Rifts Posted November 1, 2011 Share Posted November 1, 2011 Hey guys what do you think is the best width for a website? 980? or would it be better to do %? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gighalen Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 This is debatable, but I generally try to have a fix width of anywhere from 980-1000 with a margin:0px auto; on the wrapping container to center it. I personally don't like using % because if someone happens to be running a tiny resolution it will shoot everything in the foot, where as fixed width forces the page to be that big so the user with the small resolution would get a scroll bar. A hybrid approach that you might consider is using something like jQuery to find the width of the window on page load, and then multiply that number by something like .9 (for 90% width) and apply that finished number as the fixed width of your parent wrapper. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zane Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 You can set max-width and min-width you know? http://reference.sitepoint.com/css/max-width Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haku Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 It depends on the monitor resolution of your users. If you are targeting people in a 3rd world country, you may find that you need to target 800x600 monitors. In first world countries, generally targeting 1024 monitors is fine (so a width of 980px is ok). 960px is also a good number since it's divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8. This means you can divide your page into various grids very easily. Recently there is also a trend towards media queries, which re-arrange content based on monitor resolution, shifting things around as browser sizes change. You can also use liquid layouts which are generally full width. To some degree these work the same as media queries, though media queries do it better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaythMistwalker Posted November 11, 2011 Share Posted November 11, 2011 This also depends on the style of your website and the CSS. For things such as Forums, you don't generally want the tables wider than the maintitle image. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperBlue Posted November 11, 2011 Share Posted November 11, 2011 I'd recommend a fixed min-width and a max-width, and a percentage value for the width property.. Then simply throw IE6 a fixed width in a conditional comment, and advice users to upgrade on a support page or something. Keep in mind that resolutions change over time, and are likely to continue to do so for at least years to come. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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