Week Two: How Big Do I Make it? Target Audience, Browser(s), and Hardware

In designing for the web I tend to take the “safe” approach to page sizing and assume a 1024×768 screen unless there are some sort of extenuating circumstances such as a very specific audience.  I cut the page width down to about 900 and assume the “fold” to be around 550-600px.  I think the 1024×768 methodology is held up by many of the other sites in the net:

YouTube.com

YouTube’s minimum site width before scrolling is 960px.  From a design standpoint there is a fixed 960px wide banner image that anchors the main page.  Viewed at 1024×768 the meaning of the content below this image is obvious but the information does get cut off a bit.  All headers and a few examples are visible, but I think this probably does encourage users to scroll down.

Digg.com

Digg utilizes a liquid expanding layout, but does maintain a minimum viewing size of 900px wide, again catering to users at a 1024×768 screen.  The design actually fails gracefully down to 590px wide due to the fact that no major page content passes that point so users of smaller screens can still browse the site without any major issue.  I’m actually surprised by this myself, as Digg could have easily decided that due to their target audience being mostly tech savvy people, they could have used every bit of that 1024×768 space and decided only to cater to those with the screen standard, such as what youTube did.

Twitter.com

Twitter uses a 760px wide main content area, providing usability for as many users as possible.  I think in twitter’s case this is primarily driven by two major factors.  First of all is Twitter’s goal to be quick, simple data sharing.  Keeping the page small and simple without too much clutter encourages people to jump in quickly in a “get in, get out, get on your way” methodology.  Secondly, I think twitter can almost be considered a web app more than a web site.  Its something you can see being left as a window sitting in the background, and on a large monitor, that 760px wide format takes up surprisingly little space.  So in some ways the small format benefits both users with smaller monitors and power users alike.