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Review for Hakunetsu Designs
I am not too fond of the layout, but I like the style. The colour scheme itself is a rarity. It isn’t often you see grey matched with a dark rose pink, but it seems to go well together. Lots of circles and palm trees (if that is what I think they are!). At first glance, I can easily predict a nice, friendly, graphic site.
Information
Site: Hakunetsu Designs
Type: Resource
Owner: Kioku, Haru, Azreen
Reviewed By: Misao
Date Received: 01/07/06
Date Completed: 01/28/06
Preview
Presentation
Back to the layout style, it is organized and clean. I like the format of the content and the navigation. It is simple and allows your visitors a quick preview of what your site has to offer. But I am not too fond of the layout itself. The image of the Barbie-resembling girl on the left is kind of disturbing. The colouring of her body is much lighter and overshadowed by the brushes; it looks as though she has an abnormally long neck and missing her body. The colour itself is a little dull just because you tend to use the darker tones of rose pink and grey-tint. But like I’ve said, it goes well together.
I like the format of the headers. The bordered background adds a nice touch and draws enough attention to it. The introductory is very formal, polite and user friendly. The use of a “randomly featured design” on the main page is always a good way to advertise and promote your designs. I especially like the table format of your updates, the avatar hovering just outside the border of your table with all the different colours.
Due to the difference in the formatting and style of your layout, I think it might look better if you take out the grey background behind the palm trees on the right of the bottom layout image. Here is an example of what I am trying to get at.
HTML wise.. wow! You certainly know what you’re doing. But gosh, you sure have quite a bit of div layers. I would have used table for the outer core of the layout, and div layers for the inner core (content), but it seems like you managed well with what you have. Your style sheet is extensive, but very thorough. There is one small error in your source:
<div class="boxavatar">
<img
xsrc='http://hakunetsu.x-infiniti.org/wp-content/images/authors//2.gif'
alt='Haru' title='Haru' class='author_image' />
</div>
You might notice the extra / right before the direct filename of the avatar. That might have simply been overlooked as a typo (Wordpress likes to do that) but it does not affect your site significantly, as the image still works perfectly fine. Even though you state at the bottom that your site contains valid CSS, there are a few errors. If you click on the link, it’ll tell you what you’re missing. These links to valid HTML and CSS should open in a new window so viewers are not taken away from the site.
Content
Site Related - The history under the ABOUT US page is certainly well-informed and well written. But I would try to stay away from words like ‘ameliorated’ and ‘perseverance’. Try to stick with simpler words because some people may not know these words (I don’t know the first one!). Sometimes it may sound nice to use big words (much like essays and papers) but safer to stick with simple; big fancy words may take the effect away and add confusion. Like my teacher once told me, if you can’t use big words correctly and in a way that other people can understand you, it just makes you look stupid. There is a grammatical error with “…with the name Hakunetsu after further research which convinced the three of them…” You need a comma after ‘research’. Underneath Azreen’s description of her style, there is another grammatical error. It should read “I mainly combine and overlay of patterns with filtered cloud distortions.” To make the page look less wordy, it would be nice to see avatars next to/above the staff profiles, much like the ones you use for updates. It would add more
attraction than numbering the staff by names.
Your TERMS AND CONDITIONS are straightforward and appropriate of what a graphic site should include. For the first rule, it should be written as “However, we do not claim any credit if you use our avatars on forums or for personal usage.” There are a few areas that aren’t clear. For the third rule, does altering mean graphical editing? Does it include HTML and CSS edits? Would you allow people to use your HTML coding style or layout template style for their own layout designs? These are a few issues that graphic sites should address now because of frequent visitors who use inspirations from pre-made graphics to make their own quite similar to the original.
Good use of the FAQ page to include an easy access to a CONTACT FORM. Makes things much easier and efficient. I’ve noticed that most of your CREDITS links are followed by a very brief sentence about the link. This consistency is broken with the link to “PHP Freaks, get addicted!” and “Veve’s Pet Peeves, love it!”. You should change these two links to include a brief description of the site or what it has to offer. You might have to relink ‘456 Bereast’ because the current link requires a username and password. The links to ‘Anime Project Alliance’ and ‘Into You’ are mislinked. A period is not required after your links since a listing of a title is not considered a complete sentence. Always remember to include your URL for LINKAGE purposes in case a visitor is viewing your web page through a site using redirection. Those redirection URLs are really tricky because they overshadow all URLs. Very cute linkage buttons. Did you create these templates? If so, you should open a section with button templates. Destiny’s domain has been down for over a month now so you might want to either email Destiny about her site or put a strike through her link letting viewers know that the site is currently down.
Designs - I like the presentation of your LAYOUT designs. However, it would be more helpful if you divide this section into subsections such as iframe, div layers, and table. It would be bettered organized and much easier for your visitors to locate a layout type that they need. For example, I don’t have much patience to go through entire collections to find a suitable table layout that I require. It is much too time consuming. However, I enjoy your layouts. They are of high quality and contain knowledgeable skill and talent. I am unable to take a look into the style sheets so I will just comment on what I see.
