It's in Chrome and FF on a Mac, and it's been this way for months. I assumed it was a bug that they'd catch, but I guess I'm the only one seeing it this way?
I agree though, that insofar as good design is really about communicating information to normal people, A List Apart just dropped the ball there. Maybe the fact of the matter is that the elite designers sometimes get bored that they never get a chance to let their creativity out? I'm not sure, just thinking out loud. :)
It's that way because they want it—Jeffrey Zeldman and the ALA team. It's their playground.
It looks like that because it's striking. Gets the people going. Made you look. Got you mad.
It breaks the mold of traditional website design:
| Logo | Nav |
|----------------------|
| Content |
| Additional info |
| Editorial info |
There's a place for purely functional design, and there's a place for experimental design.
"Hey guys, listen to us about design, we can't even get basic things right!". That's the message I get.
It's ALA's willingness to experiment (even if the end result is suboptimal) that made people listen to them about web design.