Hammer of Truth

Interesting. Goes off the right viewport at 800 x 600, and hugs the left viewport at 1024 x 768 but doesn’t fill the window. Hmmm.
The fonts are set in pixels so can’t zoom the text on the most popular browser in the universe. Glad I don’t use that browser, but very tough on those older folks like me who do use it. And only it. But maybe that’s just as well, because when it is zoomed, on FF for example, it’s even busier and more confused.

@ willnea ??

willneea, can you link to a screenshot of it zoomed in FF? I don’t know what you mean by saying it is “even busier and more confused.”
As for the widths, I already explained that in my first post: the primary menu should be seen, but I was willing to let the ad menu get chopped (in 800×600). I did choose to make the whole thing fixed width, so anyone who doesn’t like that kind of thing will have to deal with it until a later redesign. I wasn’t aware of the zooming problem in IE, but I have to say F that, because every other browser is smart enough to do text increases right.

You have a tremendous amount of information, a bevy of ads, a long list of tiny links, and a number of *very* large images. A user on FF, or Opera — with a dial-up modem– isn’t going to wait around for it to load. At best you’ve got 8-sec to grab ’em. On IE, even if they wait, they’ll have a hard time sorting, and reading.
Here’s how Douglas Bowman, faced with hundreds and hundreds of pages of like material, solved the problem for Wired News– including text-zoom on *any* browser, with x back through NN4, at any screen size resolution (on any OS). And no horizontal scroll.
https://www.wired.com/
Amazon.com, as well, handles an unbelievable amount of
informaton. Well organized. Loads fast! Easy to read. No need for a horizontal scroll.
Now I know a blog isn’t the same as Wired News or Amazon. The similarities though to what you, and your users face– that’s what is important. Lots of information, lots of ads, well organized, fast to load, easy to navigate, and a pleasure to read– even, if you must, on IE.
You can do it, too.

It occurs to me that an easy and effective means toward resolving much of this would simply be to use the 3col template that ROOT has. It would organize your information and provide structure for use at any widow width.
Setting font-size 100.01% (the .01 is for an Opera rounding problem) on the body, and using % or em’s throughout on font-sizes, will take care of the IE zoom problem. And increasing the font-size on the sidebars (from what your are using now) will help. Additionally, greatly reducing the size of the images will effectively reduce the load time– you can alway link those thumbnail images to a larger image…
This will require a minimum amount of effort on your part; and , I believe, will dramatically improve the usabilty, and organizaton of your site.