Hi,
Is there any standard on common website resolution?
We are targeting newer monitors, perhaps at least 1280px wide, but the height may varies, and each browser may have different toolbar heights too.
Is there any sort of standard to this?
Thanks in advance!
Bad idea, I believe. The whole point in separating content from layout was to enable your web page to be displayed on any sort of browser.
Putting in artificial limitations such as a minimum screen size will limit your market.
Having said that, I believe every desktop should be able to display 1024x768. But what about the browsers running on iPhones or other screen-challenged devices?
In answer to your specific question, no, I don't believe there is any standard for a minimum or common display area in browsers.
It's best not to target any specific resolution, but to adapt easily to many different resolutions.
I would say that you should only expect users to have a monitor with 800x600 resolution. The Canadian government has standards that list this as one of the requirements. Although that may seem low to somebody with a fancy widescreen monitor, remember that not everybody has a nice monitor. I still know a lot of people running at 1024x768. And it's not at all uncommon to run into someone who's running in 800x600, especially in cheap web cafes while travelling. Also, it's nice to have to make your browser window full screen if you don't want to. You can make the site wider on wider monitors, but don't make the user scroll horizontally. Ever. Another advantage of supporting lower resolutions is that your site will work on mobile phones and Nintendo Wii's a lot easier.
A note on your at least 1280 wide, I would have to say that's way overboard. Most 17 and even my 19 inch non widescreen monitors only support a maximum resolution of 1280x1024. And the 14 inch widescreen laptop I'm typing on right now is only 1280 pixels across. I would say that the largest minimum resolution you should strive for is 1024x768, but 800x600 would be ideal.
The guidelines we use, which seem to be fairly widely used and are backed up by the figures that we get from Google Analytics, are to design the site so that it will work on a screen that is 1024 pixels wide and 768 pixels high (1024x768 and 1280x800 are the most common resolutions we see, accounting for at least 70% of all traffic).
This is why you see many sites (this one included) which use a central column approx 1000 pixels wide and with the most important content in the top 500-600 pixels so it's above the fold when being viewed in screens this size.
Using a 1000 pixel wide layout works fairly well on screen sizes of up to about 1680 pixels in width (typically as high as you'll see on laptops, except the large 17" ones) but do start to look a bit silly on 1920 pixel wide ones (high end computers, typically workstations), however these very high resolutions don't account for a large percentage of traffic on the general internet - 2% or less (on the other hand, if you have a specialist audience like this site, the figure with high resolutions may be somewhat higher).
Try to target 1024 as the minimum width. Try how it looks at 800, but don't bother too much making that work. At 800x600 almost none of the major websites are going to work, so people working at that resolution are going to have problems all the time anyway.
If you're going to go for a liquid layout, make sure that text doesn't get too wide, because when lines are too long, they become hard to read. That's the main reason why most websites have a fixed width.
Here are statistics of browser display in 2008: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp
About 50% users are still using 1024x768. If you want your site to look nice in high resolutions use flexible layout.
Although the best width may by 1024 you'll have to adjust height for account for various browser settings (navigation toolbar, bookmark toolbar, status toolbar, etc) and account for taskbar settings. It'll quickly drop the 768 down to around 550.
Forcing your user to scroll horizontally is a serious UI transgression. Unless you are specifically building a web site for a population with a known screen size, you are safest ensuring that your design works with screens as small as 800 pixels wide (about 8% of the web surfing population if memory serves me right). It is wise to make it adapt well to larger screens but not at the cost of the folks still surfing at 800x600.
Here's another thing to consider as well: not everyone runs their browser at full screen (I don't). So the idea that if is Ok to design for a specific (and large) "screen size" really doesn't work for a number of reasons.
Whatever your target browser size, make sure to include space for browser toolbars, status bars, and scroll bars as above. Internet Explorer (IME) often has over 100px of vertical space in toolbars and status bars. Typically, if I'm shooting for 1024 x 768, I would try to create a design of around 960 - 980px wide and 600px high to be safe. That way you accomodate scrolling if necessary and some nice white space (if the design requires it). I highly recommend YUI grids for instances where you need to target specific sizes:
I target the 1024 pixel monitors (but don't use 100% of that space). I've given up on those with 800x600. I'd rather punish the few with outdated hardware by making them scroll if they need to, versus punishing everyone with new equipment by wasting space.
I suppose it depends on your audience, and the nature of you app though.
