What's the widest page width that can be safely used?

Is 700 pixels wide OK these days?

[limitup]

I'd like to make my new site 700 pixels wide - is that OK these days? Due to the type of site/design it has to be a fixed width. I started checking around at a bunch of big popular sites to see how wide their templates are, but then I realized that they can, and a bunch probably do, generate custom pages based on the users resolution. Anyway, what's the general concensus these days?

[bwelford]

From what I've seen, 744 pixels wide will probably handle most 800 x 600 resolution screens with usual scroll bars, even with Mac. Of course you can make sure that any banner images will not poke outside that and then arrange for say 95% of full screen width if you want to go with a floating design

I'm not sure the detection of screen resolution will work for all viewers since some work with reduced size windows within their full screen view.

[netguy]

[webmonkey.wired.com...]

We just round it off to 740px.

[timchuma]

Something to note is that although screen sizes are getting bigger, the width of a page on the printer has stayed the same.

If you want all the text/images on a page to be printed correctly it would be best to keep the total width under 800pixels.

Thanks.