Twitter wish list: background image alignment

I love that Twitter lets you customize your background image. It's a great way to provide a bit more info about yourself to prospective tweeps and express yourself in the process. But there's something missing.

The problem

Like most web sites today, Twitter's layout is fixed-width, center justified. That means that all those tweets take up only 762 pixels of your browser width no matter how big your screen is. For most monitor sizes, that leaves a lot of real estate to use when you pimp your Twitter background.

The problem is that while Twitter's content area is centered, your custom background image is positioned in the top left of the screen. This means that the 762 pixel block that you'd like to design around floats over your content depending on the size of the browser window. For some designs this doesn't matter. But if you want to create a design that framed your twitter content like @adamplitt, you have to depend on the user to resize their window to get the full effect.

The solution

The proposed fix is simple. Allow the user to choose a center background position when choosing their background image:

Twitter could easily take the user alignment selection and render the appropriate CSS:

body {
  background:#EDECE9 url(http://a1.twimg.com/profile_background_images/42334582/zadamstwitbg_F.jpg) no-repeat fixed center top;
}

There you go. A very simple change with very big impact.