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I am developing a facebook game. this game is written in php/Jquery/CSS. Up until recently, facebook games have been display in an iframe that was 720px wide. But recently, they gave the option to have a fluid layout going as wide as the user's screen. I would like to use this option and make my game go the full view of the user's screen.

Problem: The snag i came to is trying to decide the min-width to set my game to. I attempted to search the internet for most common screen sized people use to play facebook games but got nothing. I know that for a general web page/web app i must plan for all screen sizes from a small netbook to a colossal monitor. I am only concerned about the small end of the scale for this game.

Question: Should i still plan for that drasitic of a screen difference for my game? -or- Is there a min-size that is an industry standard for facebook games? -or- Should i keep facebook's old 720px wide as my minimum?

Any Help is greatly appreciated!

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  • I don't think this is the right place to ask this question either. I think you are better off finding a Facebook developers forum to ask this sort of question. – Charles Boyung Sep 12 '11 at 20:10
  • Here, check out this: blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/facebook-stackoverflow – Charles Boyung Sep 13 '11 at 12:48
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    Thanks for the recommendation, but i already posted it there before but got down voted and told to move it here.... original question – Dewseph Sep 13 '11 at 14:22
  • You might try facebook.stackoverflow.com - although I don't actually agree that this post doesn't belong here. It's as much a screen res/UX question than a FB dev question. – snipe Sep 21 '11 at 7:45
  • Let's keep it open here and see if anyone has some useful answers. – Rahul Sep 21 '11 at 8:18
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Dewseph - we have been sticking to 720px width, simply because Facebook spends a lot of time figuring out what the majority of their users are running (browser/OS-wise), so if they set 720 as the standard width, we more or less trust that (not that we had a choice up until recently). Fluid layouts obviously give you more space to display content, but also means the physical layout of some of your elements may change based on the user's screen size, so I think it really depends on the nature and design of your game. A fluid layout would work well for some scenarios, not as well for others, IMHO. I'd suggest trying it out in a fluid layout (considering best practices of responsive web design - great book here: http://www.abookapart.com/products/responsive-web-design) and seeing if your game's design works well there, same as you would with any other web design. The fact that Facebook is offering fluid widths now leads me to believe that their user stats numbers are changing and that more of their users are working on higher and higher screen resolutions (which would make sense in the overall technology trends anyway)

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    Thank you for your post and well informed answer! I finally decided to keep my actual game play at 720px, but to expand everything around the game(menus and such) to be fluid with the user's screen. again, thank you for sharing your knowledge! – Dewseph Sep 22 '11 at 14:02

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