Help with a liquid layout

Hey everyone!

I am looking for some help with my first total CSS layout. I have not made my own layout in awhile and I am trying to make one now. I have been looking around the web and some other resources, but can't seem to get some questions answered that I have. I have two images that I want to use for my layout one is a banner and ones for my footer they are both equal in size to 960px how can use this images still have a good liquid layout? I have also been doing some math for my percentages of my left and right columns, and also my main content area. I want to use a three column layout and have my right column to be collapse for my gallery2 and forum. I use Joomla CMS for my websites which I can accomplish this task through a php script. I know some of you may not use Joomla, but it does not change my css layout. Every time I do my percentages I get like 16.25% can I use this and is this good to use? I kind of want my content area to be 600px in width. I am new at this and just trying to get some peoples advice who have done this more than me.

Also if you can provide some good resources that would be great also. One more question and I promise I am done. Is there a chart out there for em vs pt and pixel for fonts? I am trying to make my website as flexible as possible for different screen resolutions as possible.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Chris

You can put the big images as a background image for a div or set the width to be 100%

Okay cool! That is what I planned on doing, but should put my columns and images in a wrapper? If so should I set the wrapper to be 960px or 100% in width?

Chris