Originally Posted by techo I usually make sure that the main section of the template is 800px wide, and then have the patterns and bg (all the other fancy stuff) on the side, that way atleast 8x6 users can still see the content.

When you are designing a site, its good practice to make it anywhere from 750-760px wide instead of the full 800px.

If you design the site to use the full 800px there will be no room for the vertical scroll bar, which will result in an additional horizontal scroll bar appeaing. Then things just look messy.

Really if you think about it, losing 30-40px width isnt that big of a deal and it will look a lot smoother if your page is going to have a large amount of content that will require scrolling.

cheers