And the content is fixed width, and wider than my browser window when I first hit it. I hope there is something in there to detect really small displays otherwise the page will be unusable on small-to-smallish screen devices (netbooks and 10" tablets or smaller).

I suspect from the technical nature of the article he is a front-end programmer and not a designer, and from the display issues I would guess he works in a large enough team that he rarely has to worry about front-end design as someone else is responsible for that.