I have designed a template in Fireworks 8 using a 800x600 canvas. I would like the template to be fluid -- be able to expand and contract to fit the visitor's browser/screen resolution. Can you take a look at the design, maybe look at the markup and css and see if there is something I can do?

Will it be necessary for me to re-slice, or can I make this work the way it is? I didn't see anything in Fireworks that would facilitate this.

The test header is here --> http://www.jmfloorcovering.com/test_...rs_header.html

Or you can look at the index, which has major problems in any browser except IE --> http://www.jmfloorcovering.com/index.html

Thank you for any suggestions.

Grump

At the moment your header looks a little thrown together. I do not mean this in any negative way on your part. Little things like the bevel on the rectangle block and the yellow stroke applied to the blue text is excessive. Try to keep the style of your work to one thing. And try to keep it as fluent as possible. Remember, headers always stand out.

Please go easy, Twitch. I spent many hours working on a logo befitting a floor covering business -- carpet, tile, hardwood, etc. -- and you just told me it looks stupid. I'm sure it's not the best, but it was the best I have ever done and I am proud of it. I may not like it next month or next year and I might get a lot better at this stuff in time. For now though, it might be kinder if you didn't use terms that belittle the efforts of people who are trying hard. The dictionary is full of great words. Stupid isn't one of them.

I have seen a lot of templates designed using Fireworks, PhotoShop and other graphic programs that are fluid. They may do something similar to what you described, but that is still designing in the graphics program. It's how you assemble the images that make it fluid, I imagine. I was thinking maybe I should get rid of the slices I created and start over with the graphics I've designed.

Maybe I should hide everything except the elements I want to export for a specific purpose. The logo first, as you suggested, then the navbar. I could set the logo as a background image aligned to the left and position the catch phrase over it. Then I could fill the rest of the background with the gradient and position the title over that. Then the navbar gets centered at the bottom edge of the header. The rest of the content is already fluid and it falls below the header.

Sound feasible?

Thanks for all your help today. I'm coming along pretty well (I know you're a proponent of, perhaps even zealous about divs, but I have nested tables for now and doing okay with the css too - I'll put learning about divs on my priority list though).

Take a look at my progress --> http://www.jmfloorcovering.com/index.html I still have a lot of work to go cleaning up the code, but it looks a lot better'n it did yesterday.

Grump

Sorry, I posted when I was in a mood.

Your current progress is good. Just swat up on as many Fireworks tutorials as you can, and your style will become more defined.

Hi Twitch,

Actually, I'm stalled on the home page at the moment. I redesigned the logo to stretch it out a bit more and make the header a lot more flexible. I separated the navbar from the header and when I try to center it, the popup menus don't align properly. Since it's a fluid design, adjusting the position of the popups is beyond me.

Have a look at the test page: http://www.jmfloorcovering.com/test/...eader_nav.html

After looking around a bit more, I have decided that CSS layers is the way to go. So, as soon as I can figure out how to position those popup menus, I want to convert the nested tables layout of the navbar (and following that, everything else on the site) to DIV/CSS layout.

Grump