text, images, design CC copyright, Att, Non-Comm, No D, 2005-2009, With love, ...from the garden.

If you've stopped by recently you may have noticed I've been experimenting with some images and layouts for my blog. In particular I wanted to control the width of my page, which can sometimes get screwed up by the width of the header pic uploaded at the time.

I find it's a real distraction to a smooth design process. Re: just when I think I've mastered some aspect of  these pages I find once again I must  resort to trial and error to get things set up the way I truly want to see them appear on the net. And then I always must remember that these pages look different through different browers and computer systems or monitors.

I've set up my header photo at 900 pixels wide. (after trying a fewer narrower versions that shrunk the width of the page, chopped the edge of photos inserted into individual blog entries and realigned text etc, etc.) This current size seems optimal for my screen and I like the effect. It also affects the various backgrounds (the page background and entry background in my case) to align so that there's only one tiny flower image repeating itself down each side of the screen, rather than two or more - which looked to me like some old fashioned wallpaper from some old parlour of days gone by and that I didn't really like!

Thing is - does that cause some people to have difficulty  viewing the page correctly? Does it cause the header to be chopped on the side and  / or does it cause the page layout to become distorted, by tiling or however other way a browser might handle something like that?

Feedback, input, critique is welcome! If you are experienced in how these set ups work optimally over a good range of viewer and browser controlled settings I'd love to hear from you!

Design is a funny thing - there are elements that are wholly subjective, colour, mood and style tend to reflect a person's taste but doesn't really reflect technical ability. On the other hand some of those issues have an effect on readability (text and back ground colours or images, etc.) which is important in my mind. I think I've got that fairly well covered with this design but want to ensure I haven't gone Off The Deep End toying with the width of the page for my own enjoyment without considering other people's ability to read the entries or enjoy the blog's layout.

Thanks to all in advance! I think these are the finer points of the page design that aren't readily available to reference here at MindSay, if they're available I seem to be at a loss to locate those guidelines!

Hope you're having an enchanting day! To those in the deep freeze in the south and west, I sympathise on the weather issues you're dealing with and hope things can return to normal for you soon. While we may be used to dealing with that sort of weather - up here in the north east, I know it must be frightening to try and drive or even walk in weather like you've been receiving of late!