The rendering of a web page in a client browser is affected by many factors, one of which is the display resolution on the client monitor. The higher a resolution is, the more a web page will be padded with background by the browser.

The content block of a web page is most commonly left aligned and sized to a fixed width in pixels. Typically this width is in the 750 to 850 pixel range to provide the best viewing in the most common display resolutions. High end display resolutions will result in background padding. This padding is also controlled by window sizing. If you grab the right edge of the browser window and resize it back and forth the background padding adjusts accordingly, and with respect to the resolution.

Fixed width design is the most common site layout technique. It will be seen on most sites, examples of this include www.oprah.com , and www.cnn.com , and www.ebay.com , and www.usps.com .

There are two other layout techniques, they are, percentage width design and centered design. Examples of the latter include www.google.com, and www.realsimple.com , and www.msn.com . It is similiar to fixed width in that the browser still controls background padding, and interior widths are generally still fixed. Percentage width design is the hardest of the three techniques to work with. With this technique there is no background padding. The content block fills the browser from left to right. Widths are not fixed which allows the browser to expand and contract all widths in the content block. The results of which may not always be pleasing, so it requires lots of testing (mostly text based sites, like a blog for instance (this one in particular), can use this design with less difficulty).

Publisher cannot create a "centered" format web site. With a Publisher web publication, the fixed width design is the only technique available. Which does mean background padding will occur. Publisher customers routinely think of this as "empty white space". There is nothing wrong with "white space" (think www.google.com) , but some Publisher customers find it distasteful. Because of that I will illustrate in this article how to implement a design technique that tricks the viewer into not thinking of the padding as "empty white space".

You can see the trick in action in the site examples - realsimple.com and msn.com. When you first view the web page you don't think of it as having padding. But resize your browser window and you can see the background padding is still there, it's just colorized. An example of this implemented on a left aligned fixed width web site is www.barvin.com .

To create this in a Publisher web publication you set the page background to a color and then create a content block with a rectangle shape. The page content objects are then placed within the shape.

Using Publisher 2003 let's step through this in more detail:

In the web publication file go to File, Page Setup. In the Page Setup dialog go to the Layout tab. Under Publication type select Custom. Set Width to 800px. Do not modify the Height (Height should never be modified in Version 2003). Click Ok button to close the dialog.

Go to Format, Background. In the Background Task Pane select a color, either select one available under "apply a background" or click the "More colors" link and define a custom created color and apply it.

The color you selected is the color that now will replace "empty white space" on the web page. You can create the page content objects directly on the background as normal, over this background color. But as seen in the site examples earlier, the common layout design is to retain a white background for content.

To do this select the rectangle shape from the Object tool bar. Starting in the top left corner of the publication's page draw the shape down and to the right. As you do so monitor the shape measurement displayed in the status bar at the lower right of the Publisher application window.

Size the shape to 748.000 x 800.000 px (748px by 800px). Then right click the selected shape object and select Format Autoshape.

In the Format Autoshape dialog, in the Colors and Lines tab, set the Fill Color to White, and set the Line Color to No Line. Click Ok to close the dialog.

At this point you may want to Insert additional new pages to the publication using the "copy all objects on page..." option (or Insert, Duplicate Page) to duplicate your layout throughout the web publication.

You will layout all content text and picture objects within the shape that is your content block.