Optimum Web Site Size

SwiftColour

Junior Member
Hi Guys,

I just wanted to see peoples thoughts on the ideal website size as I am redesigning a personal website for my acting and want to make it stylish, impacting but also user-friendly.

In the ever changing world of screen resolutions and widescreen monitors, I think it is something that seems to be present now more than ever.

Is the solution to create a fixed website of say 750px to cater for 800 x 600px screen resolution or is it better to do a fixed site at 950px to go for the now more popular 1024 x 768px resolution.

Alternatively, is it better to create a fluid / elastic web site based on percentages? What are your thoughts on this?

Cheers,

Eamon
 
1024x768 is the more common screen size now rather than 800x600 so creating a fixed width layout of 960px for instance would be perfectly acceptable. To confuse things even more people view websites on phones now which currently don't have screen resolutions that high, but I wouldn't worry about that since most websites haven't been specifically designed to work on phones yet still work ok by pinching and zooming etc.

If your happy with the appearance of a liquid layout (fluid / elastic as you put it) then that would be an option. Personally I think this approach works better on small screens such as phones and look less good on bigger screens such as a widescreen desktop monitor - its difficult to read a column of text that spans the width of a 1600px wide screen for instance!
 
Responsive (or adaptive) design is becoming more and more the trend these days. It's kind of a semi-fluid site that realigns itself on smaller screens. It works with css media queries. Here are some examples (try resizing your browser down).

For static sites the most common width is 960px as Richard pointed out above.
 
linkbuilding said:
Standard size of a a web page is 1024x768. This is for the Firfox 4.0 and for IE 7 is 1680X1050. Its all vary according to the browser.

That makes no sense...
 
still be weary of who you are targeting, many council, government, and school organisations still, yes i know, still have 800x600 and no FLASH...
 
Very true Romack thats a very good point that I didnt think about.

Kevin I love the examples you gave with a semi-fluid site. I would love to know more about that as I love the idea of it repositioning to fit on different sizes and even removing items at smaller sizes. Do you know of any good tutorial / development pages that can explain a bit more about it or perhaps you yourself are able to help.

Something like that would be fantastic to learn.

I have also heard of using a fluid site with a max-width parameter with a javascript maxwidth setting as well as CSS. That seems to cover most browsers and stops the problem of having a line to read thats the full length of a 1600px screen lol.

Love the opinions though guys and guess ultimately its down to the client you are designing for and your own personal preference.

Eamon
Swiftcolour - print and design solutions
 
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