AJ69

Hi there Mike, and thanks for the welcome, TCH-Bruce. Here's a couple of examples that should help u see why I do things this way. Take a look at this page. motorcycleparts-accessories-andmore.com Look at it with 800x600 and 1024x768 resolution. The page is full screen, with the separate parts of the header expanding/contracting with monitor width, along with the page. Now take a look at it in a bunch of different browsers, at 1280px res, here. browsershots.org/http://www.motorcycleparts-accessories-andmore.com You will see the page has stopped expanding at the width specified, which is 1050px, and white body background shows each side of the page.....it could of course be a colored background, but white was used in this case. here's another one. coffee-makers-et-cetera.com/cmtest-index.html This time, the page is at 95% width on any resolution up to 1050px wide. No scrolling required. And at resolutions above that, it does the same thing as the previous site. It centers, and shows the background either side of the page. U can see that here, at browsershots.org/http://www.coffee-makers-et-cetera.com/cmtest-index.html with the screen-shots set to 1400px and 1600px wide. Happy new year everyone! AJ

Hi there I just want to make some comments on this topic, as it's one that I find very interesting. "Should I have a fixed width page, or a fluid design? And if fixed width, how wide?" Have you ever thought that you can have the best of both worlds? A web-page that expands to a predetermined width, and then stops expanding? Once that point is reached, the page centers, and the body background displays on either side? The greater the screen resolution, the more body seen each side of the page. The trick to it is, to be able to get ALL standards compliant browsers like Mozilla and safari, as well as browsers like IE to react the same way, and behave themselves. Which of course means a simple max-width property in your stylesheet isnt going to do the job. (IE has no idea what max-width means!) But it can be done......I do it on websites i design, both for myself and others. So the page is designed to fit full screen on an 800x600 monitor, with no scrolling. It will also appear full screen on 1024x768px monitors. On resolutions greater than that, the page is centered with a background showing either side of the page. Restraining to this width maintains a comfortable line length for a 3 column design (around 60 characters). If anyone is interested in seeing websites of mine with this happening, let me know. Im not aware of anyone else who uses the code the way i do to get this happening. It is something i developed myself, as I couldnt find any information on how to achieve this effect. AJ.