Thanks for the great tips! I'm only using surface-mount stuff, so short tracks shouldn't be a problem.
One final thing - a bit embarrassing to ask, because it seems so simple....but I've seen a lot of circuitboards with solder blobs all over the ground-track traces on the comonent side - are these actually connected (with pins, or wires) to the _bottom_ ground-plane? Is that a what a 'via' is, that we hear so much about? If so, can I just use little bits of wire, or is there some magic technique for doing them?
Once again, many thanks,
________
Agronski.