Hey guys,
what is the best desktop width for your websites in 2020?
- 1024
- 1280
- 1366
- 1440
- 1600
- 1920
- other width
0 voters
Edit: question answered with additional image in OP.
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I always thought standard Bootstrap sizing was 1140px. Thatâs what I use.
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Yes 1140 or 960
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I also use 1140 almost for all of my Blocs websites.
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1140 here too
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Ok, 1140 is very narrow on big screens. What is the reason for the width? why donât you choose a bigger one?
I think it is more a question of comfortable reading width. The background can still go full width.
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What @Flashman said. I donât like to be swinging my head from side to side when Iâm looking at a web page. A background âfillerâ is fine, but keep the interesting part compact.
âI think it is more a question of comfortable reading width. The background can still go full width.â
The main reason I use 1140 is readability. Graphics, design elements, and backgrounds can go full width if needed but studies have shown; Too wide â if a line of text is too long the readerâs eyes will have a hard time focusing on the text. This is because the line length makes it difficult to gauge where the line starts and ends. The optimal line length for your body text is considered to be 50-75 characters per line, including spaces.
@rme Thatâs the reason I have questioned your text line length in some of your websites.
I agree that working on a large monitor you tend to think that the site is too small but itâs not.
Casey
1140 is also a very good measurement to create fractions/divisions on a page.
This is perfect for: 1140 : 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or 10 or 12 or 15 or 19 or 20
A lot of users still use screens that are comparatively narrow. The native resolution of my wifeâs laptop is 1200 pixels. On mine itâs 2880 but the browser points are 1440.
I rarely have a fully open browser window and itâs a conceit to imagine that users will have the browser full screen to view your website.
A design at 1140 pixels will fit comfortably on my screen but almost fill the screen of my wifeâs laptop.
Never design for the screens you have yourself. You design for your demographic and that almost always means smaller screens on older devices.
We may have desktops with big screens, but generally joe public does not.
Want to kill a website? Make the user scroll horizontally.
2 Likes
I would say that even 1140 is an uncomfortable reading width at anything but very large font sizes. If anyone is using that kind of width for text they really should be using a multi-column layout.
I agree and that is why I set the column width at 10 on desktops. I also use slightly larger than average font sizes.
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Good discussion 
I use a width of 1280 and always a column width of 10 for all screens, except on small mobile screens. There are nice edges on a tablet. Otherwise, the text goes to the edge. I donât like it.
And donât forget in todays world, mobile devices make the majority of visits to most websites, and this number continues to grow. Yes, us "designersâ use large displays, but our kids only use large displays for video games⌠they even watch all their âtvâ and movies on their phonesâŚ
And if they are using a âcomputerâ most likely it is laptop of tablet, rare these days that the younger generation gets a âdesktopâ computer anymore (except for gamesâŚ) So once you take that into account as well, especially screen sizes of most Chromebooks which max out 1366px, and that doesnât include the space that the browser will take off that, even 1280px could get you into trouble.
So yes you want to look âgoodâ on a bigger screen, but it is like worrying how it works on Internet Explorer version 8⌠such a small percentage of your viewersâŚ
@RME
Agreed. Funnily I was just altering some areas of my site to a 1/10/1 for, on certain columns/breakpoints.