Hi,
It depends massively on your demographic but once the number of people has dropped below a threshold you're comformatable with (we used 4%) then you can move to a wider resolution.

One point to note though - it's still good practice to ensure that primary conent is viewable on 800x600 without horizontal scrolling. By using a right hand column for secondary content for instance...

On 09:40:19 10 September 2008 KJB1972 wrote:

Hi all,

We're updating our site and it's currently 800x600, which has been the 'best practice' size since time began. I do note though that a majority of our customers are using 1024x768 or 1280x800 as their resolution.

What's the general consensus out there about sizing of sites? Many sites seem to be sticking to 800 wide with varying depths.

Many thanks

On the point of moble resolutions that are typically below 640px resolution - an alternative style sheet can be employed that strips out less neccesary content (right hand column?) and lays out the content so it can be read by users on these screen resolutions.

On 08:04:13 11 September 2008 EdStivala wrote:
>Hi,
>Whilst it is true that the majority of users are now using
>screen resolutions higher than 800 x 600, you should bear
>in mind that they have also discovered that you don't have
>to have the window maximized. In fact with increasingly
>large screen sizes, it becomes more 'usable' to have
>several windows open simultaneously but with none of them
>open to maximum.
>
>Therefore I would echo Robbie's comment that primary
>navigation and anything else that is deemed very important
>should be available in an 800 x 600 format - using top
>left as an anchor point. (I typically still use this size
>or maybe 900 wide for this reason)
>
>Also as we move to 'bigger' dimensions I think we need to
>consider the mobile user more, as this is another group
>that are rapidly growing. Clearly a PDA / telephone
>handset is much smaller. So should a second design become
>standard practice now?
>
>Kind Regards
>
>Ed
>www.n3wmedia.com

As others have said, it depends on your users. However, the trend is certainly towards higher resolutions and being to design for higher resolutions does give you a lot more 'space' to play with.

If you look at most of the major newspaper site redesigns they are clearly optimised for 1024 X 768 (or higher) rather than 800 X 600.

Our new site, due in 6-8 weeks, is designed for a baseline of 1024 X 768 - it still works at 800X600 but would have scrolling. For mobile we'd do different CSS although, with the like of the iPhone, many mobile devices are getting pretty good at rescaling websites.

Ashley Friedlein
CEO
E-consultancy.com

Hi -
I agree with MrZen - variable widths are a good way to go - but i disagree that these should be restricted to simple text based sites.

If you look at www.comet.co.uk you'll see that it stretches out to 1280.

While this way of coding CSS takes a little while to get used to it gives the user a much more plesent experience and allows them to utlise as much of the screen as they want - full screen or not.

On 09:40:07 11 September 2008 MrZen wrote:
>Hi there..
>
>All the sites I've been involved with over the past 18
>months have made the move to 1024 - here are a couple more
>thoughts:
>
>- 800 width is starting to get a little small. As screen
>resolutions get higher, you can fit more on the screen,
>but remember that what appears on the page appears
>smaller. If you use an 800 width, you need to use a
>smaller font, and this can be tricky to read for some. In
>all the latest sites I've produced, with the wider
>template, I've increased the font size (I use around 0.9em
>for regular text). This means that you actually don't fit
>more above the fold, but makes the site more readable.
>
>- As mentioned previously, you can produce alternative
>stylesheets, and you can set these automatically according
>to screen resolution or give the option to the user to
>choose. (easy to do with css, but requires quite a bit of
>work depending on your template)
>
>- You could have a variable width - but unless your site
>design is suited to it (ie simple, text based) it can look
>dreadful when the screen is stretched out. Also because
>the expanding width doesn't increase the font size, users
>can often find that they have too much to look at on the
>page...
>
>- Check out this (ignore the quality of the site design,
>and it's a bit out of date) but look at how the width is
>variable between 800 and 1024, and then fixes at 1024 when
>the screen is expanded wider: www.london2brighton.com
>contact me via my website www.mrzen.co.uk if you'd like
>some advice on how to do that!
>
>- Mobile devices should be catered for anyhow - they can
>use a different stylesheet automatically if present on the
>site and most of the good modern CMSs open source and
>proprietary provide the ability to manage these.
>
>- As for working with multiple windows, I concur also - my
>desktop monitor has a width of 1440, so a 1024 can float
>fine - however 800 widths begin to look far too small on
>my machine (you can zoom the browser window, but that's a
>different story!)
>
>Hope this is of use to you!
>
>Regards
>
>Matt
>
>www.mrzen.co.uk