Hi
Could someone help me? I'm a novice user and have set up a test site, but I'm having problems with distortion. I set up my site in Dreamweaver and thought I should be using percentages instead of pixels to set up my webpage. However, when you view the page through different size screen resolutions (i.e. when screen is reduced), it distorts my text and layout. Should I have set it up as pixels instead? I want it to look the same (not necessarily stay the same size) in whatever screen size viewers are using. As I said, I'm a complete novice and would appreciate any help you could give (please explain in simple terms wherever possible). If you need to see the site to see what I've done wrong, please see this link:
http://www.fusionvm.co.uk/freedom.htm
Thanks in advance :(

This is pretty much a classic problem in web design, there are broadly speaking 3 different ways to lay out a site:

1. Flow layout (which is what you have) where the layout is directly proportional to the screen size, but as you have seen this can cause distortion.
2. Static layout, where all elements (EG tables) have a width defined in pixels which means you have total control over display but it can look tiny on higher res monitors.
3. 'Jelly' layout where the containing elements, for instance in your case the border, respond to the screen size but the contents have a fixed size to avoid distortion.

Assuming you want to follow the 'jelly' layout style, the way to do it is to have a master table or DIV layer that is sized as a percentage of the page, and inside this, put fixed size tables that absolutely define the size and relationship of the elements in the page.
EG in your case, probably keep the graphic and text absolutely sized in one table and the navigation buttons absolutely sized in another in 2 different cells of the master table, that way no matter how the master table resizes the text doesn't distort.

Of course you will have to play around with what you want to keep fixed, what flows and what sizes to use etc. but the point to remember is that you can mix percentage and pixel sizings on the same page, you can even have different bits of the same table defined by percentages and pixels respectively.

To find out more on basic web design etc. check out www.webmonkey.com

Thank you so much, I really appreciate your help. I will try various fixed width settings 'fingers crossed'.

:D