Is it time to leave 960px grids?

[Chris]

I've worked with 960 grid system and others of the sort for a few years and am starting to wonder if it's time to make the switch.

I know about bootstrap, foundation and that there are a lot of other responsive frameworks out there. However I do not like using them when developing a front-end website as they tend to be hard make good visually pleasant designs with. When working on a basic website they do the job perfect. But when it comes to placing fixed width items in them, web pages can become a complete utter mess.

So after reviewing the w3 browser screen resolution statistics of 2014, it seems that 1024x768 only holds 6% of the market and is dieing fast.

So if you were to develop a fixed width website, would you make the switch to 1200px? On one hand 6% of the market may not seem much, on the other, when you put the 6% into figures, it still makes up for millions of potential customers.

[vitinho444]

Well like you said Bootstrap is fine for simple websites, but I don't know about complex ones though.

I've always used a 960px max width for my websites then some margin-left/right: auto to make it centered. But since you tell me 720p is 6% only, I think I'll go 1200px. PC Monitors and LED Tv's are so cheap nowadays that people buy the best resolution already. And I think most laptops screen resolution are 1333x700 or something so 1200px max width for a website is perfect.

About your concern about 6% being a lot of costumers, why those 6% can't just scroll a bit to the side? If they are on a 1024x768 screen they don't know jack about Websites and they won't say a thing.

[a_bertrand]

I NEVER liked fixed designs. Why? because screen resolution and WINDOW SIZE are 2 different things. I could have 3000px wide screen and yet use a small 400px wide window (and I do so). I tend to use fixed designs only if there is really no other choices, and even then, I'm not happy.

Crappy websites like APPLE.COM or CNN.COM which don't even know what resizing means are just super stupid. Sorry guys, they may look nice at first, but try to resize your browser window and tell me how they react => badly.

So knowing what people screen are lately is not what you should check out to make a good website.

[OldRod]

I tend to agree with a_bertrand.

I routinely have sites open in a non-maximized window, particularly if I'm following along with a video tutorial, or testing code, etc. Having a site that is fixed width no matter what is a huge pain.

[Xaos]

This is the world's noobiest question, but how do you get your margins and whatnot to resize with the browser window? I often create many images in Photoshop and then use divs to align the site, how should the images be sized in Photoshop? I jumped into web design without learning first, which really hampers my skill.

[Chris]

This is the world's noobiest question, but how do you get your margins and whatnot to resize with the browser window? I often create many images in Photoshop and then use divs to align the site, how should the images be sized in Photoshop? I jumped into web design without learning first, which really hampers my skill.

Javascript.

Code: Select all

window.onresize = function(e) {
    // do magic column resizing.
}

[Xaos]

Ah, gotcha. Before I was just working with HTML

[vitinho444]

Alain, well then you only work with responsive websites? There are times to make responsive and others that a simple fixed one works well enough.
Not that I disagree with you, but for normal users will visit websites in their fullscreen browsers

How do you handle your website resizes then, im curious to learn

[Jackolantern]

Well, even though 6% are still using smaller screens, it isn't the same issue as, say, Javascript and IE6. Using certain bits of Javascript and other things would make your site unusable on IE6, so its marketshare was very important.

But if someone is using a smaller screen, they will just have to use the scrollbars. Definitely not a deal-killer, and keeping 6% from having to use scrollbars probably shouldn't be a design consideration.

[vitinho444]

and keeping 6% from having to use scrollbars probably shouldn't be a design consideration.

Yeah let those guys use scrollbars...