800x600 or Larger?

[Ark-Angel]

In the old days of designing sites we pretty much had to design for 800x600 since that was what the average pc user had their resolution set too. But that was then.. and this is now.. with today's computers most people are using larger resolutions. I'm currently working on an online store for my shop and was wonderign should I still design it for the 800x600 crowd or should I go larger now. if I keep it within 800x600 it would look better in case someone still uses that resolution. But I could also use the extra space that designing for a width of 1024 would provide. What do you guys think?

[scragar]

fluid designs should be used, that way your page will scale to whatever size you need.

if you absolutly need to enforce a limited resolution you should still design for 800, even though 1024 is average, just because everyone HATES horizontal scroll bars. And if I am forced to have a horizontal scroll bar because you designed it exactly, and I'm not veiwing it maximised, or it has a vertical scroll bar you didn't plan for, or I choose to increase zoom to get a better look at something(like maybe to increase text size in opera) then you should consider a redesign.

[Calman]

Yup! ... similar to what's been said above, if you think there are still around 10-15% of 800x600 Resolutions being used out there, I would go for a centered structure, where the main table boundaries are set to a width of 800x600, allowing for gutter margins to come into effect with larger resolutions. The problem these days being, people are running 1440x1280 etc, so it's not just a case of 2-3 choices (especially with wide screen LCD)

The only other way around is to set your tables as 95% screen width (if feasible) .. then you please most people, just may have wider gaps than intended on larger screens.

Hope this rabble helps? :)

[Ark-Angel]

yeah thats what i'm doing right now.. I have a 780 width centered table.. but I was kidna hoping everyone woudl say go 1024.. so i can get a little extra width for a wider menu bar. Oh well just a design problem to solve. I'll figure something out

[Calman]

Things may get easier when 800x600 is phased out completely, but for now, we have to think about that minority as we design our pages.

I recently designed a site which everyone really enjoyed, but for 1 member, they hated scrolling and not being able to read paragraphs without doing so, as they were on 800x600.

... if only technology could hit the brakes, allowing everyone to reach the same standards!

[scragar]

or maybe you could just learn not to use tables an adopt a fluid design technique that will allow the page to resize to whatever the users resolution is.

personaly I have yet to find anything that works best as a fixed resolution, given the large number of different screen sizes and resolutions(some people are still on 640, while others are using sizes above 1440).

[Declan1991]

I like a bit of both. Generally I have fixed sidebars and a fluid middle so that the navigation is always visible and the middle can resize correspondingly.

[felgall]

Lots of people are now accessing the web with devices with much SMALLER screens.

Designing pages that display correctly in a width of 750px will always be relevant since that is the width you need for when the page gets printed.