960px looks ok but remember that education uses computers that are 3 to 5 years old. Lots of 800 by 600 monitors floating round. We just upgraded to Winders XP as we could find the money to replace the really old computers this year.

I went for a liquid design on the personal blog -and using a dl on the front page listing title and excerpt has increased the ‘life’ of blog posts by a factor of two according to the logs. Most people can scan 5 stories above the fold rather than reading one in full.

I’ve used the Safari-only drop shadows in a layout before too; but not because the foreground-backround contrast was too low. I did it because I found that Safari in some instances would annoyingly “bloat” or fuzz out some white text on backgrounds (like ink that was laid on too heavy to borrow a print metaphor). I couldn’t quite track down what the issue was, but adding the drop shadows enhanced the readability in Safari while the readability was fine everywhere else.

After all, do you provide XHTML and HTML versions for each of your pages?

But, if you wish to provide multiple feeds, all with the same content, simply pick the template over the plug-in.

My only additional suggestion is that you stick with x.0 formats, like RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom 1.0.

The [Atom 1.0] plugin replaces all WordPress feeds. RSS will no longer be available…

Say what?

What is your take Mr. Z?

My take on 1024 vs. 800 is that it depends on the audience and the design. My take on fixed vs. liquid, likewise.

Other than rubbing Jeremy Keith the wrong way (or some poor Windows using soul, still confined to the 800 x 600 purgatory), I see no harm in a fixed width site. However, I really like the flexible option, such as the one that Dan Cederholm outlined in his book, Bulletproof Web Design.

The fact of the matter is, most web designers have a background in traditional design and they have a hard enough time getting over the fact that your final XHTML file might not match their design comp, pixel for pixel or the fact they are restricted to a limit number of fonts for body copy.

It’s the itchy tag of a new tee shirt, poking her in their neck – ‘why doesn’t this font look EXACTLY the same on the web as it does on my comp?’

Perhaps pushing for fluid layouts across the board at this point is too much. I have just gotten my designers used to relative font sizing – they just don’t see the value. *sigh*

It’s looking more and more to me that the flexible width layout is the solution that lots of people can be happy with.

Here, the only constant is change.

But, what is your take Mr. Z?