| most people dont have the browser so big that it can show the main navagation pane on the right...it looks and runs good, but it would really be better if the navagation pane remained on the left. |
That would mean their resolution is less than 1024x768. From WC's sitemeter stats http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=sm7wincustomize&r=73 it says that only 6% got a screen resolution lower than that.
| but it would really be better if the navagation pane remained on the left. |
A navigational sidebar is better located on the right side most of the times. It's closer to the browser windows scrollbar which always is located on the right side. Allowing for less travel distance between the scrollbar and navigational panel. And since western languages are read left to right it also make sense to put the sidebar to the right so your eyes don't have to travel across the sidebar area every time to find the start of the main content you are looking for.
To ensure that the sidebar is displayed at lower resolutions, 6% is still quite a few people considering WC's userbase, it'd be better if the site used a flexible (or fluid, whatever you want to call it) to allow the page to shrink down. However, fluid design can be tricky sometimes to implement with good cross browers compatibilities.
The good thing about WC07 is that it's finally got the CSS separated from the HTML. which should allow for alternative stylesheets to be applied. Currently there is no way to select a stylesheet as a setting on WC, but a Firefox user with for instance the GreaseMonkey extension can apply a whole new stylesheet or add a few style rules to just make the layout shrink into a smaller screen. Though that would require some CSS knowledge.
