Websites: how wide do you go?

I get a good number of requests to redesign websites, or create new ones where the client wants it to be very wide. Sometimes this is so that they can display photographs at a larger size or perhaps they want several columns for their content but do not want them too narrow. Sometimes clients are looking at the web from a widescreen monitor and they are thinking about all that wasted space they see on their monitor. What might not occur to them though is that not everyone has a big wide screen.

As a web designer I always have to keep an eye on the trends, and the breakdown on monitior widths being used by web surfers. One solution to having the best of both worlds where you accommodate those on narrower screens as well as wider screens is to make your site flexible width. More on that later.