Hello,

This is probably an easy question, but I design my websites in Dreamweaver and tend to only use layers and I noticed that my website looks different on different screen resolutions, which I need to resolve if possible.

Is there a way of doing this in sites that are designed with layers - or would I need to have tables in my pages - if so can I have 1 table at a set width and have layers inside the table?

I'm not a programmer however, so I'm afraid I don't understand java or anything like that, although I do know HTML.

Thanks to anyone who can point me in the right direction.

Cheers

First of all, a 'layer' ( which is a horrid Netscape holdover) is a DIV. The solution for liquid layouts is most certainly DIVs and NOT tables. You don't need java, or even javascript to make a liquid layout.. but you DO need to learn.

There is a wealth of information on anything CSS here:
http://css-discuss.incutio.com/

matty I want to echo what Ladyned said. CSS is the way to creating liquid layouts. This is overly simplified, but you want to start thinking of having widths in % instead of fixed px. You won't use % for everything though. I'll often make a 2 column layout where one column is a fixed width while the other is allowed to expand with the broswer window.

It can take a liitle while to get things exactly right, but with a little practice you can get it. Some of the work will be in creating a design that works well with a liquid layout.

Thankyou both for the info about that - I will check out what you said and try to learn about the css section.

Cheers

If you figure it out could you tell me how you did it...I'm having the same problem!

Rick it's not really something to just figure out. There's really no one or two things you do and then you have a liquid layout. It's like creating a good design. Someone could give you a lot of guidelines abiut what generally works for a good design, but that doen't mean you could then automatically create a good design.

With liquid layouts there's a little planning involved in the design itself. You want to decide what parts of your design should be allowed to expand and contract and what parts can remain fixed. For the parts that will be flexible you'll use relative measurements (%) for the widths.

You'll also want to test the layout in a variety of resolutions to see if it works at those resolutions. You also want to be ware that because a luquid layout id flexible some of your page elements will move around as the browser expands and contracts. That's one of the reasons for the planning prior to development.

There`s some good example templates at places like www.thenoodleincident.com

two of the key points though, are:

margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;