Most Common Fixed Width Design?

  • I’d like to do a poll, but that’s not an option, so I’m looking for some feed back on what people think the most common, or best width for a fixed width design.

    The reason is multifold, but one reason is after reading the new AListApart, and their reference to “faux columns”, something I’ve used on my personal blog since its inception, I thought it might be nice to offer a few different ones for download. Also, as I begin to do more themes to share, I’d like to design at a width that is accepted. I know designing for 800×600 is best (I still use my old laptop almost exclusively for online work, it’s 800×600), but 700 width, 743, 686?
    Thanks in advance for any input.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

  • 750 px. That’s the widest I generally go on fixed width. That makes a LOT of “blank space” on my own screens (little one 1280×1024, big one 1600×1200; by Friday I’ll have a second at 1600×1200 – all 17″ diags….), but it fits at 800×600 without wanking the viewport into horiz scrollbars.

    I design at 1024×768, then tweak down to 800×600. I’m NOT DOING 640×480! Sheesh.

    [and before anyone asks, yes, I surf full screen in FF at the largest res I have available, with however many sites open in tabs I need; I do NOT have a problem with text sizes – of course, who would in FF anyway? Multitasking with teensy browser windows is a myth and I have no clue who’s promulgating it….]

    I live on the edge with 786px. I also use faux columns: https://blog.jalenack.com/wp-content/themes/v4/i/content1.jpg

    760 is a good size. Altough I have seen lot of sites going 1000px. Mostly sites like Stylegala, a site for webdesigners which tend to have ridiculously big screens.

    On my 1920×1200 screen, I only browse at around 920px wide. Sometimes annoying to have to enlarge that.

    770 is the max width of a design that wouldn’t get cut off by the scroll bar in firefox. 750/760 would give you a little whitespace on the sides which I personally like because it doesn’t appear so claustrophobic.

    I assume the horizontal chrome on other browsers is similar?

    750 – 760. Beware of the Mac.

    And what is that supposed to mean?

    Thread Starter Michael Bishop

    (@miklb)

    Good question jalenack. Anyway, sounds like 750 might be a solid number. Thanks to those that responded.

    Thread Starter Michael Bishop

    (@miklb)

    OOps. Took a second. Don’t hit the button twice is the lesson now learned.

    I don’t know much about this stuff, but using a 1280×1024 screen here — I often wonder why I don’t see more designs which are, for example, Left Column Nav + Middle Column Content = 750….. Right column shows bonus content — Flikr pictures, Recent Posts, Adsense, mostly seen by 1024+ users. 800 users would get a (small*) horiz scrollbar, but they’d still see all your primary content.

    I guess it would have to be a flush-left site then.

    *Small horizontal scrollbar on a minority of users (@ 800), seems less sacrifice than huge empty borders on the majority (1024+).

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
  • The topic ‘Most Common Fixed Width Design?’ is closed to new replies.