Opinions of my first CSS effort

[[H]omer]

Sorry for the cross-post, but I'm looking for criticism *and* advice.

http://www.genesis-x.nildram.co.uk/index.html and
http://www.genesis-x.nildram.co.uk/css/gx.css

BTW: The site *is* a bit OTT; yes I'm a raving fanatic ... :)

Content aside though, there's a few things I still don't like:

1) ... I shouldn't be using literal font sizes, but I just can't seem to
get the proportions looking really professional.

2) ... There's something very odd going on with links in divs that float.
If the adjacent block is set to "position: relative", the links become
non-links - in Mozilla and Opera anyway.

3) ... Everything just looks too big; the logo, spaces, fonts... I'm
viewing this in 1600x1200 - I'd hate to think what it looks like at
640x480. No, I'm not going to ...

4) ... The page is still a bit "loose". I'd like to tighten it up a bit
with a thin, right-hand, vertical bar running the full length of the page,
but I'm a bit unsure how to do that without specifying absolute
positioning (which I really don't want to do).

5) ... The positions of everything on the page are near enough exactly
where I want them, but I don't like the huge empty spaces that develop
when I squish the page down horizontally. I'd love to hear suggestions
about how to keep the current layout, but manage the void space a bit
better.

6) ... javascript: Everyone says "don't use JavaScript". How can I hide
"mailto:" links from spam harvesters without using JS?

7) ... Too many <br /> tags rather than <p></p>, mainly because I have a
problem getting my head around what can and cannot go inside/outside a
block level tag. Too many times I've had "<object> cannot go here" type
W3C validator errors. E.g. why can't I use "<span>" as a container for
"<noscript> "?

8) ... On the search page, I'd like to have the whole Google area (logo,
input and button) centred on the page, but if I do that then I can't seem
to stop it from wrapping when the browser is resized horizontally. How?

My HTML editor is Emacs (Enterprise Edition for Workgroups :) ), on Linux.

I had a look, on a friends computer, at how Macromedia Dreamweaver 2004MX
rendered the pages on my site (in design view). Anyone unfortunate
enough to have access to that software, see for yourself. DW seems
to understand CSS even less than I do - LOL. People *pay* for that crap???
Oh well. Oh, and it missed tonnes of errors picked up by the W3C validator.

Any criticisms, advice, flames etc - hit me.

-
[H]omer

[Geoff Berrow]

I noticed that Message-ID:
<MP************ ************@ne ws.individual.n et> from Lauri Raittila
contained the following:

I don't read uk.*

Good.
--
Geoff Berrow (put thecat out to email)
It's only Usenet, no one dies.
My opinions, not the committee's, mine.
Simple RFDs http://www.ckdog.co.uk/rfdmaker/