Browsing these has made me realize the main benefits of modern web design is probably responsive layout. Some of these site hold up, but some really don't depending on how you browse them (ultra wide desktop vs smaller window vs mobile). Certainly you could fix some of the worst issues with classic html tricks but you'd have to made tradeoffs.
I really hate it when web sites deliberately constrain their content to a tiny vertical column down the middle of the browser window. I have a 27 inch wide screen display. I paid for the whole 27 inches of the thing. When I stretch my browser window across it, I expect the web site content to fill it. I don’t expect the site to fill 2/3 of it with white space.
Yea, I have heard the whole “research shows, people can’t read long horizontal lines of text” excuse. Blah blah blah. Don’t care. If I find myself having trouble reading a long horizontal line of text, I can easily… [brace yourself for this one] resize my browser window! Let the user decide.
If you (the web developer) really feel like you just have to do something different when the browser window is too wide for your sensibilities… maybe divide the content into columns or something. Anything but useless white space.
