What is the best absolute width for a webpage? [closed]

Question

Assuming a fluid layout is not an option (since that is a different discussion all together), what is the recommended width for a site layout? What are the pros and cons of different sizes?

Answer 1

I've always kept with 960px as it's viewable on 1024x768, and is cleanly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 32, 40, 48, 60, 64, 80, 96, 120, 160, 192, 240, 320 and 480... so I can split up the design of my site (using the rule of thirds) cleanly.

EDIT after a few years: Please consider using CSS Media Queries to make your content responsive to the myriad of devices out there now if you can't use a fluid layout. I'm not sure that one can claim one pixel width to rule them all in 2012.

Answer 2

Check out http://browsersize.com for some quick stats on screen resolutions users use nowadays. You can use http://setmy.browsersize.com to quickly resize your browser to emulate viewing your website at a particular screen resolution. Make sure that your layout satisfies at least the most widely used screen resolution (1024 x 768).

Also, don't necessarily aim to take up the maximum horizontal space. The width of text (number of words per line) ideally shouldn't exceed a certain threshold for usability:

At the very common 1024×768 screen resolution, most fixed-layout websites don’t use all available space to the left and right of their content. Flexible layouts make a better use of horizontal space, but struggle to maintain usable line-lengths. Usability experts have told us that there are just so many words you should put on a line. Between 8 and 12 words seems to be the ideal line length. Print media, especially newspapers, don’t hesitate to use even shorter lines. Why? Because they can, by laying out text across several columns.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/css3multicolumn