Have you ever asked yourself ‘What monitors will my targetaudience be using when viewing my website?' I know it sounds alittle too personal, and a little strange if you were askingyourself that on a daily basis. But while trying not to get upclose and personal with your customers, what you're trying to do iseffectively find a way to deliver the information to your customersin the most effective way possible. I'll explain in a bit.

When choosing to have your website redesigned, there are a fewthings you must take into consideration to steer the look and feelof your community. You will have long discussions with yourcompany's graphic design team, or our own IGLOO Inc. graphic designteam. A significant part of that process is choosing what the widthof your site will be. To answer that, we'll have to look intostatistics. Take a look at some of the screen resolutions somemonitors support.

In general, the bigger the monitor size, the higher theresolution which can be supported. Two of the most commonresolutions web developers design for are 800 pixels and 1024pixels. A while ago, 800px was the trend, but that soon began todecrease and more people were purchasing higher end monitors.According to w3schools,as of January 2008, 8% of people are now using a screen size of800px while 48% of them are using a screen size of 1024px.

As lesser people use 800 pixel-width screen sizes, we recommenddesigning your website for 1024 pixels. Besides the fact that 800pxscreen resolutions are becoming obsolete, a 1024px monitorresolution has advantages of using the 960 grid system provided by NathanSmith. The advantages of the 960 grid system will be discussedin another article.

Also, one important thing to note is that most designers designthe site no more than 960 pixels. The reason behind that is thatmost people won't maximize their web browser to the full extent ofthe monitor size. So, by taking that into consideration as well asthe browser chrome (scroll bar etc.), you'll feel more comfortabledesigning it for 960 pixels.