What screen resolution is it best to design for? - Hi All, Something that really stood out to me is that when designing a website you need to bare in

ljackson

Hi All,

Something that really stood out to me is that when designing a website you need to bare in mind what the best screen resolution is to design for, i loaded my website up on a mates computer to show them but i relised that due to their resolution being smaller than mine it looked all messed up, i remember reading about "liquid divs" i think, which expand and colapse depending on the users resolution.

can anyone offer any advice on which is the best way to approach this?

many thanks
Luke

bocaj

1024x768 is the safest res, so 960 width.

Liquid designs have there limitations, i rarely use liquid layouts.

A common mistake however, is alot of people design for the web using 72dpi, when you convert things like text, you'll notice it's a different size, using 96dpi and the font sizes will be the same in photoshop. Makes life so much easier.

960 width (height doesn't really matter, but always always take into account the fold on different resolutions) and at at 96dpi.

ljackson

thanks bocaj,

im sure thats what my width is, it must be his resolution was so low lol

when you talk about the dots per inch does that apply to dreamweaver or is that purley a photoshop thing?

cheers mate
Luke

shinyshadow

Macs work at a 72dpi, Windows at 96dpi. This only matters for fonts. (and svg?) it doesn't matter in dreamweaver.
If you're not designing your site in photoshop first, you don't have to worry about that.

ljackson

cool thanks mate :)

bocaj

I thought there was something like that.

So is there a way i can say tell macs to render the font sizes at 133%, or tell windows machines to render at 75% (i think i got that the right way round?).

So it evens out?

shinyshadow

Yes you can, use pixels instead of points.
In photoshop use wathever you are using.

WelshStew

1024 is the standard nowadays, however, this won't be like this for long.

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Moofburger

Using pixels for font sizes would go under bad as it cripples the ability to resize fonts in IE in particular. really you should use em's as they scale relative to parent and well.

skunkbad

While this data may suggest that larger screens are becoming more widely used, I think we may also see that a lot of people may start using mobile devices and netbooks. My netbook is 1024x600. I have been designing in 1024 width lately, but 600 is still ok. I don't think I'd be comfortable designing in larger than 1024, because there is too high of a percentage of people with this width or less.