Best width of a website

Nonesense. This is what stylesheets are made for. I did not realize we were discussing mobile phone sizes, only computer screen resolutions.

On a normal screen I design for 1024, however the stylesheet completely changes everything on the screen for PDA's. I dont really have a loss of customers, as my websites tend to be focused around technology/computer related items; and the general trend is a minimum of 1024. Even still, this only accounts for approximately 10% of my users. Everyone else is beyond and above that, save maybe the 1% of 800 users. For that, well, to bad. There just isn't enough room with 800 or less pixels. The extra 200 coming from a 1024 display is a godsend. Sure, 800 was great in the day, but its time to move on!

 

Actually, the question was, what's the best width for a website. Websites are not only seen on computer screens. Everyone and his brother is shouting out a screen resolution --as if that had anything at all to do with what width your website should be (and it doesn't) and that's why I don't use my work computer to browse teh internetz-- I'm sick of scrolling cause someone didn't want to take the time to build a site properly. My laptop has 1400px : )

 

Nice, what is that 19" wide? The resolution should be a big factor in what you are aiming for, but I understand what you are saying. I think it looks really weird on my computer as well (the 800 sites are horrible for me) because I have a 22" widescreen set at 1680px lol. To me it looks like a huge waste of space. Then again here at work I have a 14" screen that maxes at 1024, and everything looks gigantic to me.

I would freak if I had to ever switch it back to 800

 

And since when were mobiles not computers?

Screen resolution is not always the best measure, make sure you take into account that not everybody has their browser maximised.

I use x% here.

 

I use 740 or 925 depending on what im doing.

 

Usually I design @ 770 if it has to be compatible with 800 x 600
930 for 1024x768

 

Coding for 100% or another percentage can really limit what you're trying to accomplish in the design sometimes.

I usually use 950px-970px.

 

dont go further than 900px

 

Fluid layouts: I rarely use this type of design, it can cause problems when the end-user has a large monitor with a high resolution. A whole paragraph of text could be stretched into one line, of course there are ways to work around these.

For fixed layouts I will either use 760px or 960px.

750px; suited if the targeted end-users will be using a resolution of 800 x 600 or above. This figure is better than 740 and 760px, etc because 750px is divisble by 2 and 3 so it makes making 2 and 3 column layouts a lot easier.

960px; suited if the targeted end-users will be using a resolution of 1024 x 768 or above. This figure is a lot better than 950px, 970px, etc because 960px is divisible by 2, 3, 4 so it makes making 2, 3 and even 4 column layouts a lot easier.

If I'm designing for resolutions with a width of 1024 why not set it at 1024? This is because we have to take into account the browser's scroll bar and border (if they don't have the browser window maximized, but minimized full screen).

So to answer your question I'd say the "best" width of a fixed layout would be 960px. Of course this will change as monitors get bigger and higher resolutions are used.

 

Love it Stomme poes! It's truly amazing how the rest of the world is 'omitted' by the world's biggest superpower... but that doesn't mean that they aren't super clever though!

 

i always have jobs with Programming + Designing

so i use a main working table - 100% width
and split cells and start working.

this usually works cuz you can never know what your site visitors will be using!

one more thing u can do is split the 100% width table into three verticals and use the middle cell.

check www.jilmail.com for a live example !

 

I suggest 700px - 850px it's about the perfect size that way people with low screen resolutions don't have to scroll left and right

 

1024 is the most common screen size right now, so, when i do a fixed width, i code at 980px. even a log of big sites dont cater to 800 anymore. i work at ittoolbox, and we threw out all of the 800 templates about 8 months ago, and now cater to 1024 and larger.

 

I do it compatible with 1024x768 as 95%+ of my users use that or higher.

 

now-a-days most ppl have 800 by 600 px resolution so its better to design web for this resolution but for designing web for all resolution (its a good option) u should have to set value in % not px

 

There is a simple way round this. It's called max-width.

Any width can easily be divided into x number of columns using % rather than px as Jalpari said. It all depends on your design, if you want a fixed width column with a background image or a fluid layout.

For me the best solution is a fluid layout with a max-width set higher than 1280.

 

I posted this somewhere else but I'll post it here... a page not yet online and almost no content with the ads commented out:
http://stommepoes.nl/Scooterverzekeren/scooterafsluiten3nee.html

We decided on serving the 1024-crowd while not leaving out 600x800.

At 640x480, you get a scrollbar; however if you scroll right until the right menu is gone, you still have the full (blue) content. I find this ugly but acceptable, as the versions of our pages with lots of text or form content can still be read without back-and-forth scrolling. Forms can also still be filled in completely without scrolling (something I had to think a few times over to get).

Site fills window at 800x600, showing no scrollbars horizontally unless the 800x600 user makes his/her browser smaller than full-width.

1024 x 768 shows the site at full size (which does not quite fill the screen). Scrollbars only show up if they rezise their browser smaller than 800x600.

Anything bigger, and if left at full-width will show white on the right (and bottom possibly, depending on content length). I could have made it go bigger but for the small amount of content we have on most pages, there was no point. I also could have centered it but just choose not to. Centering is nice for small sites which want to look better than left-aligned when viewed on ginormous screens.

Min and max width are really nice CSS options. The javascript in the CSS is necessary for IE6 simply because it does not understand min or max anything. It ignores them. I have no problem giving IE6 a nanny to wipe its retarded butt with. No javascript? No problem really, site merely stays at its smaller width. Doesn't break the page.

 

personally i think 750x800 works pretty nice, 100% width

 

Don't use fixed size because are millions peoples which has different browsers and PC's monitors

 

I think your website width is fine. The vast majority of visitors will probably being using 1024+ resolution. Your website won't be the only one that people running 800x600 will encounter. They should be used to it in this day and age.