Marshall - 3:19 am on Jan 5, 2012 (gmt 0)

What bout the growing tablet market? I keep the wrapper below 1024, and so do most of the giant websites...

Agreed. But there is a key element I did not see mentioned which many overlook.

If you have an extremely wide design, and presuming a three column layout with content in the middle, and you have short paragraphs, the viewer gets one or two v e r y l o n g s e n t e n c e s which, IMHO, looks stupid and makes your page look thin on content no matter how relevant it may be.

Now picture that and a long side navigation and you get a lot of white space under your content. Again, IMHO, looks stupid.

NAV CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT SIDE
NAV CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT SIDE
NAV CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT SIDE
NAV
NAV
NAV
NAV
NAV
NAV
NAV
NAV
NAV
NAV
NAV FOOTER FOOTER FOOTER FOOTER FOOTER FOOTER FOOTER
NAV FOOTER FOOTER FOOTER FOOTER FOOTER FOOTER FOOTER

A dynamic width is great, but limit its width and center the whole thing in the window.

Marshall