wow factor

Design by Fire

Andrei Herasimchuk returns with subtle design changes and well written essays. He explains the long break,
..fed up wrestling with layouts and designs that looked or behaved differently across the various browsers, and follows with a cutting critique of successful yet fugly designs.
Do you think the MySpace guys rushed out and bought used Pontiac Aztecs with all that cash they made?

Muffin Research

While researching multi column layouts, I recalled Stuart's drop column design. I wanted to have 4 columns which are all fixed width. His extensive explanation of the design and any limitations is excellent. The related links on the same issue are also invaluable.

Width based layout

Variable fixed width layout