How links are shown:
The graphic manifestation of links can be somewhat variable for the context where a cursor is hovering over them (Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 How-Tos p.186). "Sometimes designers turn off underlining for all other link states but will have it appear when a visitor hovers over a link." That is the choice which has been the goal for the ARARA.org web site, to reduce visual clutter and to make reading easier, since without underlining, letters with descenders are much more easily recognizable.
This style is now already implemented for the page of "Standing Documents" and "Contacts", and will probably be extended to most of the site.
Default colors are by default the ones fairly standard in the industry, blue for links not yet visited, purple for those already visited, etc. No proposal is made here to deviate from those normal colors.
Page Layouts and Widths:
There is according to Beaird (pp.28-30) much controversy about liquid vs. fixed-width text fields. Some of the disadvantages of liquid layouts are that spacing is often awkward, that text is harder to read in wide columns (notice how narrow newspaper columns are), and that users often do not want the window for a particular application to expand to the full screen, but rather want to have more than one window on their screens at the same time. That last point is often forgotten.
Although the number of people with screens at the minimal 800 x 600 size continues to decrease (Baird pp.30-32), the desire to have multiple windows simultaneously on screen means that expansion to much larger windows for the ARARA.org web site is probably not advisable.
Use of full-screen windows is most standard when watching movies on a computer, when the viewer is normally not doing anything else on the same screen. If it turns out that some specific pages on the ARARA.org website would actually be better viewed in large windows, that can be added in the future.
On this www.ARARA.org web site, the major content areas are 740 pixels wide. Beaird (p.30) mentions 750 pixels as somewhat standard for the main content area, allowing for scroll bars etc. That also is often the width of the main content area even for those web sites whose overall windows are expanded to far beyond 1000 pixels (usually adding separate columns for distinct functions). Remember that lines of text wider than that become difficult to read.
As to arrangement of parts of screen displays, many pages on this ARARA web site currently have pictures on the left where many standard designs have a menu or other material. Pages other than the home page have navigation areas only at the top and bottom.
Where the current ARARA site is a bit unusual is in providing a means by which users can work with 740-pixel-wide windows, still have use of the vertical scroll bar, but place their horizontal scroll bar far to the right instead of to the left if they do not need to have the sidebar pictures visible. It certainly can be carefully considered whether sidebar pictures should be at left or at right. A sample page should be designed to contrast these, so our members can express their views on this.