[MUD-Dev] META: Web site backgrounds and readability

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 10:18 AM 4/15/98 +0000, I personally witnessed Jon A. Lambert jumping up
to say:
>
>But then you'll be hard coding for the lowest common denominator 640x480, 
>leaving a great deal of blank space on the right for anyone who exceeds
>that resolution.  

I've found that the best compromise appears to be a centered 600 pixel
width table which contains the entire page. Since it's centered, you have
the appearance of margins rather than 'lots of blank space', and it's more
than adequate for text-based informational pages. Since you've coded
specific dimensions, it works well.

Another thought for the right hand side of the table (omitting brokets so
people using HTML mail won't look at nothing at all and go 'Huh?')...

TABLE WIDTH=100%
TR
TD
...Put your content in here...
/TD
TD WIDTH=100
...Put your navbar in here...
/TD
/TR
/TABLE

Given a situation like this, everything works out pretty well. And I'm
immediately thinking "hey, I could write a CGI script that did this
automatically with the path info". That would also give you a pretty decent
way to do two versions; you could have a base script that had the table,
and one without. You sort of lose the title thing, though, unless you do
something complicated with it. Background images get a little complex like
this...