default web page width - 1024px or 980px?

Question

When developing web applications, in the past the choice has been 800px or 1024px to fit within the monitor of the user. I\'ve been researching respon

Answer 1

This is a bit of an open ended question since screen sizes are changing all the time and what might have been correct two years ago would likely be out of date now.

I use Twitter Bootstrap 3 at present and it uses a fluid grid system designed to work at sizes ranging from mobile/very small all the way up to the huge wide screen monitors that are now available.

Currently the upper default in BS3 is 1200px which translates to a container width of 1144px after taking account of margins and padding of the grids elements.

In my experience, modern designers are working to a width of around 1366px for desktop. All recent designs I've been given to implement have been 1366px.

Note also that you can customise the BS3 grid quite heavily. For example we will use a 32 column grid with 4px gutter in our sites/designs going forwards.

Ultimately the decision on page width needs to be made based on your website analytics and the screen sizes that your visitors typically use.