launchly

Excellent logo! I love it and it fits well with your overall idea. The navigation was simple, easy to find, and easy to use. Can't ask for much more than that. The layout was intuitive and easy to read for the most part.

I know it's just another WP blog (then again so are a lot of big sites like Mashable) but you seem to have spent a considerable amount of time fine-tuning it and getting it right. Well done.

The little guy at the bottom with the "goin up" chat bubble is awesome.

I noticed one problem though. The first thing I clicked on was your "Screenies" link. I noticed a big hole in the page when I went to the one you have and was confused for a minute. Then I realized that for whatever reason my ad blocker was blocking your video player. I'm not sure why but you'll certainly want to figure out how to get around that since I have no problems with that on other flash video sites. I'm just using Ad Block Plus in FF.

Also, once I got the screenie playing, there was no audio. That was a little disappointing. Maybe you can add audio to your screencasts in the future (like RailsCasts does).

One last comment... I'm a bit torn on your welcome banner at the top of the site. I love how it rolls in as random letters and stuff and it looks really cool. The problem is it takes a LONG time to actually finish writing the sentence. Add in the fact that you have multiple sentences to go through and that animation takes a long time for someone to actually read/watch if they are interested. If it is important enough to say in such a prominent spot on your site you may want to consider just saying it or at least speeding up the animation so it gets from jumbled to sentence faster. Some people may just find the whole animation process distracting while they are trying to read. Just a thought.

Hey Brian,

Thanks a lot for your feedback.

I really appreciate that fact that you were very upfront about the whole thing. Thanks once again.
As you said, Screencasts don`t have audio yet, since I was pretty apprehensive with putting my voice over (:P, just a lil shy), but my upcoming screencasts will have audio.

Secondly, regarding the screencast issue, yes I am working on hosting it directly from my servers, i have been experimenting, since this is just a 3 week old site and already hitting quite a good visits.

Thirdly,
The animation on the top was a little test, that space was reserved. I was planning to put my latest tweet or perhaps ads if possible. But once again, thanks a lot for being so honest.

Launchly has been really interesting for me. I haven't been able to use all its features yet, but its being very productive.

Thanks Brian :)

I don't like how the "Web dev" nav overlaps some of your text on the page. Perhaps try to realign the nav or text. Feels like you have too much going on all over the page. Fav, Categories, recent comments...doesn't feel organized. The most popular section looks like running paragraphs. Perhaps section part of it off...also the titles should be a lil' better.

Forgot to mention that the lil' green guy is cool and i like your idea of for this site.

Hey Jmaite,
Thanks a lot of your comments. This will really help me improve my site for my readers. I am working on the changes as I post this.

Thanks a lot once again :)

Excellent resource and fantastic idea! I enjoyed the content and design..it really pushes the envelope of clean vs. busy design, but it worked for me.

The toolbar thing at the bottom caused quite a bit of flicker for me, but I'm not sure if that's my version of firefox or due to the firewall I'm behind.

good luck!