Are we ready for 1000px Designs?
Posted on 22 June, 2009 at 17:31 PM There are already 26 Comments

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We really love the 960.gs, we have never used the CSS framework but we always use their grids in Fireworks to create my sites. Personall, I don't think I could create a site without that grid and I am not sure how I did without it in the past.

However, there are times when we have ventured out of the 960px area and created 1000px sites. Obox Design is one, Arcade and Left Handed are 1000px wide as well.

We want to know if you think that creating a 1000px wide sites is still too premature? Are we still a long way off from that size or do you think it depends on your market.

In our experience there haven't been complaints about Obox's site width and that is the reason we have pushed the limits with our themes. It probably also depends on the type of market you are aiming for, if you are aiming mainstream then we would suggest sticking to the max 960px. But if your blog is maybe aimed at the design community I think there is scope to push the limits.

We would love to hear your thoughts.

Links mentioned in this post:

User Comments

Timothy Blake 22 Jun, 2009 17:20:16 PM

A great post a very interesting discussion i really enjoyed this one. I think this was the website you was referring to in the video tinyurl.com/m5mxnk

Bryan Davis 22 Jun, 2009 17:33:40 PM

I design all my sites using 960 grids but whats the difference with using a 1000px grid only lets you have 40 pixels more to play with, I wouldn't use any larger grids until over 75% of users are using screens bigger than 1024x768.

www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

divinefusion 22 Jun, 2009 17:40:51 PM

I have noticed a recent trend in designing for larger screens. All new sites i'm working on have the main content with in 1000px and if they have a background that is photography based I'll set the background for 1200-1600px I work on a 28" (1920x1200) with multiple screens layered, which gives me a great working space. I"m finding that most new users are buying computers with 22-24" monitors ( ) and users with smaller monitors are upgrading. If someone is still viewing on a CRT, please post your comment, I will add you to my prayer list :P

MateToth 22 Jun, 2009 17:45:31 PM

I think talking about 1000px designs is too early. I usually use 960px. The reason why i don't make bigger sites is simple, there are a bunch of people still using 1024x768 monitors. I want to make sites that are enjoyable for every visitor. In my opinion it is as important as cross browser cross browser compatibility. I suggest you guys waiting 1or 2 years with 1000px designs.

Rob MacKay 22 Jun, 2009 17:48:07 PM

I have noticed things like this too and I have used 1000px for design bases already. I think the only reason that people use 960 is the resources available, its going to fit in a 1024x768 screen. Its amazing how many people still are on 1024x768. I'm only on 1280x1024...

Anyway - CRTs and gaming... yes they used to be the best, now they are even I would say quality wise with ya TFT's . The main reason though wasn't resolution it was shadowing. TFTs have a response time, anything over 12ms and you used to get a kinda shadowing effect if you moved to fast in games, especially first person shooters. It was all about how fast the screen could draw the frame. Obviously in the first few years of TFTs the price of a fast response under 8ms was ridiculous... These days TFTs are the standard in gaming, although you do get some gamers with CRTs still...

Everyone wants OLED now though - wow that's some awesome tech.

Marc Perel 22 Jun, 2009 17:51:29 PM

@Rob - I was just talking with my mate today, telling him OLED's the way forward, he had no clue what I was talking about!

But yeah, that's the next step if they can make them bigger than 11" :P

Ricardo Chiappe 22 Jun, 2009 18:09:06 PM

Hi guys. My monitor: 1440x900 at work. Usually use 1000 px for non-flash designs and 1004x605 on flash sites (although the advantage there is the flash can be very flexible in terms to resize of the browser or screen resolution).

With the 1000 px never had a problem, though i still have found a client that ask us to do it for 800x600 (don't know why they do, but often we show them that is USELESS). Maybe is a thing here in Peru, but really a lot of people still use the 1024x768 (70%), and 800x600 (20%), which presents challenges (and problems as well).

Saludos

David Leggett 22 Jun, 2009 18:09:26 PM

It all depends on the audience. Less than 20% of the viewers on Tutorial9.net browse on a resolution under 1280px wide. Less than 1% are using resolutions under 1024px. Therefore, we decided to build our own grid with 1000px for the content area.

In most sites, I would agree that you're save with 960px, but double checking statistics for your own projects is the only real way to know.

David Perel 22 Jun, 2009 18:19:33 PM

@Dave - Its always nice to see that one of the UX legends are also using 1000px widths. I actually never noticed that Tut9 was a 1000px design. Thanks for dropping by Dave.

In our case 1024px screen barely register on our radars and its the same with all our client sites which we have analytical access to. So I think that yes, its market specific (which is why we are not scared of it) but you can take a chance.

On the other hand, these new netbooks that everyone wants aren't going to help the cause.

