OUGD504 - Design for Screen - Screen size and Alignment Research

The average size of a web page is around 960 pixels, which is what you would expect as the most screen resolutions are 1024x768 or larger.

Without scrolling, the amount of content on a page will be seriously limited.

A website will display a different amount of content depending on the visitor's screen resolution.The typical browser on the most common screen resolution will show around 600 pixels of your web page, after which the visitor will have to scroll. The area above this imaginary line is called above the foldfrom newspaper design, and is enough to show the first five search results from Google, or the top three rows of stories on the BBC News website. Some newer laptops like netbooks will be even smaller than this.

If the average web page size is 960 pixels and the average screen width is 1024 pixels, the average visitor isn't really going to notice if a page is aligned with the left side of the screen or in the centre.

The main reason to centre-align your page is that it looks better on larger screens. On a 1600 pixel widescreen monitor, a left-aligned web page with a size of 960 pixels has a lot of white space on the right, but the space is a lot less obvious when centre-aligned. Unless your site has special requirements, we would always recommend a centre-aligned design.