How big should my canvas be for a website?

I plan on designing websites.

One of my first questions is, what should the width and height of my canvas be for a standard sized webpage?

 

You have two option:
1) 600x800 for standart resolution
2) Using % size (Ex: 60%x80%, etc)

Good luck

 

I recommend 1024 x 768 ... as almost all new systems are coming at the minimum of this resolution.....

 

Maybe, but for all 600x800, your site will look like crap and I don't enjoy large sites that fill up my screen. I like to see the background

 

Give margins.. if you need to show the body background...... If you have a look at a website 800x600 in a monitor that has resolution anything greater than 1024x768.... the page will be too small....

so in order to satisfy people with 800x600 and 1200x768 resolutions....... design a website for 1024 x 768 ... make sure you have a layout which is 3 column ... so that main content comes in 800x600 screen fully and people dont need to do scroll horizontally often....

 

Thanks. Any other opinions?

 

The most common screen resolution is 1024x768, so assuming people have their browser maximized (one usually would on a screen that small, I'd imagine), you're left with 950px horizontally to work with (as a safe estimate). I typically design sites no wider than 750px as this will be fine even on 800x600 displays, although I think I've seen only about 4 people ever using that resolution show up in my Analytics reports. If your design is dynamic (ie it can be resized fluidly without losing quality) you can just set the width to 70-80%, or even make specific settings for each resolution.