The myth of 800x600

March 16, 2001

There was a time a long time ago (in web time) when everyone built sites for 15 inch monitors and 640x480. As time has passed everyone has gotten bigger monitors and site designs have moved into the 800x600 pixel space. I have long been believer of keeping site layouts fixed to a specific pixel dimension. There have been many heated battles with my design and functional teams on this very subject.

However, the reality is that there is no real way to control a layout in a browser due to different monitor sizes and resolutions as well as all the pixel space the extra toolbars take up in any given browser. There is a great article at web review's site which discusses this issue in detail.

A little while back I caught a lecture by Jeff Veen on the concept of the "future web" and building liquid-based sites with CSS and percentages. It has taken awhile to sink in, but I have become a convert to the liquid-pages religion. Most of the sites we are building these days at siteSatellite comform to this standard with a healthy dose of CSS.