when you make background images, is it best to make them 800 * 600? What if ppl are viewing in a diff format? Will there be any unsightly stretches I don't like?

if you have an image as your layout and set it with an <img> tag, it's not going to stretch, there is just going to be empty space for the higher resolutions.

If you center everything, then everything will be centered, if you set everything to the left, then the people with higher resolutions are going to hvae space to the right.

If you make your image 800x600, than people on 800x600 resolution won't see the whole image, because 800x600 refers to the whole monitor, and the size of the browser screen is smaller than that, because of menubars and stuff like that. And if you have content on the far stretches of the image, people on that resolution will have to scroll. Or, if the image isn't in your background, and is just an image on the page, people with smaller browsers will always have to scroll to get to the edge of the image. As a background, the browser just cuts the image off, and to see the image, you'd have to have a larger browser. I recommend making your image smaller than 800X600, and have your whole layout centered, so, as Rosey said, those with larger resolutions won't have an unsightly amount of space to the right.

Personally, I don't mind scrolling down,but find it very annoying to scroll to the right. Lately, I've been designing layouts that aren't wide and are long. In general, just choose a layout that looks nice to you, and try to make it small enough to fit in most resolutions.

800x600 --> width of image: 780 pixels maximum
102x768 --> width of image: 1003 pixels maximum

Love,
Mirna

thanks guys. magicsun, so in your website, how do you make it stretch all the way across on my higher resolution, i think it's the 1067 or whatever one. and you made it for 780 right?

no her image is 1003px wide...in my res 800x600 i have to scroll right :P

my current layout is made in 1024x768 resolution.

When i normally make a layout i try to keep the content between 780px width, but the background is mostly made with a width of 1003px. That's because a background doesn't view a scrollbar, so it will end in 800x700 at 780px (from what you see offcourse, if you press F11 you will see a bit more) and in 1024x768 you will see the whole background. The only things that causes scrollbars are text, images etc.. the content. So you can make (for instance) a background from 3000 pixels width, but if you keep the content between 780px nobody (from 800x600 and above) will see a scrollbar.. even though you used one big image, but it's set as background.

I hope you still get it haha, i'm kinda bad at explaining this stuff =)

Love,
Mirna

if you want, you could make the backgrounds in 2 sizes, one for a 800x600 browser and another for 1024x768, and on your splash page, let the people choose. Then, you wouldn't have to worry about stretching and stuff like that