One of my pet peeves is typography. Web typography is not the same as print typography - the rule about using serif fonts in body text breaks down at 72 dpi.
If you’re going to have table columns with text in them, please do NOT expand them to the width of the monitor. Every point size has a column width that works best - too narrow or too wide, and it’s hard for the eyes to track from line to line.
I’m a big fan of white or very light colored backgrounds, with black text. I personally cannot stand reading lots and lots of text on a black background. And I don’t accept studies done for other media - the difference between print, film, web, and other display formats is great enough that the conclusions drawn for one are not necessarily applicable to the other.
There’s a reason why almost all word processors and operating systems use dark text on a light background (and for that matter, why the SDMB does too) - there’s a lot of evidence showing that the majority of people prefer it.
Patterned backgrounds with text on top are the work of Satan, and the people who do that should be hunted down and killed like rats. For some reason, I’ve noticed that this is a big trend on .edu sites. You’d think university students and faculty would know better.
But in the end, it depends on what your site is for. I LOVE Jinwicked’s design, and it’s got a black background. But that’s because the design of the site IS the content.
But if your web site is designed to transmit textual information, then your design should get the hell out of the way and let the content through. A news site is successful if I go there and don’t NOTICE the design - just the content. But if it’s got banners, animations, and all kinds of other visual noise, then it’s a bad design no matter how well done the noise is.
Here’s my ‘blog’ site, which still needs a bit of design work, but embodies most of these ideas: http://www.happyfunpundit.com