Page Width

what is the preferred size.

[JonnyWales]

I use a width of 620 pixels which seems a bit narrow but I hate it when you have to scroll horizontaly which is often the case when you have a low screen resolution and the Favourites column displayed.

What other widths are preferred?

[tigger]

I work to 770 pixels as the maximum with zero margins which does not give a scroll bar at 800x600

[Shak]

I am with Tigger on this 1

Shak

[chiyo]

Same as tigger as an absolute worst case.

But we try in almost all cases to make sure it looks good in anything from 350 up with no horizontal scroll bar, the only thing that really restricts us being the width of images and a reasonable wrap around of text around it.

The hardest thing for us is making sure that the lines of text do not get too long when people have whopper screen widths. Does not really help readability to have long lines, especially on the web.

We assume that a significant minority do not view the web full screen, but windowed, and that this trend will continue.

Our main 'ideal' is that this is the web, not a constrained newspaper or book width, so pages for us, should really be designed to stretch and compress gracefully rather than be constrained to a certain width no matter the capabilities (or lack of) a persons window to our site.

We do, as a design principle however, favour white space, so we tend to use percentages for the page as a whole (say 95%) and at least one column, and a fixed width for maybe one column, which needs to be narrow to look good, for one of the two to three columns.

[tedster]

I do both fixed width and fluid page development - some clients don't like the fluid situation and there's not much I can do about it. So in fixed width, I usually work with less than 770 pixels (720 or so is common) to accommodate (to a degree) the 800x600 visitors with a favorites column hotlist.

But I also take one more step. I keep all the individual columns of text to under 600px so that a 640x480 visitor can access the content by side scrolling just once. Then the entire column is brought into view with one simple action and the user doesn't need to keep scrolling back and forth.

[grahamstewart]

Personally I hate websites that don't make good use of my screen size. I visit loads of sites that appear all bunched up in the top left of the window, which looks terrible.

Fluid design is definitely a nice way to go - and is easily achieved by specifying widths in percentages or just allowing divs and other containing blocks to be as wide as they can be.

If your clients don't understand the need for a fluid design, as tedster suggested, then at least make sure your content appears in the center of larger windows, rather than stuck in the corner like the classroom dunce. :)

[TheWebographer]

I think fluid CSS design is the way to go. But if I use tables rather than pure CSS I wouldn't go much wider than 750 pixels.

620 Pixels seems to print out very well.

Its a matter of taste, experience, and what you need for that particular project.

[Tony_Perry]

in business always 760 as most users have monitors set for 800 x 600

[Go60Guy]

If I'm not mistaken, its currently roughly 50/50 between 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768. Computers are sold with 800 x 600 set as the default, but with larger monitors becoming common, there's a gradual switch to 1024 x 768.

[Tony_Perry]

Go60Guy

You are right. But if you set it for 800 x 600 you keep everyone happy!

[Hobgoblin]

I generally use between 650 and 750.

Using values such as those, no side-scrolling will appear for those using 800x600 resolution. I also prefer that because I run 1280x960 with my browser window covering the left 2/3 of my screen, so thats about 800 as well.

People using 640x480 are becoming fewer and fewer, and they are *used* to side-scrolling because a majority of websites accomodate a minimum of 800x600.

[tedster]

I've seen new laptops that come configured at 1600x1200. With most laptop screens, the native resolution is the only one worth looking at - but even multiples of that resolution are also OK. So the default 1600x1200 also looks good at 800x600. However in between everything has the jaggies, so these users are most likely to stay at 1600.

[bizwebpage]

Textbook after textbook suggests 800X600 and the best size for maximum results.

[rcjordan]

Currently 760, centered. Content column usually set at 468. (And I'm working on a CMS system tuned to handle the next public migration upward in resolution)