Lyndsy Simon 22 Jun, 2009 18:23:53 PM

@Bryan Davis: I would be careful using w3schools as a resource for usage statistics. Remember that their audience is largely technically-savvy people who are learning web development.

It is far better to use stats generated on your own site, and make decisions based on that. After all, your own audience is the one that matters.

Aaron Irizarry 22 Jun, 2009 18:28:50 PM

Great vid guys! I have just recently started designing everything at 1000px, love the idea... bigger layouts! yay!

progression, progression, progression let keep changing things, and pushing the boundries.

~Aaron I

TKawai 22 Jun, 2009 21:06:16 PM

I'm glad you guys brought this up. I'm working on my site's redesign as we speak, and I based it off of 1000px. I went through 3 different layouts before I decided on this final one, and they were all 960.

Why did I bump it up this time? Well, as you guys said, I think the viewer's resolution is starting to catch up. According to google analytics, smallest resolution that has ever visited my site was 1024x768. So with that, I don't need to worry about 800x600 obviously. Now, I LOVE the 960.gs but I wanted something a little more.

40px doesn't sound like much, but when you have to pay attention to whitespace and positive/negative ground, 40px is A LOT. I really think my layout works because its 1000px, not 960px.

John Loudon 22 Jun, 2009 21:18:57 PM

Sorry guys CRT for the win, flat screen is very nice looking but CRT is a far better peice of hardware :) big ass vision Master Pro 450 :P old - but still does a higher rez than anything else I have found - including my massive imac in work.

960px, its not about the future its about what works, you have to account for as much traffic as you can (In my opinion)

theres nothing that 40px extra will do to a site that 960 can't achieve nicely. why not use a liquid layout and just forget that rez problem. :) used fixed columms though.

Matty 22 Jun, 2009 21:45:58 PM

Hey guys. :)

Thanks for the great post. It's a tricky question at times, the pixel width of a website.

If a design is coded at 1000px wide, the content is rarely ever the full width of the design, making the content area neatly viewable on lower resolution screens (to a point). I'd say that 1000px is becoming a more "standard" width as screen dimensions and resolutions expand. I do also generally try to keep things to anywhere between 900px and 960px, as I do like to optimise websites for 1024px wide. In saying that, my own blog is 800px wide... although I don't have any sidebars, so it's kind of like a larger-than-average content area. :P

OK, enouhg ramble. Thanks again for the great post guys. :)

FruJo 22 Jun, 2009 22:05:42 PM

First of all, hi! I'm sorry for being absent from discussions here for a while. That's a life I must admit and I have to play along the rules.

But okay. Here is what I think. First of all 1000px is only 40px wider than 960, so no real breaking of borders. But there is a serious damage to control over grid. 1000 is divisible by 1, 2, 4, 5, (notice the gap!) 10, (even bigger) 20, 25, 50, 100, 200, 250, 500, and 1000. At the very same time 960 is divisible by , 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 32, 40, 48, 60, 64, 80, 96, 120, 160, 192, 240, 320 and 480 (just as written at www.960.gs). So this creates a larger space for variations.

So the main question is: "Are 40 pixels better than the amount of options of 960 grid?" My answer is: "No!"

If you want to go beyond 960px you definitely should break out of 1024 and go further. I think article by Cameron Moll will be useful for you, while you're considering your options.

"Is it time to move beyond 960?": moourl.com/cqdmw "Optimal width for 1024px resolution?": moourl.com/tcwbj

Nikolai 22 Jun, 2009 22:10:12 PM

Awesome vid as always! I don't think the question is "Are we ready for 1000px Designs?", but rather "What are we going to do with the extra pixels?".

At 1000px it might not be a problem yet, but at some stage if sites get too wide it's going to be lank difficult to read content on them.

I try to limit the main content section on a design to 600px, to make it easier to read (obviously I then add sidebars, etc.).

Unless we use the extra pixels for decoration or extra sidebars (not sure how useful that would be), or we reinvent the way websites work, I'm not sure if a 1680px website would be that great...

Or is that just me?

Chris Papadopoulos 22 Jun, 2009 23:34:38 PM

There are many scenarios where extra-wide websites might make sense (some interactive games, some interactive tools, sites with high-resolution images and videos, etc) but I don't think the average site really needs to be more than about 800 pixels wide.

A few points to consider.

* Just because the majority of your users have large monitors doesn't necessarily imply that they frequently browse with their browser maximized. Many users probably often enjoy having another app open right next to their browser and would be moderately annoyed at having to resize their browser or scroll around from side to side just to use your site.

* If you think you need 1000 pixels worth of width to display all of your content, there's a chance that you're not being selective enough about what content appears on each page or you're trying to organize too much content above the fold. It's not a mortal sin to go below the fold if necessary most mice today have some sort of vertical scroll wheel and people generally understand how to use them.

