This example shows a rigid design: no matter how big the browser window, the part of this page holding some form of content (menu or body text) will never be wider than 600px.

Note that the menu box ends when its content ends; if you wanted it to run the full length of the page (assuming there was not enough content in the menu div for that) you would have to specify a height (by length units, not percentages) which would mean knowing how long the page would be — as there is no way of knowing what size the text will be in the user’s browser, that is impossible.

However, if you were designing an actual page you probably would not try to produce every single aspect of the page in HTML & CSS — background images can be effectively used to separate page areas.

The most unattractive feature of this type of design is that users of high resolution displays — 1024×768, 1280×960 or higher — still get the content in a 600px-wide strip down the left side of their browser window with an expanse of unused screen on the right.
 

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