minimum width for liquid design

[smallcompany]

I want to set a minimum width for a liquid CSS design. I started it from a Dreamweaver CS3 template. (hybrid - liquid with one sidebar in EM)

I came across this one: [webmasterworld.com...]

Before that I thought about having an image in the header that would be 700px.

I wonder if an image prevents the design from shrinking further or minimum width is way to go?

I ask this because I see a note that not all browsers will obey "min-width"

Is there anything else I should pay attention to?

Thanks

[milosevic]

I never care about min-width incompatibility it in my designs, especially nowadays with IE6 browser share down. If you set overflow:hidden on the header, the right hand edge of image should be hidden too rather than the layout breaking, making this cosmetic only.

Also 700px is very narrow, unless the site is going to be targeting tons of mobile users it will be rare that anyone looks at the page at this width, a lot of sites work at about 950px min width (for maximised browser at 1024px screen) so users generally have their browser windows set up for at least that width.

I believe you can use JavaScript to fake min-width for IE6 but I've never bothered - it's only going to be either a cosmetic difference or they've got their browser in such a small window they'd have to adjust it anyway.