Problem using zen_ninesixty (960 Grid) layout classes with the flexible layout plug-in.

Not sure if this is a feature request or just a note to tell people how to make it work...

While creating a flexible layout for a zen_ninesixty (960 Grid layout) theme variant, my columns kept being stacked rather than side by side.

My layout method was to define the 960 grid container in theme's page.tpl.php file and then add grid-xx, alpha, and omega classes (960 grid layout classes) to the regions in the layout manager.

After much head scratching and testing stuff, I finally figured out that the flexible.css had a couple of places it set the width to 99.9%. This makes the panel divs too narrow for the grid layout classes and causes them to stack.

The work around solution was to override the flexible.css width by adding the following CSS to my theme:

/* Need width 100% for 360 Grid layout. */
.panel-flexible {
width: 100%;
}
.panels-flexible-row {
width: 100%;
}

This may just be the permanent work around to use because I think that the 99.9% widths allow for borders around regions. So just changing the CSS would break some non-960gs layouts.

Maybe the real solution would be a 960gs plug-in based on the flexible layout model that allows you to select the container (e.g. 12, 16, 24) on the canvas and then specify the number of layout columns to use in each region. Probably need to include a way to have prefix and suffix columns.

Well bottom line is that I hope this ramble saves someone time if they hit this same problem.