Charity website rebuild

The down side to CSS sites is the wait for backgound images to show.

The links on the grey bar are really hard to make out, example I cant read the second word after welfare, using a lighter colour would solve this.
The icons are just icons, will they be linked to things? If they are be sure to use title="??" as some of them are hard to make out, the first is home, second is print? third is more? fourth is commerical? fifth is currency conversion, sixth have no idea, and last is email.

Your text on the index needs a few fixes, there is a space between the ( and first word : "the vulnerable ( such as the elderly", also "Thiswe achieve by providing information,"

The i in the logo is very hard to read being so dark and the blur on the text in the logo doesn't fit with the design.

The google search and firefox ad are really out of place, I know these are money for the website (or you) but the search for example is very misleading as it doesn't search your site, it searches the internet

WOW!!! Easy, man! I accept your criticism, but it sounds to me as if you were trying to say “It’s all rubbish!” I’ll sort out the icons, link visibility and typos, but what do you mean by saying CSS takes long to load backgrounds? Do you mean tables are faster or the images should be a part of html? And if you look at the Google search setup, you’ll see there is no gain from it. The remark was unnecessary as it implies I was a dodgy web designer who would put his AdSense for search into a client’s website. It’s simply a Google search. Anyway, most people don’t even know you could search the actual content of the site with it. They automatically assume it is a www search, which it is, so no harm done here.
Thank you for your review.

Sorry if I came across negative, wasn't the intension.

What I meant about the google search thing is that it does search the www, not the site. Basically your giving the viewers a reason to leave the site. (I know its www cause I tried it).

You said you were going to present this to your client ... for that reason I picked up on the google and firefox bits, you like them (so do I) but your kind of pushing them on your client, they might be a die hard Microsoft fans. Wasn't implying you were dodgy

You have replaced the icons with a word, you don't need it as the navigation is a good one (is coloured on the page your on), although still very dark. Put it this way, its so dark you cant see your link at the bottom of the page, and with the reflection on the top it looks like a second word.
You can do what you want but I am just offering constructive criticism

The CSS thing isn't your fault as much as the file sizes, backgrounds are always last to load whether it be by CSS or in tables. Your images are a little on the heavy side; banner: 58kb, side image: 65kb, ff logo 9kb, pic of the boys: 38kb to cable this probably wouldn't be an issue, to dialup you notice it. Your website I gather is for the not so well off, so probably are dialup users.

What do you mean they don't care much about interaction? They don't care how people use their site or interpret the information? I think there are a lot of problems with that here. The whole site is very vague. Lots of organizations cater to the "underprivileged" - what makes this one different?

From an SEO perspective a lot of work needs to be done. The title tag only has a vague acronym - no good description of what the site is actually for. There are no specific keywords in the first bit of text on the page, and no useful headers. All of this information is useful for humans as well. There aren't even any meta tags!

What is with that big firefox button at the bottom? That's very inappropriate. As much as you may want to promote a certain browser this is not the place to do it. If you must, a small graphic in the footer might be fine. I'm also confused about the google search bar - I'm not sure if that is meant to search this site or all of the web. There's no point in having a google web search bar on a website since pretty much everyone knows how to search the web using google anyway.

So, about the design. It looks okay. I like the photos of the people on the right. They add a lot to the design - a much more human element. The bridge metaphor is okay but I feel that the photo at the top is very bland and corporate looking. That header is also rather poorly integrated. The bridge and slogan are good, but the logo looks very separate. That logo could use some work anyway - too weak, and doesn't convey any information about the organization. I'm not sure what that blue thing is beside it. I can't even tell if that's supposed to be part of the logo or part of the background photo.

The overall layout is fine - I think the navbar could use some work. Definitely lose those reflections (they only work on really clean/glossy type designs). Removing the google toolbar would allow you to do something more interesting with that navbar.

I like the concept of the outer background but it should be a different colour so that it doesn't blend into the content background area.

The source coding is good. You could proably upgrade that to a strict doctype without too much trouble.