Resolution Size when designing

[JazzMaan]

I have a very basic question:

When designing a website layout what is the size I should target?

What should be my size to avoid scrollbars. I understand that vertical really depends on how many toolbars a user has, but what is a average or accepted sizes to design?

1. designing for 1024x768:

2. designing for 1280x800:

Thanks

 

[vacunita]

Usually you don;t target monitor sizes but try to accommodate all resolutions utilizing fluid layouts that flow with the resolution and size of the window. However if you want to keep your site at a standard size that most people will be able to see without scrolling left or right, 1024*768 seems to be the more widely used resolution. 1280*800 not so much.



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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[JazzMaan]

So what should be the size for fixed:

1. designing for 1024x768:

980x600 ??

2. designing for 1280x800:

??

 

[vacunita]

If you want to use a fixed resolution use 1024 x 768. that's what most people use. Taking into account window bars and all hat stuff. 980 * 700 should give you a nice layout that everybody will be able to see correctly.

The same size will look fine in larger resolutions but it will have side bars for he rest of the space.

If you don't want side bars, look up fluid layouts. these layouts accommodate themselves to the resolutions and window sizes automatically.






----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[BigRed1212]

You can design for a particular resoultion, but lots of people still look at things at 800 by 600 and lots of people use cellphones or iPods or whatever to bring up pages.

The earlier comment about being fluid makes more sense to me. I would think in practice this might mean avoiding a 1,000 pixel wide header image, for example, and not doing things like making a textual reference or a design dependency to "the gray box on the left" that when presented with a browser/screen/device combination you haven't allowed for may not actually be on the left.

2 cents.