Mar 18 2005
Not just fake spring either — like last month — but real spring. I woke up to bird song this morning, and saw a huge fat bumble bee on the way home tonight; zoomed right past my face. I smelled the pollen from a bank of daffodils, gazed at the blossom on a row of trees and saw grass cuttings at the side of the road.
Have a lovely weekend everyone!
Mar 11 2005
Reviewed: Laurie
Site URL: sledge.sevets.net
I don’t really know what my first impression of your site is. On one hand, I see the lovely background colour – that shade of blue is one of my favourites – yet at the same time there’s a great big chunk of white space which I don’t “understand”, and two images which, although blue, don’t seem to tie in with the pale pastel blue background/links colour. Your navigation is very faint, and it took me a few minutes to figure out that the upside-down back-to-front words said “Little Girl”. You’d think it’d have been immediately obvious, but no…
Generally speaking, I like the way you’ve set this out. Although it’s not immediately obvious what the white space is for, a horizontal-scrolling layout is often hard to complete so kudos to you for that. As I mentioned already, your main image don’t seem to tie in with the actual colour scheme you’ve got going on with the background and links colour. I took your image into Paint Shop Pro to see if I could come up with some sort of effect which I thought might improve the general consistency and realised you have diagonal text across the image. Did you know that doesn’t appear on my laptop? Is that intentional?
Your links are irritating in that the background and hover colour are the same. This is bad practise in terms of accessibility, and people like me who flick over links without reading them properly have to pause, scroll away and then go back before we know what we’re clicking. Your main navigation system is not immediately obvious either, you might consider adding a note about where it is on the front page. Also, think about adding title text with a longer description of some sort to the images – this is just a suggestion though, and not a necessity. Otherwise, your site seems reasonably practical enough and is easy to use. I especially liked the fact that the navigation remained on the far left after the content loaded. It took me half an hour to realise that the upside-down text is the link back to your main page; I completed most of this review by clicking back in my browser or altering the address in the bar – you might want to think about doing something to sort this issue.
Your autobiography is light, easy reading. I cannot seem to get the hang of that style, so this is something I envy. It has light humour yet remains detailed about who you are. Your entire website seems to have this quality though – you can be witty and yet serious at that same time.
I was about to bitch at you for having a “crappy” wishlist on your website, but it’s far from that. This is probably the only wishlist I’ve ever seen and actually read through! I love your illustrations – they add a bit of colour; some life even, to what would otherwise be just text. Slightly curious as to why Web Camera is still listed when you’ve already got one? Your content is generally well presented and your language is informal but not “bad”. What I mean is you’re not resorting to using bloody awful chat speak/etc.
Bravo for completing that level of Minesweeper. Hoorah for Minesweeper players! I like your underwear designs (I want some blue stripy thongs.) However, you might want to add a small sentence explaining that users must click the picture to see the next one. There are idiots (read: me) who will close the window several times until they figure it out. I love the way you’ve added a touch of class to the hug counter – certainly a new way of presenting it.
A few errors/criticisms regarding your content/pages:
Your website validates as HTML 4.01 Transitional, this is great. I checked random pages and saw no errors. I know I say this to everyone, but – have you considered aiming for XHTML? It’s not that big a difference in terms of coding (it just requires some tidying up/etc), but would make me even more impressed. If you want any advice or help on this, feel free to contact me on a personal one-to-one basis. I’m not going to push it any more than that, because validating itself is worth praising.
I really enjoyed looking through your website. Although it gives off the impression of being quite small to look at (a psychological thing – maybe caused by your layout style?) it is quite easy to get lost in the content. Your personality and method of doing things absolutely beams from everything and your illustrations added fun where-ever they popped up. Your style of typing is easy to read through which means your visitors will take in what you’re trying to say. Obviously I’d love to see more – either more art or more writings (opinions maybe?), but you’re just fine with what you’ve got. Great site. Work out the navigation “flaws” though, for my sake if nothing else.
Mar 09 2005
Reviewed: Katrina
Site URL: bedazzled.twiskers.net
I completed this review out of sheer frustration at the lack of quality people get away with in the “reviewing world”.
Firstly, you’ve created main.php instead of index, but haven’t used a redirector to make main load as the index, which means after following your URL all I get is a file list. This should have been a sign of your inadequacy, and I really wish I’d exited there – unfortunately, curiosity got the better of me and I just had to click “main.php”. Don’t ask why; it sure wasn’t your talent that pulled me in.
Yummy! Lime green background. Heaven knows why you picked lime green as a background colour when the default skin is pink. Had I not had to wait several minutes for your “top image” to load, I’m sure my eyes would not have been blasted – but this is one of your downfalls. You seem to have this fascination with creating a layout image far too long for the actual page, instead of a small top image and a repeating background. Although, what’s utterly stupid, you DO have a repeating background – so why not trim the crap off the layout image? Alternatively, get rid of the top image – it’s just a load of crappy generic brushes shoved on a pink background anyway.
