Review for: Hana
Site: Gammy-Force
Reviewer: Jon
Date: February 27, 2005
First Impression
Inasmuch as you are a fan of bright colours, your site reflects that. The background isn't too bad, albeit bright, but the image looks kind of strange. Also, the menu boxes aren't aligned so it looks kind of silly.
Presentation
I don't really mind the bright background, but I admit it is really bright. I think the background used for the content and menu areas would look better for the background. The layout would still look the same, but the viewer's eyes would be pulled towards the actual layout and not the big open background off to the right.
Since your layout occupies half the screen in 1024x768, I think centering your layout would look nice. Even though Ms. Lennox's left shoulder would be cut off, you could use some borders to hide it.
Because the vector (or whatever) of Annie Lennox has been pasted on to such a bright background, the edges around it are quite sharp. All around the image, the space where the image meets the background is jagged and it doesn't look that great. Going in with a smudge or blur brush would smooth those lines out. The vector/image doesn't seem to go with the rest of the layout. The colours don't really match either. There are a bunch of skin tones, and then suddenly there are a bunch of blues and other bright colours. If you worked on your colour scheme a bit more and chose some skin tones to mix in with certain blues, I'm sure it would look really cool.
The coloured circles at the top of the layout look fine. They add other colours into the layout so it isn't all blue. But they're really bunched together. I think if you had some coming down the side or placed elsewhere it would look nice. I'm not saying it doesn't look nice now, because it does, but I think it could look a bit better.
You know the little box above the menu that talks about the layout? It looks good but the box seems to be a little too small. First, I'd make the box the same width as the menu, then I would add padding around the pixel text inside (in Photoshop or something) to centre it vertically and horizontally.
The colour of your font, headlines, and links is good. The font is a good choice as well. The font on the image, though, is hard to read. Maybe having the black and purple near the back and bringing the brighter colours forward would help it clear up.
Content
After reading your autobiography, I only gather a few facts about you. I think to fully understand who you are, I would have to read your entire blog. When writing autobiographies or about me pages, it's best to write everything about you. I mean, yeah, sure, people should read your whole blog anyway, but for reviewers and other people who are lazy (hee), it's best reading that kind of stuff on an About Me page. A page on which we can fully understand who you are. I can see a picture of you in my mind because you vividly described your appearance and I can see what you like to do, but I don't really have a full picture of you in my mind. It seems like something is missing.
I think adding a bit more content about you would make your autobiography perfect. Consider writing about friends, past experiences, favourites, etc.
Your pictures are quite dark and it's hard to make out what they are. Is there any way you can lighten them up in an image editing program?
There isn't much content on your site. It's mostly about you (which makes sense), and there are hardly anything for the visitor to do. All there is is a little survey and a dictionary of phobias. I don't think it's that interesting.
You don't even have a page about your site, and if you do, I didn't see it.
Errors
Spelling mistakes: on your autobiography page, some of the most obivious mistakes are "obsessivly" which should be "obsessively," "peice" which should be "piece" and "philisophisize" where think you meant "philosophise." That's the only section for which I checked the spelling. It looks pretty good at first glance, though.
I didn't see any broken images.
Coding
Your coding is pretty clean. You use a CSS stylesheet, but it is not valid. You do not need in your CSS document. Those are HTML tags. You don't really need the comment tags, either.
On your main page, the page that includes the iframes, you have CSS assigned to divs. Since you already have a stylesheet, you can put all the information into it. So, you would put
position: absolute; top: 320; left: 337; z-index: 1
into your stylesheet under something like
#areaone {
position: absolute; top: 320; left: 337; z-index: 1
}
Then in your HTML document, you would write ...
The rest of your coding is fine.
Conclusion
Your site is good, but it needs a bit of work. There could be more content and in my opinion, the layout could be a bit better. What you have is good, though. You just need more, more, more!
## out of #####