Straw poll: fixed width choices

[los_design]

OK Guys

When you and the client have decided to have a fixed width site (many do...) do you opt for

A) 945px or
B) 1000px

Just curious if anyone has a firm fav? Mine is fluid but if fixed I tend to go for 945px

[leehack]

970, 980 or 1001 for me.
Can i have my straw now please, i'm hungry.

[Corax67]

As both client and designer I am interested to see the result of this, so far our site is set up as 900 because it looked good to me on screen.

[los_design]

970, 980 or 1001 for me.
Can i have my straw now please, i'm hungry.

oooooh

no definitive, not like you to sit on the fence leeski.

Oh, and straw has been sent using Inter link ex

[TraceyHand]

OK Guys

When you and the client have decided to have a fixed width site (many do...) do you opt for

A) 945px or
B) 1000px

Just curious if anyone has a firm fav? Mine is fluid but if fixed I tend to go for 945px

interesting question.
I used to be a fluid fan but, as monitors get wider and wider, they just look a bit daft sometimes.
The ones I changed, I switched to 975 (with a 5px top margin) and that's what I've been tending towards on the whole (except Mrs 800 who I convinced to go full screen on 1024 and chose 1000 in the end)

[leehack]

As both client and designer I am interested to see the result of this, so far our site is set up as 900 because it looked good to me on screen.

Unless you have a specific reason for 900, ie showing a certain background image or color, i think 900 is bad as it's middle of the road and really satisfies nobody. Many people make the mistake of designing for their eyes IMO.

970 or 980 is to do with background colour DJ and how prominent or contrasting i want it to be, that is all, but in all honesty i probably use 980 now and try and get maximum product area possible.

[Duncan Rounding]

I agree 985 gives enough background surround whilst still allowing space for scroll bars on 1024. 1000 (or 1001 for Lee) maximises the space for 1024.

Why do like the extra 1 Lee?

[leehack]

Across the 3 main browsers i found that 1001 with a 1px border is the maximum and fills a screen everytime. 1 less pixel and there is a thicker band on one side and 1 more gives you the tiniest of scrollbars.

Maybe thats specific to my screens though, i've see my 1001 layouts on quite a few 1024 screens though and never seen a scroll bar. I guess the masses would have to take a look to get a real answer on it.

[pinbrook]

personally i like to see a little bit of contrasting background left and right, so anywhere around 970-985 does it for me, however i don't like to see a top margin

[RuralWeb]

Mr Fluid me

[Corax67]

Unless you have a specific reason for 900, ie showing a certain background image or color, i think 900 is bad as it's middle of the road and really satisfies nobody. Many people make the mistake of designing for their eyes IMO.

Thanks Lee - it's all too easy to make mistakes as a complete novice, especially on your first attempt.

Will definitely watch this thread to see the general consensus.

[RuralWeb]

You should build sites to match as best as possible the resolution your vistors most use. You can get this info from your stats or if you are targeting a specific customer base then find out what they are using as getting it wrong can loose you vistors fast.

Take Karl for example he is building a site specifically to target military personel in Iraq so I would imagine that they are using some pretty cheap kit (no change there) and smallish screens so it will be important not to make the site too wide as they will soon loose interest in using it. SO it may be best to stick with the 800 site (I know I have said they are dead in previous threads) or find out exactly what they are using if possible.

The other problem with wider sites is that images tend to get bigger to fill the extra space so increasing page sizes and download times again this would be a problem for Karls site as he already knows that connection speeds are limited. Its important that the images are very well optimised and kept as small as practical.

[wfl]

I have found centered max / min to be a workable solution where min tends to be 800 and max to be 1000.

That way the fence doesn't hurt too much.

The variation in size does not make the design look awkward at either end.

It works fine in IE6+, FF, Safari & Opera and I am willing to live with any shortcomings outside of that.