What are the best dimensions for a website?

Depending on the stats you look at, the majority of web users have a resolution of 1024x768 (i.e. 1024 pixels horizontal / width x 768 pixels vertically / height).

Therefore, most designs are done to be either fluid i.e. fit a percentage width of the screen, or fixed i.e. 960px width.

With regards to height, you have to bear in mind the visitor's viewport will vary, depending on the browser they use and associated toolbars installed within their web browser.

Certainly any menu + header with a combined height of 300px + is going to fill up most of the viewport above the fold.

Having said that, don't forget your users can scroll - as daft as that sounds, some people do get a bit too fixated about the whole 'above the fold' argument.

Webpage size...?
Think about all of use millions with different screensizes.
It's not easy to make just the right size.

Either a constant width or dynamic width.

I would check out the newspapers on the Internet.
Check the width size on them.
And either it's constant or dynamic width.

Copy from USA Today as an example...

With the wide variety of screen sizes these days it's getting harder to answer that correctly - you have users who will see your site on mobile browsers and netbooks as well as users who have widescreen displays and 32 inch monitors.

The best you can really do is compromise, the current accepted compromise is to assume that your users will have a 800 x 600 display. Even that isn't foolproof, although the screen size on most netbooks is 1024 x 600 the actual usable display (when you minus the browsers toolbars and header) is more like 1010 x 580.

Having a screen that is too tall is almost inevitable, and is far better than having one that is too wide - no one likes the scrollbar on the bottom.

Some statistics on display size for you to ponder:

Browser Display Statistics

And this site lets you see your page as users with different sized screens would view it:

ViewLikeUs - Check Sites in Various Resolutions!

Hope this helps

Bill

I guess this depends on what kind of site you are creating
if it's a news site, a blog, or a forum it can be quite wide

if it's a minisite type of site maybe 800 width would be best and not larger
keep in mind that most marketers recommend you also format emails with about 70 characters per line because it increases readibility
I believe the same is true with a minisite, only not just 70 characters because it's lot more content there, but nothing too wide!

for PPV / POP traffic your going to have to go smaller to fit everything above the fold. Use 750x550.

Hope that helps.

This may seem like a silly suggestions, but find out what screen size your client is running and make it fit perfectly for them

But if you can't, then thesedays I go no larger than 950px wide. This will fit on 95% of all peoples browsers.

Hope this helps

Bruce

The dimensions will be based on your audience. If you can gather these statistics yourself, that is a better idea.

At the time of this writing, almost half of all Internet users have a screen resolution of 1024x768. Use a width less than 980 pixels. This will keep your users from having to scroll horizontally to see remaining text.

A significant number of users have an 800x600 resolution. Use a width less than 760 pixels.

For print, use a width less than 560 pixels. To accommodate printing and a wider screen resolutions, use the media attribute of the CSS <link> tag.

No users in this statistic use a screen resolution lower than 800x600, but a significant number of a users have a screen resolution higher than 1024x768. Since you will never be able to satisfy all users across platforms, it is better to use relative positioning - aka fluid websites - for scalability. But if you want to reach only one type of user, then static positioning - aka fixed widths - is the way to go. You should weigh the pros and cons of each based on your goals and purpose.

The ideal resolution is theorically 800X 768 as it will eliminate the need for hotizantal scrolling for users who are using an 800X 600 resolution. Also it would fit very snuggly in a 1024X768 page.

I'd rather go for a dynamic width because people have different screen sizes as well as other mobile devices. Also aim for a responsive design.


- Bernadette -
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960 wide, responsive. That way you can have 3 x 320 columns that fit a mobile nicely.

The best dimensions for today's viewing screens would be width 960px. The height doesn't really matter, as it would depend on the amount of content on each page.
If you look at most designs, even responsive design, 960px is the usual amount of space you have to work with. This allow for about 50-100px on either side of the actual page as a background, so if you want to include this in your design, you can,
Here is a good Photoshop grid that you can use a starting point.

now we can't say that which size is bests..!
Responsive size is best size