All of the answers so far talk about desktop monitors, but I'm using stack overflow on my iPhone and I don't think you should exclude any mobile platform by targeting 1024 or 1280 horizontal pixels. Mark up your page so the browser knows what it all means and making it usable will come for free, even on screen readers and other kit you haven't thought of.
Ultimately, this is not a matter of standards or best practices for markup, but rather knowing your audience and making sure your website does what you want it to do.
It's more important to consider the width of the browser viewport rather than screen resolution -- you cannot assume that every pixel on a display will be allocated to the browser (and even if it is, you have to subtract browser chrome). If you have access to analytics that report browser width (n.b. browser width, not screen resolution) then pay very close attention.
It's nice to try to accommodate the widest possible range of viewports but there are some limitations. Some challenges can be handled with CSS media types, some can't. Some can be handled with fluid layouts. But fluid layouts cannot work in all situations, depending on the type of information to be displayed, line length, reading comfort, etc. Some fluid layouts don't work in wide displays. Most break when sized below a certain width, etc.
As much as I'd personally like to design for viewports ~960 pixels and up, you can't always do it. So in some cases, it's still safest to design for viewports <=760 pixels or so (800 pixel wide display, maximized) -- though the time we can finally toss this limitation once and for all -- for the desktop at least -- is very fast approaching.
Where conversions are an issue -- and you have a fixed width layout -- you better have a darned good reason for putting anything that the user needs to click in order for the cash register to go "ka-ching" anywhere east of the 760th pixel.
Ditto for the primary navigation.
Finally, test your layout in everything you can get your hands on. Big. Small. Desktop. Handheld. The works. There's no substitute.
there are actually industry standards for widths (well according to yahoo at least). Their supported widths are 750, 950, 974, 100%
There are advantages of these widths for their predefined grids (column layouts) which work well with standard dimensions for advertisements if you were to include any.
Interesting talk too worth watching.
see YUI Base
The basic advice these days is:
Optimize for 1024x768. For most sites this will cover most visitors. Most logs show that 92-99% of your visits will be over 1024 wide. While 1280 is increasingly common, there are still lots at 1024 and some below that. Optimize for this but don't ignore the others.
1024 = ~960. Accounting for scrollbars, window edges, etc means the real width of a 1024x768 screen is about 960 pixels.
Don't design for one size. Window sizes vary. Don't assume screen size equals windows size. Design for a reasonable minimum, but assume it will adjust.
Use liquid layouts. Use layouts that will adjust when the window is resized. People do this a lot, especially on big monitors. This is just good CSS practice.
Log browser display info. You can get actual numbers about this. I found some numbers here and here and here. You can also rig your site to collect the same data.
Mobile devices are special. If you got lots of traffic from iPhones and other mobile/small devices, you may need to give them special treatment.
User will scroll so don't worry much about height. The old argument was that users wouldn't scroll and anything important should be "above the fold." One of my students wrote a good summary about the fold and scrolling with links to more information.
More information here:
Keep in mind that the higher the resolution, the less likely the internet browser will be maximiced.
And some browsers have lateral bars too.
It depends on what you want to render, but I'd go with a variable width layout that doesn't break at about 800-900 width.
Height is not really a problem.
I get questions a lot from designers about not only width but what height to use to 'keep everything above the fold'. Here is one answer I gave recently -
For width, I'm not a designer but I've read that 960px width is the way to go these days, because it lends itself to being divided into columns that look nice, and fits nicely within most displays. If you can, design a liquid layout - but this is not always practical depending on your designer, your CSS skills, the images and the amount of text.
(you always want there to be 65-80 characters per line, with a line-height of about 1.15). This is the optimal column width for text, and it has been proven to be much faster and pleasant to read than very wide or narrow columns)
As far as 'above the fold', I just have to caution against using any such concept on the web. Horizontal scrolling can and should be avoided, but vertical scrolling is something you cannot 100% avoid. All I can tell you is that on a 1024x768 display (at least 95% of users have that or higher) you should be OK with a fixed 600px high block. But there are many different display formats out there, the browser chrome can take up a lot of room, and not everybody maximizes the browser window.
here are some other sites that say more-or-less the same thing - but planning to get absolutely everything 'above the fold' for everyone is tough because then you might only have 400px or so, according to the actual statistics.
And finally a good long article that goes into great detail (I'd post more but SO says I am too noob) - How to design for Browser Sizes - baekdal.com
I've personally always stuck to max width of 1000px, centered in the middle of the page (via margin left/right: auto).
If you're running at anything less than 1024x768, it's time to upgrade. Seriously. It's almost 2010. You can buy bargain bin lcd monitors with a native res of 1280x1024.