I don't think rigid pixel-size-everything was a "mentality", so much as a way around the lack of min and max-width we didn't have until CSS2. 100% width website

I don't think rigid pixel-size-everything was a "mentality", so much as a way around the lack of min and max-width we didn't have until CSS2. 100% width websites looked bad. Rigid made sense. Economical to make and most of your visitors were 800 x 600 and above for many years. Fixed width sites still look and function well on tablets in many cases. Absolute positioning rocks! I like it's predictability. Funny that he said he doesn't like conditional comments! "Bad for web standards". Agreed.