I hope everyone in the States has recovered nicely from Thanksgiving and detoxed all of the tryptophan out of your systems. As for everyone else, I hope your Fridays were quick and you enjoyed your evenings. As you can see, I’ve made some major changes to WORKING AUTHOR. Now that I’m starting to get a decent amount of hits a day, I’m paying more attention to my Web reports. Seems like the majority of visitors are browsing at 1024×768. My last layout catered to an 800×600 resolution as a kind of catch all. Unfortunately, the lowest common denominator has to be catered to when it comes to Web development. On the other hand, sometimes that group is in such the minority that it becomes more beneficial to say, “Oh well for them.” That’s why I’ve maximized my layout for the larger resolution. This way I get to add new features without visitors having to scroll for days just to see what’s available.

On the third hand (if you’re a mutant), I think there’s a way to have the best of both worlds. The way it works is like this: People running resolutions at 1024×768 obviously get the full experience, however, 800×600 resolution people can still have a nice display when they arrive without feeling like the short guy at the back of the crowd. When an 8×6er comes to my page, what they get are the left sidebar, the wide column in the middle and the middle-right sidebar. It’s all of the necessary stuff before the horizontal fold. I think it’s a pretty cool idea.

Anyway, as with all things Web, it’s a pain in the butt to code for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. I’m no professional, mind you, so I’m running into walls trying to get the IE version to behave. If you’re rocking IE, you’re probably seeing some extra fat on the width of my blog. I have no idea why that’s happening. Woe to the Internet Explorer 6 user for whom my layout completely breaks. The best bet is to switch over to Firefox 2. It’s a free download, safer than Internet Explorer and gives you access to a bunch of cool addons.

Download Firefox 2 today. It’ll make your life and mine a whole lot easier.