What is the best size set up up a new website?

By default, a web page is 100% viewport width unless you give it an explicit value in pixels, % or ems.    Height is  determined by content.  No stated values are necessary.  Scrollbars will appear when the amount of content on the page warrants it.

Nancy O.

I am going to disagree with Jon Fritz II here, not because he is incorrect, but because this is your 4th post here and I believe you may be new to website designing with Dreamweaver. Responsive Design is not the kind of thing you should take up immediately.

What you are trying to do is set up a website with the horizontal definition of the site set up for the average screen. And in the last few years, the cinema-ready size has really taken hold and the average screen size has moved beyond 800x600.

Presently, the average screen size is around 1,000 pixels, many screens are 1024x768. But you have to allow for browser chrome (this is the stuff around the sides of the browser that include a scroll bar, so you need to "give away" a few pixels for that. This is why Jon's 900 to 950 pixel width is a good idea.

As a rule of thumb, I like to use Google's "Browsersize" to design pages with the following in mind:

• Make sure the most important parts of the website are not something someone has to scroll down to see.
• Make sure navigation is completely visible without scrolling.
• Make sure that the really important stuff, like calls to action or telephone numbers are seen without scrolling.
• Engage the viewer with your design without scrolling.

That's a good rule of thumb. And I would mention that the built-in designed websites in Dreamweaver all do that. Open File>New Click on Blank Page, choose HTML and pick a layout and you will create a page with a separate style sheet that will let you fit these criteria.

-Mark

You almost never have a reason to set height. Height should be determined by content and that is what your viewers are used to (vertical scrolling is normal).

Horizontal scrolling, not so much. That can be a huge annoyance to a viewer.

Generally speaking, unless you are going for a Responsive Design that changes size depending on a viewer's device (you can use the Fluid Grid Layout tool to help you create this in DW), you generally don't go any wider than about 900-950 pixels. It's not a "magic number" or anything, that's just a size that most desktops and tablets can handle without scrolling horizontally.

Responsive Design using cascading style sheet Media Queries allows your site to change it's width (and really pretty much any part of its design) depending on the device the viewer is using to look at your site. There is a lot of info out there about Media Queries, it can seem daunting at first, but once you have the hang of it, media queries can make your site do some very interesting things.