* The wider a site is, the more awkward it is to use in increasingly important mobile platforms such as iPhones/iPods and others. You have to zoom in to read text, scroll from side to side farther than necessary to see something else on the page, etc. Thinner sites are definitely more pleasant on mobile devices.

To each his own and I'm sure there are a ton of great extra-wide sites out there, but I think you should have a heck of a good reason before resorting to a really wide site.

Mike Smith 22 Jun, 2009 23:41:20 PM

before the 960 grids become so widespread I would design on 1000px wide for all of my designs as they fit perfectly into the 1024px width screens.

Awesome post. Definitely something to think about.

sixreffie 23 Jun, 2009 15:45:44 PM

Like David Leggett said, it all depends on the audience. I just finished a site for my iPhone development company. When I was building it I had to keep in mind what crowd the audience belonged to. For the most part, my users are going to be tech-savy users who are on top of the latest trends. Odds are, they're going to have a more up-to-date monitor with a higher resolution. But since I then decided to expand the sites content to also have comics and soon some articles, I backed down from the wider width because the audience grew, and so did the possibility of a smaller monitor.

Richard Darell 23 Jun, 2009 15:47:08 PM

I think we'll see a rapid increase in grid resolution as screen sizes has gone through the roof. There's no longer a set limit on what size you would wanna browse the web on and with more web based games on the rise from the big game studios I think this will certainly add to the pace.

Also, more flexible designs will we the norm in my opinion. Ever new gadgets makes in impossible to create a website just for desktop/laptop broswers to handle the designs. A more fluid and adjustable size mechanic will add value to any site as the web is now ported from our broadband cables to wifi handhelds.

Just my two cents. :)

A really nice show once again. Enjoyed it greatly!

Thanks!

meredith 23 Jun, 2009 18:45:13 PM

Oooh wow, the commenters made many, many valuable points.

It seems lately, I always start out with 960.gs, but something always comes up and I have to break it and change the 960 css, even by just a little bit.

I like the way FruJo is thinking, about the flexibility of the 960 vs 1000.

Ezrad Lionel 23 Jun, 2009 23:57:21 PM

Jesus Christ, once again I am baffled at how you guys are able to read stuff on your computer with that huge log stuck in your eyes. Fluid layouts. Fluid layout. fluid ***** layouts. Let the web crawlers learn to read javascript generated pages. If captcha can be cracked it won't kill them. And I've seen too many fluid CSS based layouts to think that its impossible to find some clever standardized way of doing it. The only thing that's going to change in the future is the diversity between screen sizes. Its ok to have a minimum size, but I've always thought that centered layouts, like grey(ya know black or white) are complete cop outs. I was going to say completely retarded, but I guess I must be in a good mood today.

And I have yet to look at one of your videos, the topic is enough for me to go on a misdirected rant.

David Perel 24 Jun, 2009 00:03:35 AM

@Ezrad - Hmmm, keep going down your mis-directed route and maybe don't turn around. We don't talk about fluid layouts at all in our video and whats with the gray centered layout comment? You lost us completely.

Ciao.

Ezrad Lionel 24 Jun, 2009 01:48:26 AM

I prefer the artsy types, they have the kind of wit that makes you forget that the comment is directed at you. There's no grey, only black or white. It's like a myth busters episode where they ask 'does sugar dissolve in hot water?' then spend the next half hour saving Jamie from himself. I can only speak in these convoluted parables because frankly you guys epitomize garbage.. that's not what i really meant. I meant discuss something that isn't so obvious. 10 years I've been playing with that HTML thing and everyone's waiting for some guy to give them the next big thing, and it was AJAX.. I'm going off topic so I'll stop.

Gavin 24 Jun, 2009 12:58:04 PM

Hi Guys,

Thanks for including me in this post David and critiquing the design. The reason for the 1080px width was down to the idea behind the theme design. I'm still working on it so will not be showing it off just yet.

My 2pence on widths, use some blummin common sense. If everyone stuck to 960px the world would be a boring place. Do some research, look at your target audience, find the demographics then build your design on just that. If your website is niche and all mac related and your demographics show that 90% of yours users are using Safari then use something different to the norm that you'd usually stick with when designing for IE.

Do what you want to do but do your research first and use some common sense.

Gavin

Craig Farrall 25 Jun, 2009 00:02:13 AM

Another great video guys, well wouldn't expect anything different.

Well, I actually infact am the same as you, I have completed many websites with 1000px, I would say about half are done with 1000px and 960px the rest.

I definately vote more people to jump on the 1000px bandwagon, cmon join us :)

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The OBOX World

Are we ready for 1000px Designs?
Posted on 22 June, 2009 at 17:31 PM There are already 26 Comments

About the Show