I wasn’t going to write any more today, but I’m playing around with templates a bit. My current conundrum is how to handle the sidebar. I like the sidebars, don’t get me wrong, but I’d also like to have more usable space for the post itself. So, let’s make the ‘main’ area wider. Seems fair enough, right?

I don’t mind designing for the 800 pixel wide group, but realistically, unless you’re still in Windows 98 (or have some express need to be at that (800×600) resolution, you’re going to be at 1024×768 at a minimum… So let’s design for a width of 900 — a good, aesthetically-pleasing background behind it all, but more usable space for content. All of the machines on which I work daily (home and at work) are set to 1280×1024, so when I look around…I see lots of wasted space (and the need to scroll vertically).

Ah well. I’m going to sleep on this template for the evening. I’m not sure that I really like the whole ‘Visual Studio’ type of effect it has. It’s clean, but it looks to Microsoft-ish (like I’m some sort of posterchild). If I like it, I might try messing with its settings to widen it. If not, I’ll probably end up modifying the template I had before (which means resizing some images and hosting the changed images myself) or go with an un-hosted (meaning I have to host all the background images) template I found this evening I really like to better suit my unhappy self.

Time will tell, I guess… Until then…

–MZ