Width of Page

[Melanie]

I'm redesigning my site from a FrontPage template with shared borders to Dreamweaver. I'm wondering what the norm is for the width of the content on the page. For example, Yahoo! and Netscape seem to have the same size page width. Also, Yahoo!'s page is centered but Netscape's is aligned to the left -- which alignment is better? Thanks for any help!

[The_Warden]

This is tough question to answer. A lot of web sites design the width of the page so it will display properly on a 640x480 resolution. But more and more web sites are adjusting there widths for a 800x600 resolution. I use a width of 780px. Now I realize that you have 800px width to deal with but you have to take into consideration the width of the scrollbar and anything else that might affect your page rendering properly. The best way to figure out your optimum width based on the resolution of choice is to test it out. Make sure to test it out in multiple browsers, IE, Netscape, Opera, etc. Generally it should work fine but I've found that some browsers have slight differences that you need to accommodate for. As for alignment that is up to you, it really doesn't matter. One time there every becomes an issue if you are dealing with an variable width (now that's tricky).

[SlyGuy]

Hello Melanie,

Width is a trickey issue. There have been numerous discussions around WebmasterWorld about viewing resolution and screen sizes. I figure about 40% of folks out there are using 800x600 and 50% or so are using 1024x800. Then there are the remaining 10% who use various other sizes (myself included).

So when I am designing a page that will fit across all the different resolutions (without auto-stretching) I make it around 770 px wide. This is also the size of the example website you used (Netscape). This particular size takes into account the scroll bars which account for 20 pixels or so.

I also usually center the pages, it just looks a little cleaner..and..er...centered.

Hope that helps..

Chad

[SmallTime]

I very seldom set a fixed width, as I seldom browse at a standard size. If you are using tables for layout, just remove the width from one column of the table. If you have graduated to css and divs, it is a little more complicated, but the same idea.

[rewboss]

I have seen some sites which have a sidebar on the right about 200 pixels wide, and the rest of the page is fixed at just under 800. That means that it fits nicely at 1024px width without a lot of white space, while at 800px the main panel with all the important information is fully visible -- you just need to scroll for the sidebar which has stuff that may be useful but not critical.

I'm not sure about the wisdom of this approach. It doesn't seem to be a horrendously bad solution...