In 2006 I published a report about browser sizes. The point of this report was primarily to visualize that it was not the size of the screen that matters, but the size of the browser window. Now, two years later, many things have changed.
The size of people's screens has changed a lot in the past years, but so has how people use the internet. If we look the screen size itself, almost everyone have high-res screens. On this site about 1% still browse using 800x600, and less than 20% use 1024x768. Almost everyone browse the internet using 1280x800 or above. That is a big change.
If we instead take a non-tech site, like a website from a clothing company, we see a slightly higher percentage of 1024x768 usage - at 30%, but 800x600 is still in the 1% range. 800x600 is long dead.
But as I also found in 2006, the size of people's screens doesn't correspond to the size of the browser. In 2006 I found that as the screens get bigger, the size of the browser stays pretty much the same - around 1300px in width.
The big question is; with this increase is screen resolution, what size should I design for? And that is actually a pretty simple thing to answer. You should design for a maximum width of 980px.
You see the internet has changed a lot over the past two years. It used to be just about the desktop browser. That was the only way people used the internet. Today that is no longer the case. Today people browse the internet using mobile phones, gaming consoles and embedded windows - apart from using the desktop browser.
If you are smart, you should design your site so that it can be used on every modern device.
And here is a trick. Every modern mobile browser has a default width of 980px. That is the width a web page is rendered in. Your site does not fit on a mobile browser (even when you zoom out), If you make your site larger than 980px.
So you need to make it less than 980px in order to design a page that works well on all modern devices - including mobile phones and desktop browsers. And, it turns out that 980px is also a very comfortable size to use in general.
Do the smart thing. Forget about the size of people's screens, design for a maximum width of 980px. Then your site will work (nearly) everywhere.
Wow thanks for the advice. I don't know much about how browsers work but can't you just create a css that automatically adjusts to whatever size you change to? Like an SVG file keeps it's resolution when you resize it.
Interesting, even more now that I'm planning a new project and want to know things like these. What about the http://960.gs/ system? Have a great weekend Thomas!
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Yousef, The short answer to your question is "no". There are ways to create flexible layouts in CSS, but since the difference in size and resolution is no so big, you site will not look very good when scaled (the text/image would appear way to big on large screen, and way too small on small screen).
Simon, 960.gs is fine compared to the 980px guideline
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Ahh... on second though (now that I read what 960.gs actually is about), then yes, using a 960px size would be great to as it creates a 10px whitespace on either side.
980px would be still designing for a 1024px screen size. Exclude window borders in older uis plus a sort of possible sidebar in its closed state, the things that a smart moblie device lacks and you arrive to a 980 px circa. My 2 cents.
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Rotteneffekt, no... 980px is not like designing for 1024. The whole point of the article is to point out that the size of people's screen are irrelevant, because many devices render the page at 980px regardless of the screen resolution. That 1024 happens to be close to 980 is, in my oppinion, just a coincidence.
Forget about the screen resolution, it no longer provides any value as a design guideline.
Hah! didn't know that about mobile! Thanks!
We've been using 976/16/8/4 or 960px-based grids widths for the last couple of years. This due to following the stats on the 300+ sites hosted on the cms we work with. What a nice bonus.
From my experience, designing with 950px will be the best width and my refrence is Cameron Moll article http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/001220.html.
We've tried this for the past couple of years and it worked just fine :)
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Thomas Baekdal
Writer, Project Manager and Interaction Designer
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Oh... I forgot to mention. A site designed for 980px also works fine on most mini-notebooks (or netbooks) - like the Asus Eee. Most of them runs 1024x600px.