[proboscidian]

I'm entering this a little late, and not to give layout clues since the referenced website isn't there anymore but to express an opinion on usability. While 1024 x 768 may now be the most popular browser resolution and only 10% use 800 x 600, that 10% is still an awful lot of people to alienate because they can't go from the end of one line of text to the beginning of the next without having to scroll sideways and thus lose their place. And, even people with higher resolution monitors don't always use all the available monitor space for one browser window. I personally use a 1920 x 1200 resolution monitor, but my browser windows are not usually open wider than 800; that allows me to multi-task, and move things from one window to another.

I always try to design so that 800 x 600 is usable. I do get the occasional "why is there so much unused space? maybe we can put ... there" but I try to fight that with statistics. I'm also not very fond of flexible layouts, because text lines that are too long are hard to read - people also lose their place when their eyes have to travel too far to get to the beginning of the next line.