“Vivid Recollections” - You’re missing the dashed borderline on the right of the bottom image. The background starts to repeat after the green and grey vertical striped pattern. I’m not sure if this is your intention or if the background is meant to be grey. If you intend for the background not to repeat, simply include this into your body style or background div layer: background: #C9D8C3 URL(FILENAME.jpg) no-repeat;.
“Starlight” - The same background problem that I have mentioned above. Although it doesn’t look bad with the background repeat to the right, it might not be what you intended so I’ll just point it out.
“Iniquitous Soul” and “Revered” - Nothing wrong, I just simply love these two layouts!
“Cryptic” - The left side of the background (to the left of the navigation box) is slightly odd. If you look closely, the background is more or less a repetitive horizontal pattern that looks abruptly cut off. This might have been an error when slicing the images in Photoshop.
“Efflorescence” - Again, the repeating background. Except this time, this looks really out of place because suddenly to the right of the layout, a light blue vertical line appears with a dashed border on one side. So again, using the HTML coding I have provided above would eliminate this.
“Last Syllable” - Another repeating background. The purple abruptly changes to pink. If you set the background colour to a default and change the properties of the background to no-repeat, this won’t be a problem.
“Dark Imitation”, “Violet Elysian” and “Starlight Sparkle” – The repeating background. See above for suggestions.
A general comment to the layouts (especially table layouts), you can subtract the body attributes from the index page and add them to your style sheet, hence the reason and purpose of style sheets. For example:
<body background="images/bg.jpg" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0"
marginwidth="0" marginheight="0">
Will appear as the following in your style sheet:
body {
background: #FF9783 URL(images/bg.jpg) no-repeat;
margin: 0;
}
You can also add in the default text colour, font family, text alignment, etc. The same goes for your table columns. Have td id=”layout1″ in your HTML and this will point to the following attributes in your style sheet:
td#layout1 {
background: #FFFFFF URL(images/index_12.jpg) no-repeat;
vertical-align: top;
padding: 0 0 2px 0;
margin: 0;
}
Although the use of an alt=”" tag is correct in valid XHTML, it only works in Internet Explorer. In order to have that working correctly and properly across all browsers such as Firefox and Mozilla, you’ll probably want to substitute that with the title=”" tag.
[Sanosuke] Instead of substituting, add both tags, that way it will be valid but also work in all browsers
I really like your AVATARS, especially the pastels. The darker stronger toned ones are nice, but look rather busy with all the strong colour and crowding of geometrical lines and patterns. An error line that says “Warning: mysql_fetch_array(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/xyinfin/public_html/hakunetsu/wps.php on line 7″ appears when I try to download any WALLPAPER. The 800×600 resolution of id 85 is a broken image as well as the 1024×768 resolution of id 84. The preview image to id 72 is also mislinked.
[Sanosuke] One thing about the wallpapers, while they are gorgeous, some aren’t practical. Most people aren’t interested in sticking something incredibly bright, colorful and intricate on their desktop. As far as wallpapers go, slightly simpler might be better. CHEERFUL SUMMER, for example, is way too colorful, too messy, and *way* too bright.
Tutorials - The instructions are clear and easy to follow. These are very helpful to those who are new to designing and would like to try to make a few blends from scratch. But why is that your first two tutorials include images displayed on the page, but with the “Lens Flare Abstract”, I had to click on text links for the images? When reading a tutorial, it would probably be easier and helpful if you displayed the instruction images rather than link them. That way, I can see right on the page what I need to do. Plus, clicking on links that open in a new window is quite bothersome, and inconsistent with the format of the other tutorials.
[Sanosuke] If you find that your images are too large, it is better to thumbnail them than have no picture at all. Psychology states that people learn better and faster through visuals.
I’m not sure if Misao mentioned this before, but I’ve noticed that your mouseovers for your affiliates sometimes repeat themselves and sometimes don’t. For example, mousing over Aesthetic Design would get me:
Destiny of Aesthetic Designs
[URL]
But sometimes I get:
Destiny of Aesthetic Designs
[URL]
Destiny of Aesthetic Designs
[URL]
Same goes for your host and sponsor links on your navigation.
Final Statement
Your site has very little graphics to offer considering this site has been opened for almost a year. But the graphics that you do have are of high quality and that is what I admire in a graphic site. One that stresses quality and appearance over quantity. Besides the small errors, a beautiful site with beautiful graphics. I except to see more.
4 Comments to “Hakunetsu Designs”
Kioku Says:
January 30th, 2006 at 9:13 amThank you very much for the review. Your suggestions are truly appreciated.
I’ve re-checked the premade layouts, but I can’t seem to find the background-repeatition error you’ve mentioned. If possible, can you show me a screencap of one of the layouts?
Sanosuke Says:
February 1st, 2006 at 5:55 pmKioku: Have you checked in all browsers? I’ve looked in IE, and it doesn’t seem to be malfuntioning to me, but it might not work in another browser.
Misao Says:
February 2nd, 2006 at 12:25 amKioku, I’ve sent an email with a screencap of all the layouts that I’ve mentioned in the review on the repeating background. I think the main reason is because my laptop uses a widescreen resolution of 1280×800, so naturally backgrounds at 1024 px wide will start repeating for me. I hope it helps.
azreen Says:
February 2nd, 2006 at 8:59 pmomg, thank u so much for the pointers. it really helped me a lot to hear your opinion of the site.