A fixed width is a set pixel size such as 760px whereas a flexible width uses a percentage of the browsers width to determine the pixel size such as 100%.
Ex. In a flexible width site such as yours, if your visitors browser is 1024 width and your site is set to 80% then the site will be displayed at about 819px wide. Whereas if your visitors browser width is 800 then your site would display 640px wide.
Lets say you have a div around your entire site with the id of "wrapper"...
To have a flexible width of 80% you would commonly use:
#wrapper { width: 80%; margin: 0 auto; }
To have a fixed width of 800px you would commonly use:
#wrapper { width: 800px; margin: 0 auto; }
Coding Tips: The "margin: 0 auto;" is short hand for "margin: 0 auto 0 auto;" which is also short hand for "margin-top: 0; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 0; margin-left: auto;". Basically the code centers the div in it's parent. To further help you understand the short hand it goes clock-wise starting from the top, like so "margin: top right bottom left". If the top & bottom are the same and the left & right are the same then you can do it like this: "margin: top-&-bottom-size left-&-right-size" which would look like: "margin: 0 auto;". Shorthand coding is nice because it's less typing, easier to read, and uses less bandwidth because it's results in a smaller file size since there are fewer characters in the document.
Hope this helps,
- Devon
PS. I'd highly suggest that you search for some basic xhtml/css coding tutorials online and learn it. Otherwise, you're going to be paying someone to do the work for you if you want the site to be successful. It's not nearly as hard as it may seem, just read a few tutorials.
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