When a visitor to your Website is viewing your pages through a browser, you want them to be able to see the entire width of the page without having to scroll left and right. People don't mind scrolling up and down, but they can get aggravated when they also have to scroll left and right.

As a Web designer, you want to design your pages to work with as many browsers and screen resolutions as possible, but you have to find a "happy middle ground" since there are a variety of screen resolutions and sizes in use.

As you scan the Web, you will see that Websites use different page widths.

Many popular sites are set up to display a full 1024 pixel page width with Graphics and Content.
Others will even go beyond 1024 pixels.
Some sites keep their pages to a narrower 750 to 800 pixel width.
Still, others sites will hold their Graphics and Content within the 750 to 800 pixel width, but will place advertisements beyond the 800 pixel width on the right hand side of the page.
You will even find a few sites that still use a page width of 640 pixels.

Now days, most all computer users have a monitor that can display a resolution of 800 x 600 pixels or higher and a majority of them have 1024x768 or higher resolutions. There are very few people who still use a 640 x 480 resolution screen.

Many Web designers design for a screen width of around 750 pixels. This page size will fit on an 800 x 600 screen and allows a little extra room for borders. This width will also work for all higher resolutions as there will just be a little more space between the edge of the Web page and the edge of the screen.

Reduce you graphic file sizes as much as you can so they will load fast. There is no "right or wrong" answer to the question. You'll have to decide which size you want to design for, but the 750 to 800 pixel width page will fit onto the most screens without users having to scroll left and right, although a wider 1024 pixel page allows for more information.

I recommend that you don't go wider than the 1024 width and don't go narrower than the 750 pixel width. The pages for Web Builder's Cafe are constructed at a width of 900 pixels.