There have been lots of discussions on this. If you are designing for the general public, many will still be using 800*600 old computers so it's best to use that size, but if you are designing for viewers that you think will have modern computers, I suggest 1024*768.
Many professional sites seem to make the main content 800 px wide and then have ads or contact details or other less important info filling the space at the right to 1024 or 1280 px wide so that a person with 800 x 600 still sees the important stuff and viewers with larger resolutions don't have a blank space. This WebDev page looks very similar with links on the right, the page is in fact flexible with a minimum of about 900px but you could fix the width so that the main information fits a 800px width with less important info further right.
You can use min-width and max-width and perhaps set min-width at 780px width and max-width at say 1180px (allowing 20 px for a vertical scrollbar in 800 and 1200px wide resolutions).
http://www.wickham43.supanet.com/tut...xminwidth.html
See these topics:-
http://www.webdevforums.com/showthre...&highlight=800
http://www.webdevforums.com/showthre...&highlight=800
Last edited by Wickham; 01 Jun 2008 at 01:35 AM.
Code downloaded to my PC will be deleted in due course.
WIN7; IE9, Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari for Windows; screen resolution usually 1366*768.
Also IE6 on W98 with 800*600 and IE8 on Vista 1440*900.