Web Page Size

In everyones opinion, what do ya'll think the best size is to make your pages. And if you are using Dreamweaver, do you think it's best to use layers or tables?

I kind of stick around 650 to 750px in width but if I wanted to fill the screen at 800x600 resolution I would make the page about 778px wide, this is a pretty snug fit.

I think if using layers you will most likely run into problems with older versions of Netscape so I always use tables.

post is probs gonne get moved as this isnt a showcase :]

If you mean *file* size, I think the consensus is around 50K per page. If you mean resolution size, we'll you must search deep in your heart and soul and decide between 800x600 and 1024x768. If I were you, I would research Internet demographics for the specific type of site you are building and figure out who your target audience is and try to find out what resolutions they are using. On this forum don't be surprised if 95% of everybody here says 1024x768 but we are all designers and techie type people so we favor higher resolutions. Maybe your target audience does not. Find out.

These links are some demographics for the general Internet population to maybe use as a starting point if nothing else...

http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2002/May/res.php
http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat_trends.htm
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
http://www.dreamink.com/design5.shtml

I always use 780 x 580 and try not to make anything you want visible extend below the 400 pixel mark or so.

That takes care of your 800 x 600 people.... and if you are thinking about it when doing the design you can get a repeating background image make the site expand to handle ANY other larger screen size.

Tables, layers.... whatever.... it kind of really depends on what you are doing... Netscape 4.5'ish and above handles layers just fine as long as you dont start embedding layers inside layers.

D4 gave some pretty good resources for checking current trends in user monitor sizes... I just choose to take the easy way out.

Thanks for your replys.

man. 50 k per page???

I have one image on mine that' is more than that. If I made it any smaller it would probably look terrible.

My website is 15k

:D

I would use tables when possible, layers look crappy on Macs and opera...tables are fairly generic.