Comments on: How wide should your site be?

By: Icon de RSS

Icon de RSS — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 08:36:02 +0000

Hello there, I just stumbled upon your blog (again!) so this time I thought’d I’d say thanks for the awesome site! Keep it up!

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:04:48 +0000

@Paul: Good point, and most of the sites I see that are wide are in the technical arena and so are likely to have higher resolutions.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:58:27 +0000

I decide widths based on what resolutions Google Analytics says have been viewing the site. Usually, less than 1% have used a smaller resolution than 1000px wide, so I figure 950px is a pretty safe amount. I don’t think horizontal scrollbars are good for 1024×768.

I think deciding your ideal width depends a lot on who is going to use the site. If it’s likely to be technically-capable people, then you can probably expect larger resolutions and design with that in mind. If your audience is more of typical computer users, you should probably go a bit narrower.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:39:33 +0000

@Rarst: Good point, although the latest browsers do make a much better job of scaling sites than they used to.

By: Rarst

Rarst — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:33:34 +0000

I have more specifi gripe with widths – how they scale while zoomed. I like my browser full-screen (that’s 1400×900 and mostly content area with Opera interface tweaked for minimalism) and I like to zoom so page is large and well-readable.

Some sites (like blogs) scale well but some of those popular-mainstream-outlets have terrible layout while zoomed and sometimes pagination of article on top.

I just hope that with resolutions increasing (and mobile web rising) more web-designers start to pay attention how their sites scale up to large and down to small displays.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:58:13 +0000

@Lyndi: 850-950 is what I have worked to also. Take a look at http://nettuts.com though, is that site too wide?

Personally I think it’s fine, but it is actually 1002px wide.

By: Lyndi

Lyndi — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:28:32 +0000

I was also one of those who felt that there should be no horizontal scrollbars in 800 X 600. This has changed now. There are very few users using this small resolution. Today I design to make sure I do not get a horizontal scrollbar in 1024 X 768. Most of my fixed width designs these days are between 850px and 950px wide.

Your description of how you use windows is also the very reason why I dislike fluid designs. I tend to stick to fixed width and make sure the full width can be viewed in 1024 X 768. This way the guys with the big resolutions can still see a substantial part of the page without having to maximize. I suppose that with time this will move up to the next resolution.