What sort of width do you normally stick to when making a web page? I've always stuck to 720px [for people who still use 1024 x 768, and they may not have their window maximised, or may have their boomarks open].

Im starting to think now that I mightaswell increase the width of the pages I create. After all, a lot of computers come with widescreen monitors these days, and it can be awfully hard to make a decent amount of content fit into 720px!

Im thinking of stepping it up to about 850px.

El,

My recommendation is take a look at your web analytics you should be able to determine what you resolution the majority of you clients are viewing from with that. Surely a lot of people will have their input on what you should set your resolution at but listen to you analytics and go from there. If you do increase the width be sure to conver font sized to relative font sizes with em (%) the people with higher resolution will thank you.

Good Luck!

1024 X 768 is not as common any more, most people have resolutions of 1280 X 1024 or higher so a 720px site is pretty small now a days. I would definitely stay above 800px wide but don't go over 1000px. And i wouldn't design for the chance that they have their window minimized, most people looking at a website look at it at full screen and if not they usually start maximised and shrink it down so they can see the information they need so it doesn't really need to be a smaller site.

I wouldn't go wider than 1024 yet if that is what you mean. Nobody likes horizontal scroll bars. Depends on who your audience is though. There are stats counters out there that will check it for you. I think it requires JavaScript on your pages though.

Here are the results from one source.

• 1024x768 52.28%
• 1280x1024 17.85%
• 800x600 7.41%
• 1280x800 7.06%
• 1152x864 2.86%
• 1400x1050 1.69%
• 1440x900 1.53%
• 1680x1050 1.35%
• 1280x768 1.21%
• 1600x1200 0.89%
• 1920x1200 0.80%

Thanks for the advice.

Is it common to try and make the homepage of your site all fit into the page without there being a vertical scroll bar?

I did hear it once, and it sounds like a good idea. Then you could use the other pages of your site to elaborate on what was mentioned on the homepage.

Im trying to make this possible on a 1024 x 768 resolution, however its hard in FF due to the room taken by the additional toolbars that come with the browser by default.

1024 X 768 is not as common any more, most people have resolutions of 1280 X 1024

I think that's way too broad a statement to make. There are LOTS of people, especially older folks, who might have the capability to use higher resolutions, but don't use it because it just makes everything too small.

I would not go any wider than 1000 (leaving space for scrollbars) at this point in time.