What Size Should My Site Be?
We’re in a changing world. The clunky CRT monitors of a few years ago are fading quickly - replaced by skinner flat panel monitors. Overall - that’s a good thing - they use less space and less energy and can be easier on the eyes!
But we’re in a world without a clear standard when it comes to sizing up your website. When you implement a new website, you’ll need to choose a size for your website that will meet the needs of most of your constituents. There aren’t a lot of terrific demographics out there to help, either - so this may very well be a bit of a guessing game for you. Do your stakeholders have older CRT’s? Maybe in the 15 to 17 inch size? Perhaps they have one of the first flat panels - perhaps also in the 15-17 inch size?
But maybe they have a newer flat panel - more of the rectangular shape? Mine is like that - it’s a 19 inch monitor - but it’s long on the bottom (about 17 inches) and about 10 inches wide. That means long-ish spreadsheets are dreamy to look at, while some websites seem to have a LOT of white space!
Here’s a quick grid to help you size up your website dimensions:
Page widths available (in pixels):
- 600 (suitable for 640×480)
- 720 (suitable for 800×600)
- 780 (just about suitable for 800×600)
- 840 (suitable for 1024×768)
- 900 (suitable for 1024×768)
- 960 (suitable for 1024×768)
Kudos to my senior website consultant Jesse Snyder for the research and to PE Ideas on Web Design for the details!
patricks wrote:
Joel Davis creates Plone websites for our NPower customers, and magic with other sorts of tools, too. I can always count on him to provide great feedback to my website posts.
He pointed out that I didn’t really answer the question - what SHOULD your website size be? There aren’t any easy answers here - but Joel suggests (and I agree) that a WIDE website (think a rectangular monitor of 1400 pixels wide) doesn’t make for great website viewing. As he pointed out “just because we have more width doesn’t mean we should use it”!
He also noted that if you include default browser margins (and you should) - then the pixel count needs to decrease by 40 pixels. You can do the math - a 640×480 should be a 600, and a 800×600 should be a 760 and so on.
Posted on 22-Jul-08 at 6:49 pm | Permalink
Paul wrote:
It’s an interesting debate. And one which isn’t really answerable!
It really depends on the sort of content you are going to be presenting and how concentrated it needs to be. The more columns, the wider you are likely to go. It’s a design choice.
Thanks for the reference to Column Frameworks article. Although I picked up on screen sizes here I was mainly illustrating a simple way to divide the page down for multiple column layouts.
And as you right point out, you have to consider browser chrome (not Google’s new browser but the scrollbar furniture surrounding the webpage!) which is why a 780 width site isn’t strictly suitable for an 800×600 resolution.
Posted on 01-Oct-08 at 7:45 am | Permalink