Reviewed: Amelie
Site URL: not-noticeably.net

(Skin: haven)

I see blue, more blue, lots more blue and wait, what’s this? Ooh, pink. Not sure in what way these two colours are supposed to tie together but it’s variation which, at this point is good,. I had to wait a while for your image to load though because I’m using dial-up — get the size down to less than 50Kb to reduce this tedious wait. Honestly though, I’ve seen worse, and so far I don’t have any immediate fears of what I’m going to find on your website.

First thing I thought when taking a long hard look at the general appearance of your website was “proportions”. I think that the sidebar is too large and the content area too small. Although the content area is almost 200 pixels larger, my eyes don’t immediately pick up on that and the sidebar seems to dominate more than it should. Also, not a requirement but something I’ve started doing, a larger font for content than on the sidebar may give the right impression of which needs greater amounts of attention.

I think that your top image is strangely large for something with so few colours. You could probably save that with a medium compression level as a jpeg which should hopefully knock the size down to about 25Kb — much better for those on dial-up and something that anyone aiming at some sort of accessibility grade should consider.

The way you’ve set out your ‘blog entries is somewhat confusing to me. Your date seems to have more definition than your weblog entry title — I think this should be switched. The header of the entry should be placed in a suitable header tag (<h2> would be most appropriate as a <h1> header should be at the top, describing the page) with the date underneath. An article I’ve found on HTML semantics (linked to the details on headers) may be of benefit to you.

The navigation is relatively easy to spot but is somewhat cramped in terms of height. When I increase the size of the text repeatedly in Firefox it also starts to jump to the next link (this is why I prefer navigation in links on a sidebar, not that this method is perfect either.) Your font size (navigation or otherwise) doesn’t increase in Internet Explorer but that’s because you’re using fixed font sizes; this is advised against in checklist item 3.4 under Priority 2 in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Also listed under Priority 2 (checklist item 2.2) is the following:

Ensure that foreground and background color combinations provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having color deficits or when viewed on a black and white screen.

You currently do not have sufficient contrast. For future reference you can test foreground (text) colours on their background colour at Juicy Studio. I find this particularly handy because people using laptops see colours differently to people using a CRT monitor (for example) and checking it on the colour contrast analyser ensures that people using a laptop aren’t left straining their neck at a funny angle to see colours that have ended up far lighter than intended.

How do I get back to the index page?

On the sidebar “/cheesy intro” would only really make sense to those who code or have used the forward slash as a way to signify the end of something before — this will confuse newbies and those possibly reading your site through a screen reader. “Forward slash cheesy into” won’t make sense I should imagine.

As I move on to content I am beginning to wonder why your navigation is sorted the way it is. This is not a personal thing — I see lots of websites listing Domain first and yet I always thought it a strange choice for a personal website. I guess I assumed that this would be the least important content and should be listed last or second to last on the navigational menu. Anyway…

I think it’s great that you’ve displayed past website information as well as just past layouts, this shows your development in web design which many other sites seem to miss. I must admit though, the word “mingotwinge” sounds far too like a slang word for female genitals when said at speed. I won’t go into any further details!

Reading through your FAQ I see a few questions I wouldn’t have answered personally, they seem like nothing but a waste of time to me. For example the answer to “I think you’re rude and I hate you.” (which isn’t actually a question) states that posting that sort of statement is pointless and shows “how mature they are”; surely answering it says the same thing? Also, “cos” in that answer should be “because”.

Nothing constructive that I can say about Hosting/Hosted/Credits. Oh, ah, there’s the Home link. Nice thought — adding it to each sub-page, but I actually needed it after commenting on one of your weblog entries. A home link on the sidebar would be a nice, user-friendly addition.

Your free layouts section is hardly worth adding. You’ve only got two, both of which advocate pointless splash pages and aren’t the easiest to look at (I’m talking particularly about the pink one which has left serious damage to my eyes.) Seriously, if you’re going to offer these free layouts you should offer ones at the standard of your website.

I like your number to hex conversion tutorial; it’s never occured to me to do that before. Saying that, I can convert from decimal (0-255) to Hex with a pencil and a bit of paper, heh.

The other tutorials have nothing especially exciting about them or worth mentioning, but I do think that you could extend the tutorials on <div>s to explain how to move elements from the style="" in your first example to a stylesheet.

“I think it’s time I got rid of this page and made it into something a lot better.” — I couldn’t agree more.

Onto the Girl section, the first page is littered with self-deprecated sarcasm which doesn’t exactly add humour to the page. You should take pride in what you can do. If someone says you’re good at something, accept it! At the top of the page the word (if you can call it that, as it’s not real) “Biog” should be replaced with something more appropriate — Autobiography would be adequate, as a Biography (which I assume “Biog” is short for) is the term used to describe a literary work written about a person by someone else. I would also change “I live in Reading, in the UK with my parents.” to “I live in Reading (UK) with my parents” or “I live in Reading, UK, with my parents”.

Am I the only one that never reads these “100 things” lists?

There are no home links on the Visitor/Girl pages — another good reason to add one to the sidebar. Talking of which, I’ve just noticed “Noone” under the “Currently” header. The words you are looking for a “No one”.

First thing I noticed when I started to look at your coding was the excessive white space at the top of the page. I find it rarely puts people off actually stealing, nobody listens to warnings and it adds to the size of your files. The real coding, or at least every page I checked, was valid. You’re using <div>s appropriately and unordered lists for navigation (which is the most appropriate method). My only nitpick about your coding is the lack of real headers, but I’ve covered that already.

To summarise, your website is small but entertaining and even educating. Having lost a sibling myself I love the fact that you’ve dedicated your website to your deceased brother and obviously care a lot for him — it gives your site an extra-personal vibe and makes it stand out from all of the other pointless and seemingly uncared for personal pages. You seem to have a passion for maximising your website audience and I wish you the best of luck for continuining your accessibility adventures.