Interesting, but...
It appears that this is an article for (by?) graphic artists who still think of the web as a printed page. Given the facts noted in the article - specifically the fact that no two user experiences will be the same given the variety of hardware and software - it seems silly to even worry about this. If I get an orphan or widow while viewing a web page in a standard browser, all I have to do is re-size my screen (or the font) and the problem "goes away." It seems to me the issue of "rags" (thank you - a new term for me) really only comes into play when you have images or other objects in the mix - particularly ones on the right of the text with left-justified alignment. If you use the CSS style float:right with some padding on the image/object you can sometimes finesse this.
I've recently read somewhere the opinion that if you have a certain amount of text in your web document (the exact amount of text I don't remember...may be a more than a standard "page" - whatever that is) the designer should create a PDF where one can in fact control the layout of the text. This might not be a bad strategy as I personally prefer to print out large/long documents and print them out (Yeah, I know I'm an ole fart).
In this world of handheld devices "fluid design" has to be the prevailing theme. So, I am not worried about widows, orphans or rags - at least not in web design.
I'll be interested in hearing what others have to say on this issue.
