Standard SVGA is 800 X 600. Chrome on the side (scroll bar) is about 20 Pixels. I like to design at 760 to 770.

You want you most important message to be above the fold, meaning the don't have to scroll down to see it.

Monitors are getting bigger but you want to be able for the most people to see your site with the least amount of annoyance.

I have designed for years and this is the standards I use for most sites (Not all - depends on target audience)

Hope that helps you,

Have a Great Day!

According to the stats from the w3c website, as of January 2009, the most popular browser display resolution is 1024x768 with 36% using that res. 57% used higher. Only 4% of browsers were set at 800x600 according to their stats.

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Most used is 1024*768

I now create websites with a 950 pixel wide header.

It doesn't get lost on monitors with high resolutions and is not too wide that it annoys a visitor with a 800x600 monitor - the article content displays properly but the sidebar is partially hidden.

I'm not too worried about the length - sometimes I'll split long articles into part1, part2 etc. - useful for testing as you can see how far visitors are reading and modify accordingly - some copywriters use this for tweaking long sales letters.

You could set the width of the main table at a percentage, something like 80%. That would on the face of it suit everyone, no matter how big or small their monitor, but the trouble is you then don't have full control of the layout, where images appear, and so on.

Personally I set the width of the main table at 650 to 700 pixels. If the heading is very long then you could do it in a separate table at 100% width and just have the narrative in a narrower table.

Personally, I wouldn't use anything less than 960 wide because with anything narrower you lose valuable real estate. When I see a 640 pixel site with all that blank space on the sides it's like viewing an old unformatted movie on a new widescreen HD TV.

Grumpy-

The ideal width depends on what you want to use your page for.

The idea width for a salespage is between 650 px and about 710 max...

Wider pages will fit on the page just fine, but that's not the issue-

The issue is that if you force your visitor to read lines of text much larger than that, and you're going to find them getting disinterested and leaving the page.

If you're looking to make sales from the page, keeping it within the limits I mentioned will generally help maximise conversions.

Hope that helps

David

I would think that the standard size would be roughly 800 X 600. So its usually better to design just slightly under those proportions at 760 to 540. You would want your main headline to be in the top of the screen so you don't have people scrolling down to see it. Although this won't matter too much with people who have widescreen monitors, this is just a good way to ensure that people with standard monitors can see your page clearly and easily. Hope this assists!

To set your maximum page width, I would suggest no more than 800px width.

If your own screen resolution is greater than 1024x760px then you will see the page on your screen differently to most of your visitors.

The main body table is your choice - 700 or 650

What I find useful is to make 2 tables.

Top 700
Second 650

Thus, the text is away from the edges of the broader table.

I'm not a Google expert, but I would say that the size of the page & dimensions are irrelevant.
Title, description, key words in metatags and keyword density in the body copy are more important.