One thing to consider is how many of those wide screen viewers actually view the page in full screen vs. having multiple windows open and are actually viewing it in less than 1000px. A fluuid design is always best (IMO).

I have three monitors, two of which are 1024 x 768. I'm presently running firefox as my default browser, but when I was running IE with the "favorites" toolbar open in the left gutter, sites in 1024 were too wide. Firefox alleviates that issue, and I no longer use IE with favorites open. So maybe browser use also factors in. I created my site within the last year and modeled it after Adobe, GE and Philips sites. All very clean and light, also all based on 800 wide, fixed, not fluid.

My other monitor is 1920 x 1200, and anything fluid on that just doesn't work.

fluffyMuffin. You could be opening a can of worms with knocking fluid designs. Over the years, there have been several threads on not designing fixed width sites, especially only 800px wide. It is one of those
Catch 22" situations: you can't win for loosing. Then again, I doubt anyone ever thought monitors would get as big as they are. Heck, I can connect my PC or laptop to my HDTV. Talk about W I D E screen :)

[edited by: Marshall at 1:27 am (utc) on May 12, 2007]

Talk about W I D E screen

And trying to read text in 100% main content area with no columns is not easy. This is why flexible 100% is not always a good idea. If 20% of my site visitors were using 800x600 I would not even be considering alienating them?

This is a subject that gets discussed regularly but the bottom line is that an 800x600 will display in an acceptable way for everyone. The same cannot be said for other widths.

This thread from a few weeks ago discussed this in depth.

[webmasterworld.com...]

From my own stats - which records the actual size of the browser window, as well as the size of the display area - I can see that approximately a quarter of users with 1024x768 display browse with a sidebar opened, with a display area size reduced to a value between 750 and 850.
Users with display of 1280x960 and above tend to have this kind of behavior even more often - with a mix of unmaximized windows, and maximized with sidebar.

I have similar stats as far as resolution and stay and 800 wide for most pages, some fluid some fixed. for fluid I max them out at a 1300 limit for browsers that obey it!

Thx all for answering .Beedee thx for link ill check cause still cant decide.