The last three computer screens I’ve purchased are 1920 pixels across, the new 27” iMac is 2560 across. Designers often hear “make the design fit the screen”. This is not a reasonable request and it’s made without understanding the variability and indeed the nature of screen resolutions.
But what about making your design 100% of the browser width? This is no problem technically; just let the design expand horizontally as far as it will go and make sure the content still works at low resolutions. But we almost never see it in modern web design.
There are exceptions. eBay has an expanding width layout, but it stops around 1200 pixels in order to maintain some control of the look. Amazon goes all the way, leaving vast white holes in the content on wider displays. Most corporate sites do not need to cram so much content on each page, and most care more about their look than do these highly function-oriented sites. A designer cannot produce a variable-width design that he/she is happy with at both 1000 and 2000 pixels wide.
Three modern, high-content designs demonstrating this: the committees for their production certainly weighed the advantages of full-width layouts, and decided to go with a fixed width, where they can control the look, control their columnar text, and know (as best they can) how their designs will appear to most of us.
(Note: these screen shots are at full browser width, on a screen with 1920 pixels across.)
