Website max width?

ColdAsIce · 18 Jan 2011 at 10:05

I have been creating a website using wordpress for a school I work at. Before I only had a 19inch monitor using the res of 1280x1024.

Yesterday I recieved a new PC and monitor which is widescreen and using a res of 1920x1080, obviously the pages look completely different at this res and I am not entirely happy with how it looks at this kind of resolution.

Do people usually set a max width of their websites or are they happy for it to fully scale to whatever the users max resolution is?

8t10 · 18 Jan 2011 at 10:22

Generally a good size is 960px wide. I use percents, but there are still lots of people who make static sites most commonly with 960 wide.

Remember that people who view the site all have different screen sizes and different browser resolutions so you need to be flexible.

otemu · 18 Jan 2011 at 10:26

This mainly depends on the company, services or products your offering. Most of the major sites normally set there widths between 960px and 1004px but it really does depend what there offering.

Don't think there is any right or wrong answer to this, check out this article http://www.smashingmagazine.com/200...s-elastic-layout-whats-the-right-one-for-you/ that might help you make a decision.

Sp00n · 18 Jan 2011 at 10:45

960 is pretty much the agreed standard

otemu · 18 Jan 2011 at 10:50

Here is a list that might help, which was last updated April 2010:

Facebook facebook.com 980px
Yahoo yahoo.com 990px
MSN msn.com 970px
New York Times nytimes.com 970px
Wikipedia wikipedia.com 100%
Web Krunk webkrunk.com 985px
WalMart walmart.com 720px
NFL nfl.com 985px
Best Buy bestbuy.com 790px
Apple apple.com 985px

ColdAsIce · 18 Jan 2011 at 11:29

Thanks for the info guys, site is looking much better now

Russinating · 18 Jan 2011 at 12:10

As said, I usually start my Photoshop design with a width of 1000px, but this allows some margin for the background and the final site (content-wise) usually ends up being 950-980px wide.

Muel · 18 Jan 2011 at 12:16

I always stick to 960. It gives the option of using the 960 grid system for a start, and it's just a nice, comfortable width. 990 is too big IMO, because lots of people (myself included) have toolbars in their browsers these days that take up room.

AJK · 18 Jan 2011 at 12:24

ColdAsIce said:
Do people usually set a max width of their websites or are they happy for it to fully scale to whatever the users max resolution is?

Depends on the design - stupid answer I know, but it's true. If your design contains lots of carefully laid out elements which rely on a min/max/fixed width and will look wrong otherwise, then yes fixing the width is a sensible idea (and 960px is pretty much the current standard).

On the other hand, if your design doesn't rely on such elements and scales nicely perhaps showing more content depending on the screen width, or simply giving your users the freedom to resize as they see fit, then you wouldn't

Sp00n · 18 Jan 2011 at 14:47

Muel said:
I always stick to 960. It gives the option of using the 960 grid system for a start, and it's just a nice, comfortable width. 990 is too big IMO, because lots of people (myself included) have toolbars in their browsers these days that take up room.

Vertical toolbars?

Tripnologist · 18 Jan 2011 at 14:59

Sp00n said:
Vertical toolbars?

I was wondering the same thing.

I generally don't give a toss about height as it's not my problem if someone has 18 toolbars installed and can only see the first 4 lines of text on a page.

Muel · 18 Jan 2011 at 16:08

Sp00n said:
Vertical toolbars?

Aye. Opera 11 has one built in and there are loads of plugin type ones for firefox.

Sp00n · 18 Jan 2011 at 16:39

I've only use horizontal toolbars, I attribute vertical ones to things like history and favourites and I never use those because I don't like losing the width

3dcandy · 18 Jan 2011 at 17:12

Not a fan of vertical toolbars. Re: OP as said above it's all dependant on content and how/if it scales. Saying that, I don't know many sites with a liquid design that scale that well. Dare I throw mobile devices in the mix?

Tripnologist · 18 Jan 2011 at 17:37

3dcandy said:
I don't know many sites with a liquid design that scale that well.

That's because there aren't many. At least, not many which actually look half decent. When you give up that much control over our layout, something has to suffer, and that something is generally aesthetics.

3dcandy · 18 Jan 2011 at 17:56

ColdAsIce said:
I have been creating a website using wordpress for a school I work at. Before I only had a 19inch monitor using the res of 1280x1024.

Yesterday I recieved a new PC and monitor which is widescreen and using a res of 1920x1080, obviously the pages look completely different at this res and I am not entirely happy with how it looks at this kind of resolution.

Do people usually set a max width of their websites or are they happy for it to fully scale to whatever the users max resolution is?

Got a linky?

bash247 · 18 Jan 2011 at 19:46

I tend to use a width of 950px/960px for the width.

ColdAsIce · 19 Jan 2011 at 08:41

3dcandy said:
Got a linky?

http://inveralmondchs.org

3dcandy · 19 Jan 2011 at 11:31

hey ho, a critiqué we go!
Sidebar need to be a bit wider, event calendar overlaps. Centre images below even calendar. Maybe a background, that would help with your widescreen issue and make it seem less, erm, plain? I would look into a couple of plugins. w3total cache doesn't appear to be minifying css, javascript and html. wp mobile pack will serve your site up in a mobile format for those who access via other devices...

Otherwise, it's looking good and seems quick!