Schoolboy, thanks for the response. There was some helpful information in the post.

In changing to a percentage, one of the settings you mention was changed by me. I changed #mainWrapper, which I now have: width:100%;

Other fields I had set to 100% in my stylesheet.css file are:
#headerpic
#topmenubar
#navMainWrapper, #navSuppWrapper, #navCatTabsWrapper

I understand your calculations based on pixel entries, and don't get how it is calculated with the percentage value, but that isn't my point.

Yes, zen has to be generic. What I'm thinking is that it starts out with some generic column sizes (I think originally the center is 750px). CSS has the ability to resize things depending on the browser width settings of the user. My question is why can't this column size also have a minimum pixel rating to combine the best of both worlds. This way fixed aspects (such as my banner spanning the center column) added to the site will still look right during the resizes. Is there an easy way to do this in the CSS, or perhaps would the main zen code have to have a feature like this added?

I'm also pretty new to CSS and "don't get how to code it" so if there's a fairly simple way to do this and people have coding suggestions, I'm all ears!

24Paws