19 Jul

Wider Sites

Take a look around the web, and you will notice there’s more to see. Almost weekly, at least one Fortune 500 company unveils a web redesign, and they’re all pushing site design standards to new widths. Less than 2 years ago, major sites like Microsoft, CNN, all fell with in the standard lowest common screen width of 800 pixels. Most sites, due to browser chrome issues were quite a bit smaller to allow for scroll bars and window borders and interface elements to be displayed.

Previously,

Pixel Dimension DesktopToday, however each major site release is a realization of positive new trend in webdesign , wider page layouts for greater flexibility with the presentation of information online. Microsoft, for instance measures 930 pixels wide. CNN’s flexible new design displays at 1,011 wide. eBay’s recent update the narrowest of the new sites — but still wider than previous — is 767 pixels wide. Apple’s new website, heavily promoting the iPhone fits into a window roughly 985 pixels, but really looks better if you can stretch your window to around 1,085 x 786.

At stressdesign, we’re advising all our clients to take advantage of this new trend. The results are websites that are more flexible in the presentation of information and can allow more room for contrast of information and larger images of staff, events and product.

If your current website design is more than 2 years old, chances are that it was design for the now outdated 800 pixel standard width. Contact us today to learn how a website redesign can help your company communicate more effectively and make a better impression online.

Additional Reading

If you’d like to read more about the considerations for site width, consider these articles.

Chapter 2 from this 1999 article at WebMonkey, Sizing up the browsers is a great article to understand some history of pixel dimensions.

409.gifAs recent as 2002 on this nicely written article posted at Web Style Guide discusses safe browser dimensions. Page Dimensions tells web developers not to exceed 760 pixels to allow for browser chrome and maximum compatibility. Even more telling is the maximum width suggestion of 410 pixels. Graphic courtesy of Web Style Guide.

 

To get a real sense of the evolution of screen sizes view the following statistics from TheCounter for the past 7 years.

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007