what size for a web page

wolfman

ts_aly2000 wrote:

1024x768 is the best to aim for. This comes from the website stats from 50,000 hits to my website.

You're limiting or alienating users of lower resolutions though. A good example of an 800x600 fixed design site is bbc.co.uk/news. There's plenty of info on the page, but it still looks fine at higher resolutions.

All of the big guns (Microsoft, Intel, eBay, Amazon, BBC etc...) still design to a minimum of 800x600. I always find following them a good rule of thumb.

ts_aly2000 wrote:

Also you need to consider what browser they are using as well as resolution. IE6 makes up the majority at about 70%. What is visible in one browser can completely fall apart in another.

It's best to code via the standards set out by the W3C, and not to a browser. The easiest way is to use Firefox (fully standard compliant) and the Web Developer tool to check your code is fully compliant. Keep a version of IE open though and check it's working ok in that too every so often.

Probably worth thinking about your audience again. The newer the code and standards, the less it will be supported by older browsers. For general use, make sure it works in IE 6, Firefox 1.x+ and Opera 8.5+ (and Safari if possible). If you really want to go the extra distance look at supporting IE 5.

Astaroth

The real thing to be careful with is making sure it is compatable with IE7 as whilst at the moment it is a optional download MS have said they will make it a critical update so everyone with auto update turned on (the majority of people) will very shortly be upgraded and its rendering of CSS is significantly different to IE6

Personally I do design for 1024x768 as it is the most common, looks good on higher res/ widescreen views where as 800x600 most often dont, but still isnt totally unusable for the few people with low resolution. Whilst W3C are considered the authority on these things, from my own sites I havent had a single visitor with a resolution below 1024x768 in the last 12 months

martindow

There is nothing more annoying than horizontal scrolling and most people will abandon reading text and go elsewhere. I would not want to alienate even a small percentage of possible viewers - about 12 per cent for my site is 1 person in 8. I am sure we will be changing to using 1000 as standard sometime in the future, but I am sticking with just under 800 at the moment. Maybe it also depends on the type of site. Something techie where most of the people coming along will have the latest kit 1024 would be fine, but there are a lot of people with old computers and small screens or low resolutions still around.

Astaroth

martindow wrote:

I would not want to alienate even a small percentage of possible viewers

The problem is that if you do design on a a width under 800 you may well be alienating some people anyway.... on my high resolution widescreen monitor a webpage designed for under 800 fixed width (which are fairly often significantly under 800) appears as a silly strip down one side of my screen taking up under 33% of the possible viewing space..... 9/10 I will go elsewhere

DeadHead_4

800x600 would be the standard.
Any larger and you will confuse people who use an 800x600 standard desktop screen resolution.

The real trick is to use style sheets properly to rezize everything according to the window size, that will optimise the layout for every user (within reason) no matter what screen res they use.

wolfman

Astaroth wrote:

The problem is that if you do design on a a width under 800 you may well be alienating some people anyway.... on my high resolution widescreen monitor a webpage designed for under 800 fixed width (which are fairly often significantly under 800) appears as a silly strip down one side of my screen taking up under 33% of the possible viewing space..... 9/10 I will go elsewhere

What? You know 83.8% of statistics are made up. 33% of you're viewing space, you running a 24" screen or something?

I've got a 20" widescreen monitor and it doesn't affect me. Like I said some of most traffic hit sites such as Microsoft, Intel, the BBC etc... all still use 800x600 designs. That's half the screen on my machine, which is fine as I often use the other half for winamp, visual studio, another browser window etc...

In fact I can't think of anthing worse if it spanned the whole screen! That's just poor design. People are arguably more put off it they have to scan from left to right across a wide text area. That's why newpapers are written in columns rather than across a whole page.

janinl

Also, don't forget to handle font sizes properly.
Large monitors are usually used with large fonts.
Web sites usually cope well but some are just displayed as a 800x600 stamp lost in the middle of the screen showing only a few characters in font 40

Astaroth

I am running a 21" wide screen on a fairly high resolution - ultimately it is resolution not screen size that dictates what proportion of the screen a page takes up.

Certainly you wouldnt want a page being the whole screen esp on a wide screen monitor but by designing on a larger template enables you to consider having more sections/ columns which breaks up the text... similar to how a broadsheet newspaper has more columns than a tabloid rather than just having it stretched or in larger print.

wolfman

Astaroth wrote:

I am running a 21" wide screen on a fairly high resolution - ultimately it is resolution not screen size that dictates what proportion of the screen a page takes up.

Unless you have a tft

(size determines the native resolution)

Astaroth

which is still resolution whether it is native or what you set in the OS