Webmaster Forum / HTML, CSS, Scripts / CSS / November 2005

What problems are there in using position: fixed; with left: %; and
right: %; to do pages that look like a typical boring framed site.  A
full width header and a footer and the rest of the content between them.  
A narrow left (and/or right) navigation column, plus a main body taking
the rest of the width?

I was reading http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/visuren.html where one example
uses fixed.  When I tried it (with empty mostly empty divs for header,
footer, nav and main so far) it seemed OK, at least in my browsers (I
don't have IE).  However I don't recall seeing many examples of it being
used in actual example web sites.  Is there some major problem with
position: fixed;?

Is there some major problem with using % to specify left, right, top and
bottom?  Or two of those and width and height as %?

I can see if the user makes the viewpoint small you would need to decide
how you prefer to deal with the inevitable overflow.  That would apply
even on the header and footer, if they make the viewpoint height very
small.  Wouldn't be the greatest viewing experience, but what is
actually likely to break?