Have you ever wanted to expand your web design skills and learn how to make your web sites more aesthetically pleasant to your visitors? You’ve come to the right place. In this group of articles you’ll find a friendly guide that will show you how to create harmonious web page layouts by using two fundamentals concepts taken from graphic design, popularly known as the Golden Ratio (or the Golden Proportion) and the Rule Of Thirds. This is the fourth part of a seven-part series.
Using the Rule Of Thirds for Web Page Layout (Page 1 of 4 )
And now that you know what to expect from this series of tutorials, it’s time to review the topics that were discussed in the last article. Essentially, I explained how to create a liquid web page layout by applying the principle of the Golden Ratio.
The web page in question was comprised of a side bar, located to the right of the document and a content area, which was positioned logically to the left. Nonetheless, the most relevant thing to stress here is that the widths assigned to each column were calculated by mean of the aforementioned “Golden Ratio,” something that made the whole web document look more attractive and harmonious.
But as I expressed a few moments ago, there’s another principle of graphic design that can be easily applied when creating web page designs, called “The Rule Of Thirds.” It is actually a simplification of the “Golden Ratio.” Basically, it consists of dividing a composition (or in this case a web document) into thirds, both vertically and horizontally, in this manner building a simple grid that can be used for positioning elements in a truly harmonious fashion.
Assuming that you’re interested in learning how to implement the “Rule Of Thirds” with your own web page layouts, in this fourth article of the series I’m going to explain how to build a fixed web page design by applying this principle.
Are you ready to deal with thirds and other math-related things? Then let’s get started now!
Style Sheets 
Using a Background Grid to Assist Web Page Layout
