Hey guys, i have been wondering if there is a specific width a designer should use when designing a website. I am used to 750X600 , but i recently read article on website designing and the write stated that the page should be 640X460. Am not particular about the height, just curious on the width. What is the recommened width to use?

hello,
Personally, i use between 600 and 850px and it works for me

adeniyi,

how old is the book? For the most part these days, most people code for the 1024x768 resolution.

This is where web logs come in handy. In the end, it really depends on what audience the client is targeting. If the client is clueless, then I would suggest you go for 1024x768. Of course, to prevent horizontal scroll, you probably won't go for exactly 1024px width. I for example atimes will use anything from 780px to 965px and then center the page, depending on the design.

Of course, it would be preferable to go for a liquid or elastic design. That way, your page expands and contracts with each resolution. I for one, try not to do this as, depending on design, you could end up with items (especially when implementing positioning or floats. Also occurs when you are combining, say, images with fixed widths,with %age-based columns.) looking good in one resolution but messed up in another. In this case, it depends on design. Look at www.webmastersofafrica.com for instance. What I did here was make the header and footer 100% width while the middle content has a set width.

I hope this helps.

Hi @adeniyi83,

I would agree with my2cents. Personally, I would recommend keeping the page width between 760 and 780 (fixed), and centering the page. Boring sort of style, but gives you 'compatibility' amongst perhaps the widest range of audiences.

Thanx yah all. I get kind of worried when i see some pages with width of about 1000, i have noticed that portals are always more wider. Am i right?

adeniyi,

again, it depends on your audience. If the portal owners *know* that a majority/all of their visitors will come in with a certain resolution, then setting a width of 1000px isnt a problem. You can study your visitor's trends for maybe, say, 3 months, to see what they are coming to your site with, resolution-wise.

Take a look at www.cnn.com for instance. They have set a width of 984px. I am sure b4 they chose this width, they monitored their web logs to see what resolution visitors come to their site with.

I am not in Nigeria and so don't know the trend there. However, from reading posts on NL, I would probably stick with a width of no more than 800px.

I hope this helps.