Comic Sans MS is so 1960’s. Please, please stop using it. It makes your website look untidy and unprofessional. A nice round alternative is Verdana at 9pt – you’ll find it’s nice and chunky, so little paragraphs look bigger, and it’s easy to read. I find that the content and navigation text runs right into your ‘border’ – this also looks unprofessional, and takes away from the aesthetic value of your website (if you have any).
Your links are a good colour, and sufficiently different from the text to be distinguishable. Hoorah! I never thought I’d find anything positive to say.
I find myself flinching as I read thought your paragraphs because you have this uncanny habit of capitalising the first letter of completely random words. For example: “Hi and Welcome to Bedazzled Reviews!” – “Welcome” should be “welcome”. “you can apply at other review sites, Sorry” – “Sorry” should be “sorry”, and so on. The only time you need to capitalise the first letter is at the start of a sentence (after a full stop/period, not a comma), and for names/places/etc. I am sure you should have learnt this kind of thing at school.
A lot of your sentences don’t make sense. I don’t know if you read through your website before publishing it online – but you should.
Just like you, I also want to see my site reviewed to boost our confidence
You want your site reviewed to boost OUR confidence? That sentence would be better as:
Just like you, I want my site reviewed to boost my confidence
Speaking bluntly though, you really ought to lower your expectations. If you want a confidence boost when you have your website reviewed, you need to put the effort into your websites to make them worth complimenting.
Bedazzled was once a site hosted on Freewebs.com where no one comes to get reviewed. And who will on a site on freeservers? They were right.
That small paragraph makes very little sense. For starters, the way you’ve worded it makes it sound like people would not go to Freewebs.com to be reviewed – which wouldn’t happen anyway as Freewebs is a hosting site and not a review site. Next, “who will on a site on freeservers” – who will what? I assume you mean “who will come to be reviewed on a free server”? You need to make your sentences more clear. Lastly, if you’re going to say something like “They were right” – at least make the effort to explain who “they” are.
You’ve spelt experience as “Experiece” on the about page – correct that.
Your grading system is overly complex, with several pointless sections. “Content-Visitor” for example: not everyone has visitor content; me for one. I can still manage to drag in 500+ visitors a day without it, so obviously it’s not a very important factor? Also, “Content-Site/Domain” – what kind of domain content could one have? Alright, you could explain your domain name and layout, but you actually plan on giving 10 points for that?!
All three content sections could be compressed into one, and “blog” should be removed – not everyone has a blog on their website. If you are desperate to rate blogs, you could always include it in the Content scoring. “Coding Style” should be removed too – who cares what the code looks like, as long as it does the job successfully? I don’t use indents at my personal websites, would you take points off me for that? I’d be quick to mock you if you did.
You give “Your Splash Page” as an explanation of the First Impression section – what about those who don’t have a splash page?
You Must NOT direct-link from my site or else I will not review you and tell my affiliates (if applicable) not to review you too.
I hope to high heavens you never apply to be my affiliate, because if you tried to tell me who I can and cannot review, you’d be given the finger (to put it bluntly).
You demand a link back because you review sites in two browsers. Wow. That’s sarcasm, in case you’d not noticed. How long do you actually take to DO the reviewers? 10 minutes? I review my sites in 5 browsers – but that doesn’t make a good review any better or any more worthy of a link back.
Your fake submit form is pointless – most of ‘us’ know the tricks of the trade and scan rules pages for “you must enter this shit into the textarea” rules and fake submit forms anyway.
Why have you got avatars as link back buttons for your site? Avatars are for forums.
Your “apply.php” page is delivering a 404 – which means both the affiliates and the advertising link on the sidebar are pointless.
Your coding is generally average – I was quite surprised to see <div> tags instead of tables. However, you have two body tags – the second one (<body style="background-color:lime"> – why are you using lime for everything?) is after your “navframe” div and can be removed, as can the ending body tag (</body>). A HTML page only needs one body tag.
Your using an id for navhead which is then repeated several times across the page – ids are for unique objects, and therefore navhead should be changed to a class. In your CSS, change #navhead to .navhead. You can also swap:
border-bottom-style:double;
border-bottom-width:3px;
border-top-style:double;
border-top-width:3px;
..for..
border-bottom: 3px double;
border-top: 3px double;
You’ve missed a space between a quotation mark and the word target in this bit of coding:
<a href="apply.php"target="contentframe">
Generally, your code is pretty good, which I suppose is your saving grace and stops this review from being completely pointless. You seem to have a half-way decent grasp of what you’re doing coding-wise, all you need to do is re-learn English. Small hint for your CSS: if you declare your font in the body { } section, you don’t need to re-declare it in your links, as it will be inherited by the browser.
I guess I should summarise this review before I find something else to complain about. Your English is poor, your rules are generally pathetic and the appearance of your website is off-putting. I don’t think you have enough experience or intelligence to be critiquing other people’s websites. I suggest you clean up your pages, or expect to be laughed at by those you “review”. Take my suggestions and work with them, because otherwise your site will be just another crappy review site.
