Drawar

800x600, mostly.

Many people will argue against this, but I am working with 1280 * 1024. Two reasons:

1. That's my monitor's native resolution, and anything else looks downright ugly
2. I like having the big picture. Not having to scroll as much is a nice bonus.

I design with a width of 750 or 730. It looks pretty nice in higher-res - but I do intend on designing with a width of 900 in the future.

8x6 fixed designs look good in 1024. Not so the other way around. Also, some people - myself included - have a rather narrow field of view and would rather scroll downwards than have to look over the monitor left and right.

I usually try to make sure my websites are readable at 800*600. Many people might be using bigger resolutions, but how many are browsing full-screen?
Personally I tend to have a few windows (browser, editor, mail, etc) open at all times, so I'm not browsing full-screen and I assume lots of other people are doing the same. :)

I typically explain the situation to the client and let them make the decision.

Most comps ship with 1024 and so that number is only going to increase.

800 is getting really rare, though it's still a sizable enough chunk to matter.

Anything above 1024 needs some serious user-statistic justification, I'd say.

Web Design is about what's best for the vast majority, in my opinion, without leaving the rest of the crowd behind. Take a Church, for example - many have giant stairways leading up to their doors, part of an old world design scheme - but most, these days, will also have a secondary entrance for wheelchair access. The design is based around what "most" people will find appealing, but there is added functionality there as well.

If your target audience is mainly made up of tech-savvy people, designers, photographers, etc. the chances are they're going to be using at least 1024.

I design for 1024, putting the width for my sites at at most 980.

My screen resolution: 1280x1024. I try to design for a minimum resolution of 1024x768.

I design for 1024x768 screen resolution, based on browser statistics from a few different sites I can see that there are very few that comes using 800x600, most are much higher than that. With more and more people getting machines with TFT screens nowadays everyone will have at least 1024 width on their screen. The average 15" TFT screen has a native 1024px resolution and they seldom scale down well, so no one would run it at 800x600 really due to the crunchyness of the pixels!

I have no plans to go any higher than 1024px, unless using a flexible width with minwidth / maxwidth options. I'm also interested in trying an EMs based site though, like Dan Cederholm's simplebits.com.

My screen resolution is 1280x1024 but I design around 800x600 because like RalphDagza said, it looks pretty in the most common resolution (1024x768).

I design for 1024x768.

Question: Obviously, I don't want my actual container width to be 1024, because we need to save some space for browser scrollbar and stuff, is there a generally accepted container width for resolutions? I'm using 986 right now (really random, kind of ugly number), can I go any higher?

I'm moving towards 755. This is the 800x600 resolution, minus the 45 pixel-wide sidebar scenario.

I find that I am resizing the font up to something I can read easily when a site it built at a high res. It sucks when the fonts don't scale.

/youse can have offs my lawnz

i like 2 keep my main content w/in 800 x 600 (720 - 750 x 540 - 600) but design the background to fit 1024x768.

i like 2 keep my main content w/in 800 x 600 (720 - 750 x 540 - 600) but design the background to fit 1024x768.

Same here. Still gotta please the minorities.

I prefer fluid layouts, but most of the time 1024x768 fixed is what I have to go with until IE6 dies.

My designs try to stick around the 1024x768, but with so many of my clients' customers being stuck in yesteryear, I have to make modifiable to 800x600. But with so many computers having ridiculous resolutions, I feel lame not being sensitive to them and try to at least have a cool modular design that responds to their screens...

at the very least, I keep the larger guys in mind so it doesn't look ridiculous on their screens.

I don't really think about resolution these days although I guess every professional web designer should. Having a large display has made me take the space for granted :) I do try to keep all the content within a 800px cell though so I guess I'm still designing for 800x600 in a way. All the computers in my college's labs are still on that resolution, so we shouldn't be too quick to discount that resolution since there are quite a few who browse from work.

The ideal way to do something is usually a matter of judgement rather than hard fact, so here's my two cents. Let the audience dictate. Every website is different, and some have audiences that are more technically sophisticated than others.

I started out cautiously and designed my website with a fixed-width layout to accommodate 800x600 screens. The exact width I use is 760px.

A year or so down the line, my statistics indicate that about 3% of my visitors are using 800x600 or less. This tells me that it's time to serve the majority - my next redesign will favour 1024x768 screens.

Yeah, 1024x768 is the way to go. Even folks with big monitors don't open their browser windows all the way.

If making fixed designs, I design around 1024x768. Mostly I make pages 960 px width.

I usually try to keep between 1000-800 wide, generally lately, falling just inside that around 900-950...

though, I've got a recent client that has me building a two col 750px wide site...and he's an architect who uses this giant widescreen monitor with his web browser always fully expanded...go figure right...

Oh... and I usually design/work at print resolutions.

I generally set my design widths between 800 and 950, so that if there is some horizontal scrolling for users with 800x600, it is minimal and doesn't hide important elements.

I think the horizontal scrolling issue lends support to the practice of left-column sidebars.

Still targeting 800/600 although most of my clients don't bother about screen sizes. Google Analytics keeps telling me than less than 5% of my clients' visitors are using that resolution but it's still something!...

I try to design for 800x600. I know the 'norm' now is 1024x768 .. but it also despends on the site - who the target audience is. Gamers and techies, I drop the 800x600 - general audience, kids, older adults, I go for the 800x600.

Also, I have been working on lately so that if it is displayed at 800x600, you can see the navigation and content.. but if the size is increased, you get extra eye candy but do not miss the content.

Ok, that prob sounds strange.. but here is an example
http://www.ericastjohn.com/beta/ It is constantally chagning, but I hope to keep this design and working in different resolutions.

1024x768 due to the greater influx of "widescreen" formats on new LCDs shipping with computers these days... Although I prefer working in 1280x1024 myself, I try to test whatever I do in as many formats in both IE and FF when possible!

I'm still designing for 1024x768, unfortunately, but for personal sites I don't think it really matters.