It is a common misconception that to build a website in 1024px x 768px, thats the size to set your workspace in Photoshop or Fireworks.
However, there are a number of misconceptions that this has - including:
Browsers maximised on a screen of 1024px x 768px aren't actually that size.
- Screen sizes take into account the size from 'edge' to 'edge' of the screen. That includes your taskbar and any other bars you may have running. When you maximise a browser window at 1024px x 768px - the 'viewable area' maybe be considerably less depending on how many toolbars you have (address bar, google bar, yahoo! bar, links etc), whether you have any scrollbars and also how large your taskbar is.
Users don't always view websites maximised
- Just because your web-stats tell you that 80% of your visitors are running 1024px x 768px or above, how many of them are running their browsers in a fully maximised state? It's virtually impossible to tell and therefore, building a site which is fixed to work for these settings may significantly impact on the message you are trying to put across.
Then of course, we have mac users who's screen dimensions may also differ and doesn't include as many toolbars etc as Windows users.
So, when designing a website - work to 'browser' sizes and not 'desktop' sizes. To reach out to the maximum number of visitors possible (95%+) - you should design at 765px x 420px
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