Check here… % of uers screen sizes
I have recently noticed that the New York Times homepage and, somewhat shockingly, A List Apart (http://www.alistapart.com/) are both currently publishing front pages that run between 900-1000 pixels wide.
For my main web project, I still get about 15-20% of users with 800x600 screen sizes, but I think there is a definate trend towards the 900-1000 pixel wide website.
just go 780 x 450 always works for me 
I always make sure the width of my sites are 780px and even if they are in liquid layout, the minimum with is always 780px.
I use a 24" widescreen and most websites look ridiculous when browser is full screen! Liquid ones look “too liquid”, with each paragraph looking lonely on its own line.
Many fixed width layouts just look too small.
Under 800px wide (fixed) and centred is my preferred width, ideally with a background that looks like part of the design whatever the width (the blogger.com homepage works well).
Paul - I’d advise you stay away from 800px wide - you would almost certainly get scroll bars in Windows at 800x600 - thats why the more experienced developers are all quoting figures of around 760px wide!
“I use a 24” widescreen and most websites look ridiculous when browser is full screen! Liquid ones look “too liquid”, with each paragraph looking lonely on its own line."
The advantage of liquid layouts is that if you don’t like the way the website looks at full screen, you can reduce the browser window, so the width fits your own preferences.
For some sites I use 100% and for others I use 800px width.
Hi, there seems to be a lot of good advice in this post. One article that always helps me out, despite being a little dated, is hosted by Webmonkey. It goes into detail on how to calculate the different browser differences and how to compensate for them as well as providing a few photoshop files to help you out. It will obviously have to be updated for Firefox and Explorer 7 but it remains a great resource. I would agree with you guys that 800 x 600 is still the best resolution to design for.
I go for 100% width and leave the text fully scalable for all users. Yup, the length of the <p>'s can look funny on a big screen and sentences do become harder to read… but … I like to let the user organise their own view of the site and not restrict them.
They can narrow the window, blow up the font size, whatever.
Wow thanks for all the feedback. As usual there is no straight answer. I will use trial and error and see how it goes, But great guidelines thanks.
and whats about the users using 1280*1024? they are not to neglect
Fix the width using %, not pixel because everyone is using different resolution ( 1024x768, 1280x1024 etc ).
One thing this discussion has not touched on is content.
Certain content simply cannot be adequately displayed in a small size because there’s too much loss of detail - lots of fine-art photography, for example, and also many scientific graphs and tables. The IE 5.x/6.x height limitations on Windows of <600 pixels for a 1024x768 display is good example of where this is a problem. So even if the webpage your visitor uses to access your content is, say, 700x500, they may still end up having to scroll when viewing your actual content.
(although, on the other hand, the typical serious users of such content are probably more likely to have higher-res displays).
Who has a resolution these days of 800x600 anyway? When will we all make the shift to 1024 & higher resolution? Are we all waiting for someone to do it first? It seems from what I have read that at least 60% are at that resolution or higher. Stuff that some of my sites are 1024 I reckon if we don’t start making pages that big we will never get there.
Andrew, you have a point.
Small companies often replace the Purchasing Officer’s monitor last. If you’re in B2B it pays to remember things like that.
Once again, it depends on your target audience. Also, the rate of equipment replacement and upgrade is probably faster in USA/UK than some other countries. Where is your audience.
I think one of the bigger drivers over time, will be the increasing use of small screen devices to access the web, especially in the business community. Another reason I like liquid pages. They scale well to anything.
Yeah true, my target audience are designers and web graphic design people, I don’t really sell anything. I also agree that you must design to your target, if my pages were to be viewed by companies like you say, I would of course design to accomodate smaller resolutions… Still 800x600 looks so wierd these days.
Horses for courses all right.
I’m playing with the idea of continuing to use fully liquid layout but putting a width on <p>'s so they don’t get too wide and unreadable. This might leave images looking a bit lonely, but what the hell.
Once again, there is no right answer. You just gotta work with the info you got and make a best guess. Of course, if you have a way of asking your audience, you can find out more.
Does anyone have official stats that breaks down what the general population has on their screen?