So what do you think?

Well I thought everything loaded fairly quickly for me (56k modem). The top banner on the first page took a couple seconds but I didn't feel like I was "waiting" on it.

Of course, I'm used to viewing art pages which can take days to load.

I hope you keep your nav links the gold color they are now.
They work beautifully with your logo you have on your sub pages. (really like the star on the mouseovers)

I have never been a big fan of red on webpages.
It can be used and look good, but too much red hurts my eyes.
I think red could make your nav links distracting.
As they are they blend into your site nicely.

Ok... I guess I don't have anything negative to say.
hmmm.... I guess I'll leave that to someone else.

Thanks for the look!
Karen

Megan,

You might want to consider gaining rounded edges on the top and bottom, just a suggestion. Also, the top portion:

Home | Skills Dictionary | Links

Looks like something one would use to show where a visitor is in the website. Looks like it should be done a little bit differently. Not trying to pick, but even on 768*1024 I still feel that the text is a little bit large. Mabey one size smaller across the board. The top looks great, but after I scroll down past the colorful header it becomes slightly bland.

I think it looks really good. Not too lossy at all, and I'm on a 33.6, load time was good.

Only thing I noticed is in NS 4 that the nav links bump against the left of the column, whereas in IE they had a little more breathing room.

I can't comment on the load time of the top header graphic since I'm on T1, but looking at the file size (3918 bytes), modem users shouldn't have any problem with that. I have to agree with exbabylon, all the text seemed a little bit to large to me.

This is just me, but it felt like there was to much black. Did you try the "gym-routines.com" in any other colors? I think it might look good in a barely transparent white or off-white.

I would make the nav links a brownish color, a darker shade than you use in the header, to make the site look more unified.

Very nice header graphic!

Looks very good to me, I have just moved over to an adsl line so for me it opened in a flash

Megan, you are very brave posting in here. As many sites that you have critiqued of others. Overall impression was good. I know you haven't really done much linkage but does everything have to lead to Australia. The only thing I didn't like was the text. I think that I would have specified a size for it instead of letting the browser do so. The other thing related to that is the underlined text. I know it makes the links easier to pick out but it messes up the look a bit. The code looks pretty clean only two nbsp's on the whole page (try achieving that with Frontpage). Why the shtml? Are you kicking the pages out of a db?

Yeah, I copied and pasted the nav links for right now to get an idea of what the hovers would look like. .shtml is for the includes which is what the main site uses. I know that it's possible to use SSI with just .html but I wasn't sure if my server supported that so I just went with .shtml. I am hoping to be databasing the site eventually - have to learn PHP first and figure out how to set it up

My main audience is rather newbie-ish, so I think that taking out the underlines for links in the body part would be a mistake. That's why I was worried about the nav links being black.

Alright, so I'm going to do something with the font sizes. I'm also going to try something different with the black background so it doesn't look so black.... I also need to see if I can figure something out for my 640 x 480 audience (which is almost 10%!!!!! Can you beleive it mairving??? I'm serious!) Hopefully I'll have time to work on it tonight - SimCity is just so addictive!

Regarding load times

On my clunky 56k modem, on my shaky server way over here in Asia, the load time was pretty good.

thumbs up!

You didn't ask and I don't what your plans are but let me say it anyway...

Your font size is a little big in my opinion. I know I'm guilty of using tiny 10px font but I felt that you ought to use a slightly smaller size. I felt like I was in remedial reading class.

I like it alot that aside.

Thanks
Andrew

Most things have been covered already

but a few things on that first page,
You may have compressed the banner a little to much, at the bottom of the g and y (on 'gym') it's very blury. I think its because the black cant fade into the yellow like the rest of the graphic blends/fades.

The banner does a great job telling/showing what your site is about, I know its just a mock up but there is way to much white space and the font is a little big. the other pages are great, nice even blend of white and dark blue

I would change/loose the black links, either use the faded mouse overs like the other pages or use default links if your target is for newbie-ish

The links are going to the old design - that's what I'm replacing.

I fixed up the font... I'm still not thrilled with the way the background work, and I will re-save that grahpic. I'm a stickler for download speeds in case you haven't noticed. I might make some graphic page headers though.

Which one do you like better?

http://www.gym-routines.com/new2.html or
http://www.gym-routines.com/new.html

The header graphic looked better against a black background but the body looks better against the yellow to me. I don't know which one I would choose.....

But, on the yellow version you should add a black "border" on the right hand side of the "body" table.

Andrew

I prefer new2

I like the lighter background, although I would probably make it even lighter.

That's a good idea - i'll try that. Is anyone seeing the font size too small on one and too big on the other? That's what my mom is saying but the stylesheets are the same for both so I don't know why that would be.

Sidenote: My mom is so funny. She keeps sending me paint drawings to show me what she thinks I should do with my sites She's my no.1 usability tester though.

I like the black background better! Sorry, just differences of opinion.

Brooke
:snow:

Fonts are the same for me

I think 'new' makes it look bigger/wider but the black border makes it look like its added on.

eeny meeny miny moe ....

hehe nah, the 'new' one gets the vote

Alright, last one, I promise. Is this one:

http://www.gym-routines.com/new3.html

Better than the other ones? This one is based on mom's idea.

mum know best

the "home, skills, links" part still looks to big, maybe its the italics? the rest of the text is fine now.

how about taking the yellow and white to the margins so you have no colour down the side? the curve looks good.

Much better, that one definately gets top marks!

What about having a dark yellow line between the edges and the black - like you did on the yellow background site (just the opposite)

I like the curve a lot.

Brooke
:snow:

Another good idea! I'll try that one too. Thanks for all your feedback - now I'm just about ready to put it up for all to see