As Chandler from Friends would say, “Could there be any more screen sizes?”

I get asked so many times what screen sizes I design my websites for on a regular basis. Do I keep the sites fluid or make them static at a certain width. If I use a width for my websites being displayed, what’s the optimal width used. – These are all good questions, and I can’t say there’s specifically “optimal” width to use – not that I have noticed any way. Once we get some sort of web standards, we might find a a point where we are all within a range. This range sounds like a fairytale to me. My children might see it, but I doubt I will ever experience it.

 

My screen setup consists of 3 screens – these are the settings and sizes I have as of this post.

  • 24″ widescreen monitor set at: 1920 x 1080
  • 19″ full screen monitor set at: 1024 x 768
  • 15.6 widescreen monitor set at: 1366 x768

Before you start thinking – “I only have 1 monitor, how does this relate to me?”, let me discuss the reasoning behind my monitors. I have 3 monitors because I have 1 widescreen and 1 full screen for testing purposes. My 15″ is my laptop and I plug my 24″ into it for a dual screen setup. I’m a professional web designer too, so this is typically a normal setup to do designs for my clients. If you are trying to earn a living from designing, I recommend having 2 monitors. Even if they are small you can pull all the layer windows over on 1 screen and the other screen can be used for your designing board. Makes it much faster to work on client projects. I would also suggest that having more than 2 screens might become a pain because there are too many places to lose your mouse. lol

 

What screen size should I design for?

While there’s no definite answer for this, there are some guidelines to follow. First understand that pixel size is not related to the physical screen size. Some people assume that a 19″ monitor will only produce a a specific size resolution. This actually pertains to your graphics cards more than your monitor.

Designing for a 1024 x 768 resolution should be your best option right now but the recommendation is to keep your web site fluid at 100% and then you will cover all the different screens.

Another good idea is having the image aligned left and utilizing the same color as the background. This image is much wider though but with the correct amount of overlapping layers you can create a Twitter background that looks seamless.