Hi, I am wondering what the best width is for websites these days. I am using 950 px at the moment. It seems kind of narrow on my new monitor screen but then again, we have to think of those viewing our websites on iphones and stuffs.
There's the 960px and if you wish to go > 960px I would suggest building a responsive design or template for mobile website.
The width should be at maximum 1000px to fit into most of the monitors. However, if you want to think of people using mobile devices, just create a separate template for them.
You can create your site to be dynamic and have parts of your site stretch so as to be more flexible depending on screen size. while fluid design is normally all in %% (something im not a big fan of to be honest), but i have found that for minor flexibility, you could have minwidth=800 maxwidth=1000 and the site will adjust between, you can then use percentages for your other containers so that they space out accordingly.
When in doubt check main stream sites. I use 1040 personally. My main column is normally only 720-730 wide though, so to be honest.... If they can't handle that size odds are that they won't even be able to comprehend the content on my sites anyway.
960px is fine, you can go bigger if you want but remember a lot of people use laptops and some have crappy monitors. I would suggest creating a mobile version as well which uses the device width for iPhones and stuffs. 960px still looks ugly on an iPhone.
I use responsive design. So it goes in 5 various widths depending on the user's devices to view it with.
Most monitors are 1024 in width so thats the best width but if you want to make your site same width on any screen use 100%
I would suggest do not go beyond 1000px as if you take 1024px, the scrollbar on left may take some space thus giving you a horizontal scroll. A width of 980px or 1000px is fine.
Rather than setting the width to a measure in pixels, I would suggest setting it in a parameter at 100%. This will ensure that your webpage fits most if not all monitors and looks basically the same on all screens.
I prefer to use 800 pixels that is auto resize. It will expand on wider screens and it will shrink to at most 320 px on other small screens.
Most monitors now are 1028 or more... optimise your main site for wider screens and build a mobile website for mobile visitors. A good site i have found: 123MobileWebsite dot com You can purchase the software to make your own mobile site for just $15