October 31st, 2014 at 4:50 AM
It's a debate of whether to encourage compatibility with legacy monitors, or whether to make use of the glamorous real-estate of large 1920x1080 LCDs. Mine is personally a 1600x900, which I think is pretty much the sweet spot as far as good webpages are concerned. 1366x768 is workable as well, but outside of this narrow range, designs either end up incompatible with small devices or they end up looking bad on large screens.
I personally think that a design should be supported on monitors of at least 1024x768 because, believe it or not, the resolution is still in use. Besides that, people don't always keep their web browsers maximized, so I think it's fair to require support for at least 1024x768, if only to allow people to keep webpages clean on the eyes (and personally, I think this is the only primary reason 1024x768 isn't dead yet). I don't personally think webpages (whether fluid or fixed width) should extend past around 1600 pixels in width either, as I think once you start going far beyond that, it gets hard on the eyes. 1600 pixels in width looks just fine on a 1920x1080 monitor. Then again, highly responsive designs may make good use of the extra real estate.
With the port of the current theme to MyBB 1.8, one thing I have worked hard on is to implement smarter fluid width values to ensure that the page is within reasonable limits and can adjust better depending on the monitor size. I've also done some basic responsiveness to adjust padding and a few other values to look at its best on 1024x768 monitors. The max width for the container/wrapper is 1460 pixels, and the minimum will be about 990 pixels, and after doing a lot of testing, I think that's pretty much the sweet spot that manages to make good use of a variety of monitor sizes while maintaining compatibility and readability, as well as a somewhat consistent theme feel.
What is your opinion as far as widths? Do you generally lean towards narrower page layouts, or do you prefer wider layouts that cater towards modern displays? Personally, I feel that some sort of responsiveness is the future, but the internet has been slow to catch on.
I personally think that a design should be supported on monitors of at least 1024x768 because, believe it or not, the resolution is still in use. Besides that, people don't always keep their web browsers maximized, so I think it's fair to require support for at least 1024x768, if only to allow people to keep webpages clean on the eyes (and personally, I think this is the only primary reason 1024x768 isn't dead yet). I don't personally think webpages (whether fluid or fixed width) should extend past around 1600 pixels in width either, as I think once you start going far beyond that, it gets hard on the eyes. 1600 pixels in width looks just fine on a 1920x1080 monitor. Then again, highly responsive designs may make good use of the extra real estate.
With the port of the current theme to MyBB 1.8, one thing I have worked hard on is to implement smarter fluid width values to ensure that the page is within reasonable limits and can adjust better depending on the monitor size. I've also done some basic responsiveness to adjust padding and a few other values to look at its best on 1024x768 monitors. The max width for the container/wrapper is 1460 pixels, and the minimum will be about 990 pixels, and after doing a lot of testing, I think that's pretty much the sweet spot that manages to make good use of a variety of monitor sizes while maintaining compatibility and readability, as well as a somewhat consistent theme feel.
What is your opinion as far as widths? Do you generally lean towards narrower page layouts, or do you prefer wider layouts that cater towards modern displays? Personally, I feel that some sort of responsiveness is the future, but the internet has been slow to catch on.
