Page width for web development

gimme5minutes

Fixed width sites generally seem to be approx 960-980px in width. Obviously this is to account for users with 1024x768 monitors. But it's 2010 now and I find it hard to believe there are many users still stuck using a resolution from the the 1990s. Users with higher resolutions are suffering acres of space wasted on sites designed for 960px.

So what minimum resolution should you be designing for these days?

Sparks

Moved to Design.

TitoPuente

1028 is about standard really. So your designs should be about 980 in width or thereabouts... I think.

daymobrew

Blueprint uses 950px, 960 Grid System uses 960px, Yahoo UI Grids has 750px, 950px, 974px and 100%.

People on high resolution screens may not maximise their browser window.
My screen is 1440x900 (widescreen) but my browser window is is about 1050px wide.

Pixelcraft

gimme5minutes wrote: »

Fixed width sites generally seem to be approx 960-980px in width. Obviously this is to account for users with 1024x768 monitors. But it's 2010 now and I find it hard to believe there are many users still stuck using a resolution from the the 1990s. Users with higher resolutions are suffering acres of space wasted on sites designed for 960px.

So what minimum resolution should you be designing for these days?

First off, 1024x768 wasn't common in the 90's, it was probably the best you could get, then the move to tft's slowed down resolution advances. It's still by far the most commonly used.

Second, people don't necessarily browse with full windows, so 960 should be in or around what you design to.

OFlaherty

I posted earlier with the graphs showing the screen resolutions of over 1.4 million unique visitors to our site based on Google Analytics results of the past 30 days.

1024x768 was still being used by over 9% of our readers. That accounted for almost 130000 of our unique visitors.

You can see the statistics and popular resolutions by following the link above

Liam Byrne

gimme5minutes wrote: »

Users with higher resolutions are suffering acres of space wasted on sites designed for 960px.

As others have said, there's no guarantee that people will be browsing with their window maximised, especially on large screens.

The whole idea of having larger screens and larger resolution is to have multiple windows open.

If you buy a bigger desk, you don't necessarily want a bigger notepad or keyboard

yuloni

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Liam Byrne

Condi wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Not done automatically. You need to set the body content to centred in CSS, and then put in a content "wrapper" that has the required width, text-aligned left and margin-left & margin-right set to "auto" in order to achieve that in all browsers

Condi wrote: »

if it has to be done by the designer, make it centred on the page

It does. But I agree that it's the best approach and looks way better.

OFlaherty

Thanks Condi, glad you enjoyed the stats

I agree.. no matter what resolution you work for, centered is always the way to go.

There is nothing worse than seeing a 1028*768 design left aligned on a 1600+ display...

cormee

OFlaherty wrote: »

I posted earlier with the graphs showing the screen resolutions of over 1.4 million unique visitors to our site based on Google Analytics results of the past 30 days.

1024x768 was still being used by over 9% of our readers. That accounted for almost 130000 of our unique visitors.

You can see the statistics and popular resolutions by following the link above

Wow. Very, very impressive stats. Well done.