Member Avatar for rickvidallon

I just noticed that Yahoo's homepage redesign frames nicely at 1024px. I grabbed a screen shot and it appears that the width is 952px (give or take a pixel)

Good to see that one of the big-dogs has taken a step-up to 1024.
Rick

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The thread highlights the classic tradeoff between supporting older, small-resolution users and taking advantage of wider viewports. Rather than treating 800x600 or 1024x768 as a gospel target, a more useful approach is to design for content and readability first, then make the layout scale. Building on points from , and about shifting baselines and ’s practice of testing tiny viewports, aim for a constrained-fluid layout that preserves line length, spacing and usability across widths.

A simple, resilient pattern is a centered fluid container with sensible min and max widths — it keeps reading comfortable on wide screens and prevents collapse on very small ones:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

.container {
  box-sizing: border-box;
  width: 95%;
  max-width: 980px;   /* comfortable line length */
  min-width: 320px;   /* prevents extreme collapse */
  margin: 0 auto;
  padding: 0 16px;
}

/* basic two-column using flexbox */
.layout { display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; }
.main   { flex: 1 1 60%; min-width: 280px; }
.sidebar{ flex: 0 0 300px; }

Practical testing and accessibility tips tied to this thread: use analytics to pick sensible max-widths rather than guessing; test extremes with browser devtools and a low-res emulator as does; set typography in rems so users who need larger type (eye-strain cases like ’s client) can scale easily; do not disable pinch-zoom on mobile. Keep tap targets large and contrast high for older users, as implies.

Workflow: design content-first (headlines, body, key nav), implement a fluid container, then add breakpoints that reorganize rather than shrink content. If a small fraction of users truly use very old resolutions, consider a simplified fallback rather than constraining the whole site to an outdated fixed width.

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Member Avatar for Dani

Makes me feel better that I have daniweb set up to be optimized for 1024x768.

Member Avatar for stymiee

CNN.com dis this recently as well. Made me feel better about switching my homepage to a 950px width design. But I did leave my inner pages at 750px as there are still too many 800x600 users out there.

Member Avatar for rickvidallon

Super! Thanks for the post. Now I have another big site to reference when I discuss design with my clients.

Member Avatar for pctec

Im glad 800 x 600 is on the way out because it feels so bulky. Even so a lot of people are using 800 x 600 and you know you cant please everyone but you still have to try :)

Member Avatar for rickvidallon

This past Friday I meet with a client for a site redesign. We were looking at websites on her 17 inch flat screen. Her monitor was set at 800x600. I'm guessing that she was at least +55 year of age... so it's a saft bet that men and women 5) and older comprise a large segment of users who view at 800 x 600 because of eye strain. I guess it comes down to designing for the client in this case.

Rats...

Member Avatar for Puckdropper

Why not design the page so it scales to most resolutions well? I've got a monitor for my file server/secondary computer that's capable of only 640x480.

I have Netscape set up so it only shows what a 640x480 screen would show and try to check my site design over on it before I release it to the real world.

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