Drawar

Scrivs, with my designs, I build them to look good at 800x600 to 1024x768 and for screen resolutions smaller then 800x600, like with handheld devices, I serve up a different style sheet.

Looking at my Google Analytics, the average screen resolution is 1024x768, next up is 1280x768 and then 800x600.

I wish that Google Analytics would also serve up the actual viewport size. Javascript can easily find this information. Then it would just be a matter of breaking that information down into ranges. Also, comparing this information to actual screen size would be quite interesting too.

Aside from my site, I usually stay under 800px width for client sites and whatnot. For my own site, only 3% of the users/visitors are at 800x600, and since my site is pretty specific for audience, most of them have higher res. monitors.

I think it really depends on the site and users still to determine if you should move above 800x600.

I'm ok with designs that scale to the screen size being used, but what I don't like is when you have your screen resolution set really high and some sites just look like a little box on the screen. That's no fun but then again, higher resolutions are really only good for movies, photos and graphics work in my opinion. I think 1024x768 is a nice default size for most modern monitors and web browsing.

Interesting. I did a test and my actual monitor size is 853x691. I rarely scroll because people are using right sidebars now. An example TechCrunch is wider than my browser window is open but the content I'd want to see if I read his site is in plain view. Sucks for advertisers...

I don't mind up and down scrolling on sites, that seems to be the norm. What I don't like is having to scroll left and right. It reminds me of the days of frames in sites... ewww.....

I have always been torn about this sort of thing, I like to design small and minimal, and yes on 1600+ pixel width resolutions it can look like a tiny box. One could go fluid with their css and it would expand to fit the browser, then using em based text sizing could help it not look like the site has very little content. With this approach I have always feared the user staring at a screen that mimics one of those gag telephones or remote controls with obviously over sized buttons for the visually impaired. You could also force browser resize but that kind of thing makes me mad and I can only imagine 99% of the population reacts the same. To sum up, I design the way I like and let my sentences run on enough to make any English Major queasy!

Mint will tell you window width, and calculate what percentage of viewers have a window width higher than x# of pixels.

Mint completely killed my server and my host at the time almost kicked me off completely. I'd rather use something more comprehensive like Google Analytics anyway.