Web Design 2012: Minimal Windows Width of Popular Sites

Xah Lee, 2012-03-08

Quite annoyed that Google's g+ in past month assume your window size must be quite wide.

Meaning: the page is designed to assume a minimal display width as optimal. For example, if your window is not that wide, part of page on the right side won't show. A horizontal scrollbar shows up. You have to use that.

Here's some minimal sizes for each site.

• Facebook = 1014
• apple.com = 1014
• google.com = 1014
• microsoft.com = 1000
• Yahoo! = 1014
• amazon = 1033
• Twitter = 900 (mininum); (990 to show all items in nav bar)
• Gmail = 994 (mininum); 1290 (no horizontal scroll bar)
• g+ = 994 (mininum). 1080 for nav bar to float.
• Google Reader = 952
• DISQUS = 1180

The above are tested with web browsers on a PC, running Windows 7.

Here's sites that used a flow approach. ♥

• Wikipedia = flow
• hootsuite = flow