Thanks for adding to the ‘off topic’ design conversation. I appreciate your thoughts too, and it’s interesting to get your take.

I know this has gone slightly off-topic, so just quickly: while it’s true that most people browse with resolutions greater than 1024×768, that’s the screen resolution, not the actual canvas size. You still have to account for the (many) people who keep their sidebars open, or browse with un-maximized windows. But agreed, you’re probably still OK with the size of screens these days.

I do like the look of this site.

Jennie, interesting comments. I have to admit I thought the ad was very clever at first. Then after reading up on Tourette’s (which I knew little about), I discovered that it was a bit misleading, and was somewhat disappointed. Thanks for your view!

No worries at all.

Jonathan,

I agree. Options #1 and #2 are definitely more suitable, even if an increase in future image widths would be nice. I’ll see what I prefer when I have more time on my hands (still working on my new office space and home move). Thanks again.

1. Keep the middle post column/div at 460px, and just adjust the width of the sidebars/inter-column whitespace to compensate, thereby bringing the edges of the sidebars outward by 20px to align with the navbar, header and footer.
2. Keeping the width of the post column constant at 460px, and the sidebar width/margins identical, but reduce the overall width of the rest of the site, ie, bringing the navbar, header and footer inward by 20px so that the navbar, header, footer edges align with the sidebar edges.
3. Resize the post column/div to 500px & apply a CSS rule to centre all images inside the post divs, and create 500px width images going forward. Older posts would display the 460px images centred within the 500px column (although I don’t know if having centred images in the midst of flush left article text would is ideal either).

I think your current line length of around 70 characters/12words is ideal from a readability perspective, so I would have thought that the first 2 solutions are easier and more elegant than the 3rd solution.

My favourite of your four screenshots is definitely the first – flush headings with white background. My only reservation is the image width change. All my pictures, YouTube videos etc. are configured to 460px width, so to display them on a width of 500 would look a bit out of place. Maybe it’d be for the best though. Do you reckon? Thanks again. Your help’s much appreciated, and I’ll have to get familiar with the FF Web Dev tools!