Hey designers and webmasters, I could use some of your expert advice!

I am having trouble deciding how to intelligently slice the area right below the header (large blue rectangle) on my site design. I plan on using a different color scheme for that area, as can be previewed with the images below.

Also, I plan to use css rollover effects for the navigation, which can be seen with the white links that begin with "welcome".

Your valuable advice would be much appreciated. Oh and if your a particularly kind soul, please don't hesitate to slice it on my behalf- ill do my best to return the favor

Thanks, and I'd love to hear what you think about my design.

Why use a graphic for that at all ? It it's a solid color, just specify that color as a background in CSS.

As for slicing - www.cssslicingguide.com is useful.

Thanks Ladynred for your post. You had suggested that I use a solid color in css, but the area I was referencing has a gradient shadow and noise filter on it. Sorry for being unclear, I meant the part with the navigation and lorem ipsum text. Essentially being a large image, would it be better to make one large layer with it as a background, or break the area into several smaller areas?

I checked out a few tutorials online and the site you suggested- but I am still having some issue.

I can't really use a repeating background because of the gradient, so should I slice it into smaller squares for loading? Also, do you think I can do the text which reads "click to enter" in css text or is an image the only way to keep it consistent? The blue text above it has a gradient on it so I think that I can only produce that as an image, but perhaps I can do the large white text beneath it (not the lorem ipsum) as text?

Thanks and please let me know if I can elaborate on anything.

I appreciate it.

You could make that a repeating background if you take a thin slice and repeat it horizontally only.

Slicing it into small squares really doesn't help much, you just get a choppy-looking mess as it loads.

It really is better for accessibility reasons to avoid using images to replace text.