it may be better to have the site centred... About this issue, a couple questions. What is the reasoning involved with centering, just trying to understand? And can it be done w/o tables?

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Hi, As I said earlier, I personally think a website looks better when centred on the screen. Prevents that wasted space look at one side of the screen. However, it really is just a matter of personal taste - others may prefer the look of a site when it is not centred. Is really up to you which look you like the most. Yes, you can centre the page without the use of tables. Can use the css "wrapper" technique , or see this for some helpful info http://www.dustindiaz.com/centering...

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You know, I tried the simple two lines of CSS in the article cited above, but I don't see any difference when resizing the pages. Feel free to look at the stylesheet of my page and see if there may be something else conflicting with the attempt at centering.

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Upon second glance, it does work. Is this the effect you were recommending? I can see the beauty of the centering approach for higher res. browser screens, but someone mentioned I should lose the fixed width page for lower res. devices, I guess phones and PDA's? Said it messed up the menu. One thing I notice is when I resize the window to the left, when I scroll across the page, the main content overlaps the menu. I don't know if there's any way around that since I like the fixed, absol. pos.'d menu, do you?

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Hi, Had another look at your site and yes, this is the effect I was talking about. Page looks good at various resolutions (800x600/ 1024x768 and 1280x800) and I can't see any problem with the menu. What do you mean exactly by "resize the window to the left" and scroll across the page, as the menu appears fine at any of these resolutions? I have not looked at your site on a phone or PDA, so am not sure if this is what you mean when you say you scroll across the page?

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I mean, when you "grab" the window on the bottom right corner and resize it smaller (to the left), then you see the bottom scroll bar. If you scroll to the right, to view the content on the far right of the page, the content overlaps the menu. Just a peeve, not an issue above 800x600 res.

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Hi, Yes, I see what you mean. When resized the menu overlaps the image when scrolling. This problem doesn't occur when you remove the fixed menu, but I'm not sure if there is a simple workaround to resolve this issue with the fixed menu which you prefer to use.

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Absolute positioning is great to get things to stick to one particular place on the page, but it's got it's own probs, too. Like different browsers putting absolute positioned stuff in different places and overlapping. This page looks okay at standard 800x600 res.; but smaller, and things start floating over other things on the page (I was going for the "bulletin board" look, as the images are all shapes and sizes and it was hard to format): http://pojoaqueriverarttour.com/art...

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"...but I'm not sure if there is a simple workaround to resolve this issue with the fixed menu which you prefer to use..." The simplest I've found is to use a colored background on the menu, like this. http://perfectionconstruction.com/L... index.php It's not prime, but it reduces the visual confusion, especially of text over text. (this doesn't apply to IE6, incidentally.) "...Like different browsers putting absolute (or relative) positioned stuff in different places..." As for this, best I've found is to serve different stylesheets to different browsers. The page above serves 5 different stylesheets, depending on which UA is detected. Now if I could just get the browser sniffer I use to detect IE6 properly!

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Hi, The page - http://perfectionconstruction.com/L... - looks good with menu and content centred in IE6 and I see the scrolling problem is not an issue now when viewing in IE (when fixed menu has been removed). Firefox shows fixed menu to the left of the page and content centred with scrolling problem still present (due to fixed menu). I think in the other page you mention above - http://perfectionconstruction.com/L... - that the idea of a different coloured menu background is good in one sense as it helps to lessen any confusion if overlap occurs, although, I must admit, I personally prefer the appearance of the menu in the original site (without the different coloured background). The whole look of the site is very clean with a simple clear layout - the sort of site that doesn't drive me crazy with annoying over-complicated content! Like your idea of different stylesheets for different browsers, displaying the page content as close to what you originally intended, depending on which browser people are using.

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i'm not wicked fond of the colored background menu either. And though it's more maintenance, AFAIK, the only way around browser inconsistencies is the multiple stylesheet approach.

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Hi, It is more maintenance, but I think it is worthwhile for the effect it has on making the site look good depending on which browser is being used to view it. I agree with you on the multiple stylesheet approach. Is an interesting problem with the menu/image overlap, so I will let you know if I come across any other ways to resolve this issue.

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Thanks for the helpful insight and feedback so far!

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