what resolution should I target?

I'm collaborating on a site or 2 this week. One for higher end graphics geeks like us, one for clueless consumers.

My question: What resolution should I design for?

I've asked about five people already and they all give me different answers. What do you think?

EVERY RESOLUTION.

800 x 600 is pretty common though. But then you have the WebTV people that are only at 512 by something.

Then the people on cellphones, PDAs, beepers, etc. So, use CSS, XML, and a database so that your site will be viewable on everything.

Pretty simple eh?

800x600

Not everyone who uses 800x600 is 'clueless'. Most sites are made in this thus they set their monitors to this.
Plus its good practice to design lower than your current res.

thanks for the feedback...that's what I was afraid of.

Is that really all it takes for PDA's and Phones to view your site? Damn. I haven't taken the PDA plunge yet. I'm clueless on those.

No fun shooting for 800 x 600 .:mad: -I want BIG!! -

... but then again, who ever said generalizing web sites for the lowest common denominator was fun. [Poor programmers, they have to think about the different browser versions and code differences and AOL and... yuck.]

Programmers don't have to worry about that stuff. Designers do. Or whoever does the HTML.

It takes more than that for a PDA or Phone to work. I was exaggerating. But CSS is a big part of it.

If you want bigger sizes to work with, make you site stretch to any resolution. No offense, but I don't think your design is important enough to take up 1024 x 768 pixels of space. Especially for the commercial site. People will go there for content, not to see your huge navbar buttons. 800 x 600 is more than enough room to make a lovely design.

A lot of times I work with a size of 760x420 for my Photoshop/Imageready image dimension. I believe its a dreamweaver recommendation, but at this point, its been so long I don't really remember. Ya always have to take into account the various sizes of browser windows within a browser itself. The top navigation area, bottom navigation, and right-side scroll bar (if you're making a scrolling page) all take up part of the 800x600 space.

Width is really the only big consideration you need, unless you don't want your page to scroll vertically.

I try and never make a page wider than 750-780 and no longer than 440, as far as the design in photoshop goes. The Navigation or anything that gets repeated on every page goes above the 440 mark.