It looks cool Clicken, but...
1.) It ain't a black site like that!
2.) You'd have been shit out of luck on my time helping you with CSS layout! I mighta got it to work in IE, but Jurgen usually gets an e-mail when I'm working on CSS layout!
3.) You misspelled Lawn in the header dear!
4.) I always use Justified alignment, unless it creates a problem with words running waaaay far apart. Then I will either change the setting in CSS for that specific div, class, or ID; or in-line format a particular item if the issue is restricted to only one or two spots in copy.
Newspaper and magazine have been around a whole lot longer than websites, and there is a reason they use justified alignment! It's not because it spaces the words further apart making them easier to read either, it's because it leaves a consistent trailing edge on the right side of the paragraph making it easier to follow the content to the next line, thus making it easier to read.
5.) Whaddya mean you couldn't download the header image?!
<body>
<div id="masthead">
<!-- This is the banner in the header -->
<div align="left" id="Layer1"></div>
<img src="Assets/SEMOW_placeholder.gif" width="20" height="80"></div>
<!--- Image is called from #Layer 1 in the rightNav style sheet ---> <------It tells you where to find it right there!!
<div align="right" id="Layer1"></div>
<a name="top"></a>
</div>
<!-- end masthead -->
You have to open the stylesheet to find the link to the image! You can't just right click on it!
background-image: url(Assets/SEMOW_header.jpg);
6.) Your copy proves what I suspected with your initial comments on the white glaring at you. I think your monitor is quite a bit brighter than mine, which some just naturally are, while others offer a considerably darker resolution Clicken. I don't have an issue with the white glaring on my monitor, honestly. Wherein the page you offered there, is a tad dark on my monitor, making that rendition more difficult for me to read than the off-white on black. Brightness and contrast are auto-set to mid-range on my monitor, in that manner I don't overcompensate one way or another. And, I do check the work on 3 different computers here with different monitors to make sure I'm not straying too far in any direction, from middle of the road.
The monitor I used to have at work, your rendition would not be legible at all without highlighting the text, there isn't enough contrast in it. I learned that one the hard way! You have to be very careful in not providing enough contrast, there are a great many dark monitors out there in the world.
7.) I do know where you're coming from, from a design perspective, but... racers are a different breed. They like black, no... let's rephrase that... they love black! It goes back to the color psychology thing. Black is menacing, black is intimidating, black is Dale Earnhardt's colors, and that's all the excuse they need. If you do a search for racing sites, and run through as many of them as I have, you'll find there is more black websites amongst racers than anything else. Also, if you look at a race car, it's typically all about making it look gawdy, 2 - 3 highly contrasting colors, decals pasted all over it, big numbers, lettering everywhere, lots of chrome. Put one on the track without that appearance, and it doesn't look right. Therefore, I often design racing websites in that fashion, because that is what racers want.
Were I going to design it in the manner you suggest, it'd look more like this -
http://www.ndlmra.com/ Two colors, no boxes, no tables, high contrast black text over a light background. Subtle horizontal rules, justified alignment, borders on pictures... single line, because it isn't as gawdy surrounding a picture in a simple high contrast layout, where a single line suffices in placing the picture on the page... IMHO.
Why wasn't that one designed to look gawdy or intimidating, like a race car, as suggested above? Because I designed it to sell races to potential host venues, and many, if not most of them don't understand that philosophy in racing either. And, furthermore... I don't want to initimdate anyone there, so black wasn't considered an option!!
And, the reason I placed the image top of the content next to the first paragraph on the SEMOW site, is... I'm not using the big black margin around my background that you are, and that makes my content div considerably wider, as in about 20% of the page or 204 pixels wider, wherein the first paragraph becomes 1 long line with only 1 or 2 words wrapped, making it look out of place at the top of the page. The picture was placed next to the first 2 paragraphs, because they ARE much shorter than the third, thus forcing them to wrap more frequently, and in such, lending more depth to those short paragraphs, and making them seem to contain more content than they really do!
And, I didn't write said content, haven't SEOed it, haven't made but one or two changes of any nature to it in fact, and those were correction of grammatical and spelling errors only. Thus, I didn't have any control over length of that content, aside from trying to make it look like much more than what it was on the page, so I stuck a picture beside it!
