What is the best Width for Zencart?

What is the most screen/monitor friendly width to use?

I do not wish to use 100% of the page but feel that 800px is too narrow to use with left and right columns.

I do not wish for my customers to have to scroll left or right to see the content either.

What is a safe pixel width to use?

Two basic considerations:

1. The style and content displays in your site

2. Browser resolutions and monitor sizes of customers.

For (1), only you can decide how "nice" your site looks, from the way you've decided to lay it out and style it. For (2), you can safely assume that most people will be able to see a 1000 pixel width without having horizontal scroll bars.

In my sites, I advise clients to adopt a "more is less" approach with components, and in fact, we usually disable the right column completely. This gives more space to present product info, and also removes "distracting" sideboxes on either side of the main display, that don't really need to be used.

I don't like 100% sites, either, and I've stopped worrying about 800X600 users, so I usually go somewhere around 900 - 950px. If you use 800, 800X600 people will have to scroll horizontally since the vertical scroll bar adds some width.