What screen resolution?

[charter]

I am going into web design and am wondering if someone can please help sort some confusion for me.

With most computer sales now coming with 19", 20" or 22" widescreen monitors, I am left wondering what screen resolution I should be designing for.

I know some people with very old monitors still use a resolution of 800 x 600.
I also know that the average for quite a while has been for 1024 x 768.

These new widescreen monitors (of which I have a 20.1" Viewsonic) has a normal resolution of 1680 x 1050.

Which resolution should I be designing to?

All help much appreciated

[tracknut]

I very much doubt that most of us using large widescreen monitors browse the web with the browser at full-screen resolution. The reason we have these large screens is so we can get multiple windows on the screen and multitask. So I don't agree with the idea that as monitor resolution increases, so does a web page. I still design my pages for 800px most of the time.

Dave

[mrtodd]

Great Point Tracknut!

Here is some very useful information on "who you should be designing for."

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

I think the 800px width looks great even on my wide screen macbook pro.

With that said I will almost always design to that tune but some times the client wants otherwise and sometime (like on crazy sports team pages) I go much wider.

Great question!
Hope that helps.

-Kasi

[mrtodd]

Whoops.

Posted the wrong link... That was a good one too but here is the one you are looking for:

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

sorry
-K

[Kravvitz]

The statistics posted on w3schools.com only apply to their site.

Check these out:
The Definitive FAQ on Screen Resolution (http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=463591)
The importance of window-width (http://www.collylogic.com/?/comments/the-importance-of-browser-window-width/)
Actual Browser Sizes (http://baekdal.com/reports/actual-browser-sizes/)
Poll results: 50.4% of respondents maximise windows (http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200704/poll_results_504_of_respondents_maximise_windows/)