"Don't get any silly ideas of designing a web page for wider than 1024 pixels"
Do you think there's anything wrong with fitting the essential information within 1024 pixels, but then putting non-essential stuff to the right of that?
Do you think there's anything wrong with fitting the essential information within 1024 pixels, but then putting non-essential stuff to the right of that?
I don't think the guy that just bought a brand-sparkling new 27" cinema display really wants all the websites he visits to now start filling his entire screen -- he bought it to do multiple things at once.
Speaking from experience, I keep all my browsers at around a 1024px viewport and I get frustrated when I visit a site and need to scroll horizontally.
I think the best target size for webpages is still 1024px with 960px^ as its main content area size. The 960px grid is still very strong and useful and there's nothing wrong with it -- I would even go as far as to say that it's a "standard". (http://960.gs).
To me 1024/960 page size is the web's A4/Legal.
^Doesn't have to be 960px obviously...
Very few sites aim for 960 as their minimum[1]. I tried side-by-side viewing on a 1920x1080 monitor and it really didn't work out in most places. Even parts of Wikipedia (such as tables) will create horizontal scroll bars on certain articles.
I did notice that a lot of websites aim for 1024 instead of 960 because I saw many pages that almost fit. Please, if you can aim for 1024, aim for 960 instead.
[1] As the parent post said, it probably isn't quite 960 when you take window borders into account.
If its a site I regularly visit that is not a problem though, but what is non-essential to you might be essential to me so I'd be happy if there were small duplicate links in the footer or something.
I guess it depends, but in general anything besides ads further than 1024 pixels to the right annoys me.