The landscape has changed considerably since olden days though. "Fluid" layouts of old were no use from a designers point of view because the designer was tryin

The landscape has changed considerably since olden days though. "Fluid" layouts of old were no use from a designers point of view because the designer was trying to consider the measure (words per line) as well as the layout, and the variance of screen size and resolution wasn't great enough to justify the work load in creating a truly useful (from a design point of view) fluid layout. We didn't have media queries and JavaScript was something that programmers told us we should never use, but all that has changed and the field of screen sizes has exploded in many directions (physical size, pixel size, pixel density...) meaning it's now appropriate/essential. In short the environment has changed, weak ideas are now strong ideas, and the design approach has evolved.