It's just a compromise for visual purposes really. If I increase the width pixel count (or set the width to 100%), the site fits the page better (or completely) but at the cost of the blinding white vertical bar. At the current width pixel count I get narrow dark borders each side of the site. So I've essentially exchanged a worse than useless white bar in the body of the page for useless but harmless dark borders either side. Hopefully there's a simple setting to rectify the IE white bar horror properly. It's beyond me though.