Mar 09 2005
I have always considered myself an observer. I watch everything — particularly people, because then I can attempt to interpret their behaviour and make little profiles in my head. I love to watch ‘weblog circles’. These are little circles of friends which all link to one another, and then someone in that circle links to another person from another circle who then all tend to link to each other (this is how new weblogs are usually found).
Some of these circles are easier to get into than others. I mean, there are some where you just exchange a few comments and you’re linked already, and then there are those you link to forever and can’t seem to “connect with”. How do you get into these circles without spending countless hours chatting on an IM program (which I refuse to do)?
Anyway, this isn’t about the circles in general, just one in particular: the “we’re validated but don’t preach” circle/clique/club. A few months ago when the validating trend hit the personal site/weblog scene, the majority of my friends validated and starting preaching about those who didn’t, discussing how terrible they were/etc. Then, as with all things, came along the rebels. Those who refused to validate, even though they could. All of a sudden, the preachers realised they were making enemies of those who didn’t validate, and started prattling on about how they’d never said that validating was all that good, that validating wasn’t necessary for a great site/etc. Some people even started writing about how people were getting obsessed with validating and that it wasn’t everything.
Why the heck is all this happening? If you’re into validating; if you can create a page that is considered valid by the recommendations and “standards” set by the w3c — why hide that ability away simply to please other people? If you cannot stand IE and think that those who use it and design for it need a kick up the arse, why not say it? I’m fed up with people arsing about the topic. If you don’t validate — hey, personal choice and all.. but if you do — stand up and be proud. Be proud of the fact that you’ve created a website that is more-than-likely going to be cross-browser compatible. Be proud of the fact that you can close your tags, code in lowercase and give attributes surrounding quotes. Stop sitting on the back row telling people not to make a fuss and then crying when your pages don’t validate. Either be a validator, be proud of that fact and boast it.. or shut the hell up whinging when your coding doesn’t quite make it. You can’t have it both ways.
Mar 02 2005
Let’s talk about elite cliques. No, I’m not talking about a good ol’ whinge because I haven’t been accepted (I haven’t tried recently), nor am I talking about the usual rant on how acting elite is bad (I love being elite). This is a rant/observation on cliques that think they’re elite when they’re not. At all. I wrote this a few days and forgot to post it…
1. Let’s start with ARROGANT, The Elite Clique. Firstly: the layout. Since when did a black box in the middle of a white page, containing an inline frame, constitute elite design? Oh, and then of course there’s the first paragraph:
This clique was designed to bring all webdesigners with well designed sites, and attitudes together.
How many webdesigners do you know with well designed attitudes? That’s how it reads to me and I’m the Queen of misplaced commas. I usually let this kind of thing slip – not today.
This clique is was designed and is maintained, by me, Christine.
“is was”?
It is an elite clique, so make sure you note that before you join.
I’ve noted it. I’ve written it down on a post-it note even. Will this help me become a member? Will this increase my general knowledge? Will this make my site suitable for your elite clique? Will this get rid of your nasty white scrollbars that are impossible to use? Will it clean up your terrible spelling and poor grammar? Oh right! This must be distraction technique – I note down that you’re an elite clique which means I’m not focused on the screen and won’t see all of your cock-ups. Riiiight!
2. Now, let’s go now to Twilight Magic. Yay, more frames! Gosh – I’m beginning to think that I must use frames for my own website, otherwise I won’t be accepted. That’d be a shame. I obviously have to use miniscule navigation too – this seems to be your set standard. Obviously never heard of people who wear glasses or have some sort of visual impairment.
Twilight Magic is an elite clique which lists only those websites that are well designed in graphic design and in web design.
Uh.. what?
it’s not a semi-elite clique, but a wholesome elite clique
A wholesome elite clique, eh? Is that anything like the difference between normal white bread and wholesome wholemeal bread?
1. Have an extremly well designed site, which is up to my level or higher then me.
Wow, getting into this clique would be easy then.
3. Moving on, before I lose my concentration: Porcelain Stars. Ooh look, more miniscule navigation. I’m beginning to think I’m missing out on something important by not using this kind of crap y’know.
This clique is just ment to
..join people who cannot spell in a supposed elite clique to inflate their ego and give validation for their crappy Britney Spears blends? Or is that not what you meant?
This clique was started in January of 2001 because I was tired of all those elite cliques that were impossible to get accepted into.
Someone should take a hint…
4. Then there’s Les Anges ..with Mystery Meat Navigation: my favourite! Another bloody inline frame (which scrolls horizontally on the “site” page) and incorrect use of id attributes. No quotation marks around a few things in the HTML, and superfluous JavaScript (could be replaced with decent navigation). Not major offenders, but surely “elite” cliques should tidy these things up?
5. The Grave Elegance shows us that you must have tiny text to be successful, alongside links that are underlined but the same colour and therefore just look like emphasised text.
aesthetically pleasing to the eye
Well, they’re not going to be aesthetically pleasing to my arm or my stomach, are they?
..need I say much more? Here’s some free advice to Elite club owners:
My name is Jem, & I once told the world I'd never become a "mommy blogger" ... then I had a baby. Now I talk about boobs and poo and other inane mummy stuff. »
