what resolution do you design for?

Mine ??
1024×768

I wish it were that easy, though i am working on a personal site… I am ready to kill IE….

Same ??
800×600…but I try and test at 1024×768 and 1280×1024 as well.

I have been trying to use variable widths to accomodate down to 8×6
but I am used to a 21″ display set to 1280×1024
it’s a compromise..

ahreno,
I target 800×600 but when creating DIVs or graphics and such, I limit the width to 770px, to ensure that the window chrome and vertical scrollbar has some room. If your actual site is designed to 800 pixels wide, you’d get the dreaded horizontal scrollbar.
Fluid designs can allow for different settings, but they can be a bit trickier. Well, to me they are. ??

Fluid designs can allow for different settings, but they can be a bit trickier. Well, to me they are. ??
I don’t even want to talk about it!

I always design my site for 800×600 but I havn’t actually used 800×600 resolution for a few years. I just think if it displays fine on that it will be a little smaller but fine on higher resolutions.

For a start, there are some nice Statistics at W3.org.
I personally design to make it look good at 1024×768 but it must remain viewable at 800×600 without horizontal scrolling. Normally I use a 750-790px div centered horizontally as a wrapper.

Sometimes this type of issue is made more complex by not using the proper terminology. There is a difference between the width (anticipated / optimised / actual ) of the viewport, and the system wide screen resolution. Incidentally the Firefox Web Dev plug in has a very handy tool for measuring this stuff, and if any one is getting started I can’t recommend it too highly.

800×600. And since I prefer fixed width, it actually makes for a good ‘reading width’ ??

My browser window is typically 950 px wide on a 1028×768 screen (so that I can keep an eye on windows off the side of my desktop, in which something dynamic might be going on).
I vastly prefer liquid a layouts — many fixed width ones use, IMHO, fonts that are too small, or else line lenghts that are too short, or make me squint by being too off-center. (But some do solve the problem beautifully, I admit.). On my blog, a scrollbar shows up at under about 780px. I’m not happy how I solved the problem (fixed width left side column, liquid content area), but whenever I try something else, everything falls totally apart in some versions of IE. (And by “totally” I mean not just boxes adapting to oversized content, but some parts overlapping others, jumping around or otherwise making a nuisance of themselves.)
On my second site https://chrysalidesque.f2o.org , I opted for total liquidity. Everything is fully readable and functional down to 600px or less. But it may look a bit left-heavy over 1028 px since I had to set a max-width for the content. I might enclose everything in a centered div, but haven’t been able to do without breaking the wrapable menu in some browsers.
If it weren’t for the IE family, both sites would long be better centered.