Preferred width for a blog

[bnsullivan]

What's the current consensus about the preferred display width for a blog?

800?

1024?

Fluid?

(...other?)

I'm designing a new blog: header; 2 columns (posts + 1 sidebar); footer. Header will have a photo -- maybe as background to the title, maybe not -- still mulling.

Mostly I just can't decide whether I should design it for a certain width (i.e., the outer wrapper, not counting body background) or make the elements completely fluid. <-- if the latter, then maybe the sidebar should stay a static width?

I'd love to hear your opinions.

Thanks.

Bobbie

[DazzlinDonna]

Until recently, I'd always liked having fluid width that could safely scale down to 800, without losing anything. But then I realized that there just wasn't enough room, and finally decided that people would have to handle 1024. I'm sure that annoys a few, but I think enough time has gone by for people to be beyond the 800 limit. Fluid would still be ideal, I think, but it was easier to do fixed width, so that's what I did. At some point, you just have to do what you have to do. In any case, sidebars should be able to accomodate the standard sizes for widgets and ads, which of course aren't really all that standard. Definitely at least be able to handle 160 wide, but I personally like 200, for some of the wider widgets.

[ses5909]

I recently redid my personal site and I didn't want 100% fluid but I also didn't want 800px. I think the standards are changing and if you check your stats, you can see that the people on an 800 x 600 resolution is I bet under 10%.

The blog I'm referring to is: ilovecode

[bnsullivan]

@ Donna - Yeah, I agree in my heart of hearts that fluid is ideal, but I also agree that fixed width is easier. For my current blog development project I actually have made two versions so far -- one with fixed width (using header, post, sidebar and footer boxes with nice rounded corners) and one fluid, just to see... I like the look of the rounded corners boxes, but centered on the page at full screen it seems to get lost.

OTOH, the fluid design (using a right-floating fixed width sidebar with rounded corners) is great for the post part, since the post area and body background color, in this case, are the same. But the photo-header ends up looking lost, since it can't stretch. So, with the fluid design, I end up having a stubby-looking header, because it's necessarily fixed width.

Still tinkering, obviously.

@ Sara - What a good idea to look at the stats and see what resolutions people who read my other blogs are using -- just to get an idea of the trend. Thanks for that tip. (I can't believe I didn't think to do that. Duh! )

Bobbie

[bnsullivan]

Okay -- FWIW, if anybody else is thinking about what width to design for:

Following Sara's suggestion, over the weekend I looked at the past 30 days' traffic for 5 blogs. I looked at screen resolution stats, and totaled things up for width only.

For the five blogs, the percentage of visits with widths of 1024 or greater ranged from 90% to almost 96%.

Percentage of visits with widths of 1280 or greater ranged from 32% to 49%.

My conclusion. We can all forget about designing for anything less than a 1024 width. Period.



Bobbie

[DazzlinDonna]

Wow, good to know.

[ses5909]

That's great to know Bobbie. I just checked mine and it was less than 1%. It's good to know who your audience is and what they use. If your blog looks like crap on Opera and 30% of your audience uses Opera, you definitely need to fix it.

[Arjun Muralidharan]

I stick to a width no larger than 728 pixels.

Reason 1: Compatiblity with a lot of screens, including iPhone love.
Reason 2: Advertising units of that width size seem to be seamlesslyintegrated and dont't look "stuck on".

See this effect on www.cupofchai.net

[mrstoneman]

@bnsullivan, who writes "We can all forget about designing for anything less than a 1024 width.":

Bobbie, I agree with you, but what's going to happen when people access your site through smaller portable devices? Will you simply add an alternative style sheet for those things, like we can do for printers?

I'll admit. This is a non-problem for the moment, but I wonder for how much longer.

@everyone: One thing I've noticed with some blogs, is a tendency to not even consider those of us with a 1024 width. I don't think my 12" iBook is all that archaic.

[DazzlinDonna]

I just did a roundup of essential wp plugins, and WordPress Mobile Edition was one of them. It's an easy way to deal with the small portable devices without really having to think about it.

ADDED: btw, after activating the WordPress Mobile Edition, you might wonder if it's actually working, and if so, what your site looks like on a mobile phone (or device). To save you some major searching headaches, just head on over to the Opera Mini demo...enter your url...and you'll see the WP Mobile Edition theme in action for your site.