It's funny. I lobbied for years and years to designers to use fluid layouts (percentages instead of hard coded numbers). I have been met with a lot of condescending resistance. Fluid is bad because fixed layouts are good and I didn't know anything because I wasn't a web designer. The arguments didn't matter at all. The way it was done it was the way to do it, period.

Years passed by and now everyone is doing it, which is great.