Why width 960px? - html

Question

I have a question regarding fixed layout. It has two parts, closely related, so I'm putting in one question.
Part (a)
Why 960px is suggested for the website layout? I understand that it is optimized for the most common screen resolution (1024px). But why exactly 960px? Won't the 1000px be as good?
Part (b)
What exactly is Grid system? I did check 960.gs but didnt get the idea of columns. Is it better to use grid system (using the template from 960.gs, which looks so messy) or should i stick with traditional way, like:
<div id="wrap">
<div id = "left-column">..</div>
<div id = "center-column">..</div>
<div id = "right-column">..</div>
</div>

Answer 1

1024px is the max screen width it's aiming at. We need to allow some window chrome, so it needs to be less. We'd ideally like it to have lots of factors, allowing us to split it into equal size columns with integer widths.
960 has lots of factors:
echo factors(960);
1 2 3 4 5 6 8 10 12 15 16 20 24 30 32 40 48 60 64 80 96 120 160 192 240 320 480 960
1000 doesn't have as many
echo factors(1000);
1 2 4 5 8 10 20 25 40 50 100 125 200 250 500 1000
Specifically, you can easily split 960 into 2,3,4,5,6 and 8 columns.

Answer 2

Why 960px is suggested for the website layout?
960 pixels is a common width for web layouts because 1024 x 768 was the most common resolution for many years and designers were forced to design for the lowest common denominator. When designing to a fixed width, it's wise to design so most people don't see a horizontal scrollbar. If your design is 1024 pixels wide, a page that is higher than the viewport (say 768 pixels for simplicity), will suddenly introduce a vertical scrollbar, eating away the available horizontal space which suddenly is less than 1024 pixels (1024 minus the width of the vertical scrollbar).
So you need a width less than 1024 minus the width of the vertical scrollbar. The width of a scrollbar isn't much more than 20 pixels, but to take into account non-maximized windows and end up with a number that's easily divisible into as many factors as possible, since that makes designing fixed-size boxes or columns easier. As 960 has more factors than 1000, 960 was chosen.
It's a partially false safety net to base the design on a fixed width of 960 pixels, though, since many people won't maximize their windows or even re-size them properly, so even with resolutions higher than 1024, their browser window might not fit 960 pixels. That's why responsive web design is beginning to take off, where designs are more fluid and responsive to the user's device settings (like screen resolution).
What exactly is Grid system?
A grid system is just a set of predefined CSS class names that you can use in your HTML documents to align the different boxes in your design into a "grid" that matches one or more common layouts for web design. A grid system is good if you're unfamiliar with CSS and find it difficult to align the boxes (in both width and height) your design is composed of.
If you find CSS simple enough to write yourself, I recommend you write it yourself. I also recommend not to use strictly fixed width columns, but instead more responsive web design (like mentioned above) to accommodate different screen sizes better than a fixed-width design is capable of.

Answer 3

960px is used because it is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, and 16... - allowing designers to have a huge variety of different column widths and possible layouts. There are probably other "magic" numbers in this respect.
Also as pointed out, a width of 960px fits the majority of resolutions "nicely".

Answer 4

I think the divisibility reason is the primary reason.
{ 2^6 , 3 , 5 } allows for (7*2*2)=28 scaling factors
using six twos and the next two smallest primes
Also 960 = 1920/2
It also double to guard another use case : wherein user tile 2 windows side-by-side
like browser on left side, and word processor on right.

Answer 5

A grid system is used to have elements line out on the same vertical lines. This gives your layout a better look because all text/headers/images are left aligned the same way.
960 is as others said a based on 12 or 16 colums because it can be devided by the most amouont of numbers. This way you can have a row of lets say 8 elements and one of 4 and have the same space between your elements. If you look at the link you can see the white margins between the elements are the same wheter you make a 2-8-2 cell layout or a 4-4-4 cell layout(12 col based)

Answer 6

960px has a huge amount of factors, meaning layouts can have full-pixel, sane values with a lot of different dimensions.
960px is used because the most common and is the smallest screen resolution used regularly. You'll get mobile devices and a few 800x600 screens, but there are few and far between. The extra space on the side(s) of the page allows for window borders and scroll bars, while not obscuring the content.

Answer 7

Here is a different way of thinking about grids. What I offer here is a working solution to create accurate layouts needed for the width independence of responsive design. I make the assumption that all good web design should be responsive and accurate at all scaled sizes.
Having designed/built hundreds of responsive landing pages over the past three years I discovered an issue with the 960 pixel grid early on. Since responsive designs use percentages for widths instead of pixels, the number 100 becomes all important. The second important aspect of this issue is to avoid the use of fractional percentages. The final essential part is to make sure the image widths are in exact proportion to the percentage they occupy. Given these three constraints there is only one grid that makes sense: the 1000 pixel grid.
Before adopting this approach, we used the 960 pixel grid with the associated fractional percentages for our responsive designs. As a result we found different results from one browser to the next. The variance is subtle, a pixel this way or that, and due to round-off errors. There are some who find such nuances to be an acceptable trade off for the ease of dividing columns exactly equal using fractional percentages. If you are interested in a thoughtful alternative I invite you to read on.
For those familiar with U.S. currency, specifically the dollar, you already understand how whole number percentages work. You know the dollar can be sub-divided using pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters and fifty cent pieces. Anytime you have to split a dollar three ways someone will end up with the extra penny. In your layout, using whole numbers, this means three columns could be set up as 33%:34%:33%. Your image sizes would be 330px, 340px & 330px. The differences in width are virtually imperceptible because our perception is far more attuned to the alignment of elements rather than the comparing of widths. The 100 percent grid and the 1000 pixel grid correlate as a simple 1:10 ratio. This method is simple, accurate and easy to remember.
Building your layouts using percentages is a tremendous time saver. Our main container does get a fixed pixel width set using a single CSS class. When you change the fixed max width the layout scales. When a mobile device such as a table or phone requests your page, your layout will scale accordingly. I would, however, limit the upward scale to be no more than 125% to avoid noticeable softening of the images. For example, our new upcoming view port of 1230 pixels falls within this constraint.
In conclusion, it is best to remember we are craftsmen who, at our best, create true art. History provides us with wonderful analog examples created before computers existed. We have all seen the beautiful mosaics created with broken pieces of glass or tile; their beauty comes not from machine-cut, equal size pieces but rather, the carefully crafted pieces assembled by the hands of an artist. Established historic methods provide insight to solving similar problems found in web design.