What dimensions is your blog set for?
 

not sure what templates folks are using but, I found that using a 700 width template was way too cramped. I've been experimenting with wider templates.

what do you guys think? What width are your blogs?

The Plain Vanilla template I'm using is 750 px. I've tried templates with 100% width but didn't like the way things were shifted around at different resolutions

I like the narrower templates...they make my writing look like there's a lot more...I tried the 100% with three columns and it just looks to wide because even a paragraph of text might only take up two or three lines.

Most of mine are 700 wide.

Unless you have two sidebars taking up space in a wider design, I think it's too hard to read really long lines of text, so I try to keep text areas 400-500 wide.

Think mine have moved to about 750, I agree 700 is kinda cramped. I've never liked using 100% for anything, always looks screwed up somewhere.

ronnie

All my templates or designed for a screen resolution of 800x600. But i tend to go for 1024x768 but i've not yet taken this step. I've seen recent statistics that 1024x768 is going to take over 800x600. But changing a thing that's the default for over several years is a scary thing.

RE : "1024x768 is going to take over 800x600" yes, but remember that most people who use 1024x768 do not use full screen, so anything wider than about 750 is not going to look good even on bigger monitors.

If you go to the "general business" board you will find that threads are regularly started on the subject of width so I won't duplicate threads by posting what has already been said. However two points that do get neglected are:

1. Posts often say things like "according to my stats only 23% of people still use 800x600, and I am not going to cater for that minority" however that is nearly a quarter of all surfers, do you really want to loose that many surfers ? and even when it drops to 10%, or even 5%, why would any sane webmaster throw away these surfers? (And that does not even take into account the large quantity who have bigger screens but do not surf on full screen mode, you will also loose them.)

2. On occasion I have seen posts from people who make their sites wider than 800 quoting their stats (eg. "only 23% of people still use 800x600") and the stats they quote are nearly always lower than the ones I get (in the case of this quote, I was getting 49% at that time). This is because I always stick to the max 750 rule (or width ="100%"), but as they do not, surfers with an 800 width screen stopped visiting their site, affecting their stats. In other words, they had already lost 26% of their surfers by the time they looked at their stats !!!

Bottom line: Once you allow for the frame and scroll bars, Explorer gives you about viewable 760 pixels width on 800 resolution, say 750 to be safe. If you make your site wider than that you will loose an appreciable number of surfers, and never get as many bookmarkers as you would otherwise have got.

In case their are any newbies reading my last post: When I said "width =100%" I meant setting the page in a table and making the table width equal 100%, I did NOT mean making the window expand to full screen, which is a whole new subject, and another good way to loose surfers and fail to get bookmarks.

Hello echhi, i can only agree with you, i'm have a resolution of 1280x1024 and i never maximize my browser, it's most of the time between 800x600 and 1024x786, sometimes when i need to view screenshots or a webapplication i maximize my browser.

I think it all depends on your target public, if you are targetting tech people with a ultra cool tech site with the latest hardware you can go with 1024x768 without any problem. But if you got a site with your favorite horses you should stay at 800x600. The target audience is different here.

Below are some articles that I can suggest if you want to consider designing for flexible screen sizes. The evolt page below will return search results that include articles on why "640 x 480 Isn't Dead Just Yet," "Liquid Design for the Web," "Liquid Tables" and "Design to realistic window sizes." All good stuff if you want to see how to do designs that aren't locked into a resolution quite as much. I'm not doing anything but some personal blogs so far, but these are things I'm considering for our first commercial blog(s)...

http://evolt.org/search/node/liquid+design

Granted, some of it's a long read, some a little tech/nerdie (okay, I like that), and it's focused on mainstream sites, so I'm mentioning it knowing it's not for everyone. :)

Simon