If your inside is an image, you probably would not want it to be clipped, because the inside gets smaller as you increase the padding or border width! In other scenarious you might need to ‘fix’ the total width, including the margin.

That way it works from inside to outside. Yes, it might be confusing,
but at least on a consistent basis.

I struggle more with the restrictions that come from the required order of content in HTML and display position.

E.g.

I’d love to have ‘left sidebar(fixed width)’, ‘main content (flexible width)’, ‘right sidebar (fixed width)’ in a fluid CSS based layout with the order ‘main’, ‘left sb’, ‘right sb’ in HTML.

I figured out how to do it with nested floaters, but it only works, if I fixate the width of the main container as well (which I don’t want to do.)

So much comment for CSS.
Yours
John

P.S.: Wish you continous success in 2008.