Website max width?

Soldato
Joined
26 May 2006
Posts
6,204
Location
Edinburgh
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?
 
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. :)
 
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
 
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.
 
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.
 
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 ;)
 
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?
 
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 :D
 
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?
 
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?
 
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!
 
Back
Top Bottom