I completely understand the situation you describe, however I’d also point out that with a fluid design as the browser is open wider, either the text starts to get very long or you inevitably have very wide spaces between columns and elements. You do lose control over aspects of your design when the design is allowed to expand and contract.

Personally when I see the main content stretch I find it difficult to read and so I tend not to read. I’m more inclined to leave the site. That’s not going to be true for everyone, but I’m sure it’s not just me who feels the way I do.

That’s the nature of designing for a browser. I don’t think it’s something we should avoid. I think it’s something we should embrace. Having said that I don’t think anyone has come up with a really good solution yet for fluid designs.

You are absolutely right in the one regard that most all designers (I’ve dealt first hand with 4) will design a website constrained to the 1024×768 screen size.

Now as a web developer, I fully understand that 1024×768 is the average screen size out there, but it alienates your viewers. Particularly those who have larger screens and cruise the internet in full screen mode.

On smaller screen size, say 1280×800, it’s not as bad, but when you get up to 1680×1050 (what I use), sites become annoyingly crammed together.

This is really just a personal preference, but every site I make that doesn’t have a designer, uses a fluid layout.

You can still have white space, even set distances of white space, and sill have the main content stretch to take up the full size of the screen. You just need to know how to use CSS accordingly.

You couldn’t really place important information on the right since it’s likely to end up off the screen or beneath the main content area of your profile. I’ve seen some people make use of the space, but in general there’s only going to be so much you can do on the right side.

Great idea about using billboards and books and magazines. The latter two would be easy enough. There aren’t too many billboards where I live unfortunately. I’d have to make a day of looking for them and bring my camera with me. I do like the idea though.

Cheers.