Need critique before I go to far. Launching June 1

Xnitelife Test Site

I welcome any critique people may have. From code to accesibility, it is important that I know now before I launch and it becomes a real headache to make changes.

Thanks to those who take a look and offer some critique.

Nice appearance over all. It's a little heavy on graphics—slow load on dial-up. Maybe that's inherant in the site purpose.

There are two things that cause problems;

The design becomes ungainly at larger screen sizes. At 800-1000 it's good. You might wrap the whole thing in a centered container.

You could make the links having focus more obvious. It's easy to lose sight of as is.

gary

Thanks Gary,

I did have some concern about the size on much larger resolutions and I am not sure the amount of images will be able to be helped.

However, I do appreciate your comments and I will definately find some ways to incorporate them in to my final design. If you have a suggestion for the links I would be open to hearing it.

I was quite happy with the navigation and thought everyone would love it(well not love it, but find it easy to use), but maybe I am not so objective of my own work.

I am very big on how easy it is to navigate the site, so if anyone else finds it difficult or potentially challenging, I would love to know.

It is OK for me. Navigation was pretty straightforward.
The thing that confused me was the select city jump box - wtf is that about.
Apart from that and the html coding the site is quite OK

Thanks Jamie,

About the "select city jumpbox": that will make more sense on June 1 when we launch both in Edmonton and Calgary. And will make even more sense when my plan for world domination is complete!

Actually, I do appreciate your comments and I am aware that most designers would probably reel at some of the code. I have been trying to learn PHP, MySQL, Javascript, CSS, and Xhtml in a 2 month time frame - I had received some quotes for the site that were in the $1200 - $1500 range (database work), so I thought I would give it a shot. And now I have a library of books worth that price and a new desire to keep learning proper coding.

Bare with the coding now, and I will have it validated and ready in say three years when I figure out what I am doing wrong.

Thanks again!

And to the rest of you, more critiques are appreciated.

I would really appreciate some more feedback from everyone. The comments have been great, but I would really like to know if there are any glaring problems that need fixing or even if there are any real positives about my site. Would you visit the site if you lived in Alberta, or would you just pass it by?

I thought I'd return the favour for critiquing Mike Elley Online.

The content is very good, and I would certainly visit for local info.

Just a minor gripe about the top nav bar: two of the links are made up of several words, and the bottom and top borders are out of line with the other link borders.

Apart from that I love the navigation - clear and easy to use!

Generally a nice site - everything I would have said has been already mentioned