Here we have a second take on my new layout (100K Image, 1024x528 pixels). Of course the image is extra wide, when it's an actual page I'll be able to put the wings as a centered background, so they'll get clipped if your browser is narrower, but there's no horizontal scrolling unless you are running at lower than 800x600 or surfing extra narrow.
Might as well weigh in on the whole fixed width vrs. flexible discussion that has resurfaced because of an actual argument on the side of fixed width - that being that full screen width text is hard to read. Yes, full width text is crap typography, but that doesn't rule out the multi-medium accessibility benifits of liquid layout, or mean that liquid layout can't be done well.
The most effective flexible layouts that I have seen (such as douglas bowman's stopdesign) and mimicked in my own work are those that have their body content set to somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of the screen width. That way the content is a good width anywhere between 800 and 1024 pixels wide, and reasonable at other sizes. I think the key part that many flexible layouts lack are good margins. We're not printing out cheap paperback novels with ink to the edge of the page leaving no room for thumbs, let's let our layouts breath a little. I'd also be impressed to see more layouts done with their margins set in em or %.
With this site I have gone over to the dark side because, as with the force, power is more easily acheived. I have always had trouble coding layered designs into flexible pages. Part of the reason most of the zen garden designs are fixed width I suspect.
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