Banner size and things have changed

[iCe]

When it comes to monitor size I'm a spoiled brat I've been using 21" displays at work for over 10 years... maybe 15 come to think of it. However... every website design tutorial I have found says to design for a site width of 800 px. Probably because I don't know what I am doing, my first page looks like crap at the native resolution that I operate at (1600 x 1200). It probably looks fine at 800 x 600 but my little 800 px width banner image looks tiny on my stuff.

Web design has changed a tad in the last 10 years. The last time that I cared anything about HTML was over 10 years ago and I haven't kept up with style sheets and all the other super duper web design gizmos (like flash). Methinks I may have to outsource this thing to someone that knows what they are doing. Even if it is going to be tiny. Well... at least I think that it's going to be tiny... I want it to work with Exposure Manager...

I've been eying GoDaddy's web design stuff but I'm leery of buying into it and then hating it and then being stuck with it.

[iwatb]

I still stick with the 800px as a general rule. You don't want to leave anyone out, but there is a point when you have to move forward and leave the slow to upgrade folks behind. There are several sites that use the 100% liquid type layout, but with that it is hard to know what exactly your site is going to look like for everyone. I like .css, but it can be a challenge at times. I have decided to stop doing site for folks because there is just so much to deal with. I want to focus more on photography and learning all I can. It is nice knowing how to do the web part, much cheaper that's for sure... There are several template style sites out there, but they just never seem to do exactly what I want which leads me to make my own (when I can find the time...)

For my current site I decided to go with the very clean, plain layout and that makes the 800px size fit into any screen size quite nicely. Good luck and hope you find something that works for ya...

[Graydon]

If you are concerned about the 800px crowd... you can get the information about what resolution your visitors are using and make a decision from there.

I went ahead and went to a default of 1024px because when I looked at stats I very rarely found anybody with a 800px resolution... but did see a good number running higher than 1024px...

I think that the 800px rule is out of date as an absolute.