Staff
Past Staff
Archive
Meta
Review for Beautiful Dawn
I can’t seem to classify your layout—the image is really eye-catching, but other parts of your layout just don’t piece together. For example, you have plus signs for your content headers but plain text headers in your navigation; your layout image, so intricate, is framed by thick, yellow borders; and, for a reason that I cannot discern, you have butterflies near “The Analyst”. These little inconsistencies are littered throughout the page—almost like you started the layout a few weeks ago, but just came back to it and forgot your theme.
I have a very fast Internet connection, but even so, it took about thirty seconds for your main image to load. It’s over 200 megabytes! When I optomized it for myself, I got it down to only 70 with minimal optimization. To optimize an image in Adobe Photoshop, press “File > Save for Web > JPEG.”
Information
Site: Beautiful Dawn
Type: Personal
Owner: Sonya
Reviewed By: Megumi
Date Received: 1/24/05
Date Completed: 1/28/05
Preview
Presentation
Layout
Like I said in the “First Impression” section, your headers and borders are woefully inconsistent. I’m not that fond of the addition signs, and I think it would be nice if you could somehow integrate the swirly divider into the headers—both the content and navigation ones.
You mentioned on your splash page that Internet Explorer does not display your site correctly, and I found one of the problems:
I’m not entirely sure, but I think this is because the image was saved as a *.png, which caused it to be rendered differently in IE. Why not save it as a *.gif? The *.png format is used to preserve colors and quality, and it is wasted on this poor little divider.
There is padding at the top of the page, but not the bottom. To keep the layout “floating” on the page, about 45 pixels of space would be sufficient.
If you are planning on keeping the yellow borders (I wouldn’t, as they look sloppy. Try a subtle pattern and thinner line), consider either: a) seperating the main image from the content area. This block is already seperate from the navigation, so it seems logical for it to be two distinct halves, and it will also maintain the “floating” appearance I mentioned; or b) join the navigation area to the main content and image.
The links in “Navigate the Site” are of a lighter color than their descriptions, which make them look less prominent. Try switching the colors, and maybe indenting the descriptions, so that they are seperated from the links. Or, you could just get rid of the descriptions and opt for links that don’t require explanation (i.e. “Sonya”, “Visitor”, “Domain” etc.)
Coding
All your navigation links look something like this:
http://beautiful-dawn.net/domain/index.phpThis is technically fine, but you can shorten the URL by simply using “/domain.” The / references the root directory of Beautiful Dawn. The index.php is not necessary, because the page will automatically find the index file of domain/—unless you have another index file, like index.html, which you don’t.
And instead of having this for your line breaks:
<center><img xsrc="http://beautiful-dawn.net/images/div03.png" mce_src="http://beautiful-dawn.net/images/div03.png" width="75px" height="31px" alt=" " /></center><br />Wouldn't it be easier to just type <div class="break" /></code> , and put this in your stylesheet:
Wouldn’t it be easier to just type , and put this in your stylesheet:#sidebar .header {background: URL('/images/div03.png') no-repeat;height: 31px;width: 75px;
margin: 10px auto;
} You occasionaly misuse the paragraph tag—in “Domain (Her Sanctuary)”, for example, you start with a paragraph tag for “Beautiful Dawn is my personal…”, finish that paragraph, and instead of closing the tag and starting with another for the next paragraph, you use two line breaks (<br />), finish the next paragraph (”The current layout feautures…”), and end the paragraph tag there. I find the paragraph tag to be easier than using line breaks, and it’s more logical—they are two seperate paragraphs, after all.
tag—in “Domain (Her Sanctuary)”, for example, you start with a paragraph tag for “Beautiful Dawn is my personal…”, finish that paragraph, and instead of closing the tag and starting with another for the next paragraph, you use two line breaks (), finish the next paragraph (”The current layout feautures…”), and end the paragraph tag there. I find the tag to be easier than using line breaks, and it’s more logical—they are two seperate , after all.tag—in “Domain (Her Sanctuary)”, for example, you start with a paragraph tag for “Beautiful Dawn is my personal…”, finish that paragraph, and instead of closing the tag and starting with another for the next paragraph, you use two line breaks (), finish the next paragraph (”The current layout feautures…”), and end the paragraph tag there. I find the tag to be easier than using line breaks, and it’s more logical—they are two seperate , after all.You occasionaly misuse the tag—in “Domain (Her Sanctuary)”, for example, you start with a paragraph tag for “Beautiful Dawn is my personal…”, finish that paragraph, and instead of closing the tag and starting with another for the next paragraph, you use two line breaks (), finish the next paragraph (”The current layout feautures…”), and end the paragraph tag there. I find the tag to be easier than using line breaks, and it’s more logical—they are two seperate , after all.For your actual blog entries, you have header coding that looks like this:
<h5>+ +</h5><h1>23 Jan 2006</h1><h2>Holy fork Batman.</h2>Instead of actually making a seperate header for the addition signs, make them into a background image, which you can put into the h1 selector in your stylesheet. If this interferes with h1’s placement, give it (h2) a negative top margin.
selector in your stylesheet. If this interferes with ’s placement, give it () a negative top margin.Instead of actually making a seperate header for the addition signs, make them into a background image, which you can put into the selector in your stylesheet. If this interferes with ’s placement, give it () a negative top margin.Technically your stylesheet is validated, but W3Schools gives your page an inordinate number of warnings. Many come from your font selections:
font-family: Trebuchet MS, Helvetica, sans-serif;If a font family is more than one word, like Trebuchet MS, it should be quoted:
font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;
Content
If there’s one thing that I strongly dislike, it’s a cluttered navigation. In your sidebar, you have many things that I would move to their own seperate pages. Currently, Dates to Remember, the quick links (Validation Related, Pending Reviews) and your short biography About Me are all right. But you have a whole section about your domain, so why do you have that little blurb (Her Sanctuary)? And the blurb about Minneh the Ipod belongs under The Curious Girl.
Under your sub-sections, you have three headings: two too many. To remain consistent, just keep the title of the subsection (as named in the navigation) as the main headers, and perhaps use a short paragraph to describe the kinds of things the section offers (the descriptions you currently give me don’t tell me much).
The Curious Girl
A Basic Profile: I like this page. It’s simple and straightforward, and the use of bolding helps identify the different topics. “I believe my religion may entitle me to be called…” is overly wordy. “My religion is Roman Catholic” is more straightforward.
What I like/Don’t Like: I like how you’ve alphabetized your list, but as much as you deny it, I would like some justification on these matters. Not a lot; just one or two sentences, for example: I like Adobe Photoshop because I can go crazy with filters. Mabye provide the occasional image to counteract the wordiness of this page. I understand that maybe you can’t understand why you like a certain food, but think about what parts you like: I like the crust of pizza. This is a very long, long list and while it’s a good reference point, it could use some interest.
Dictionary of Slang: This is a great page. The Definition and Example pieces really make it seem authentic. However, sometimes for Example you have a sentence using the word (”When I heard the Backstreet Boys will be touring Australia…”: awesome-sauce), and sometimes a situation where it might be used (”If something is very hard, annoying, or otherwise a complete waste of time…”: bastardic). Can you split this into two different sections (Situation and Sample, maybe)?
It seems to me that the entire Delve Deeper section could be combined with The Sonya Four-One-One. My Favourite Things and What I Like seem eerily similar, and Musical Tastes are also, essentially, things you like. I’m seeing a lot of repeated information throughout these pages also.
My Life: The Original Soundtrack: This is a very good idea. The only thing I can think of is provide a link to the artist’s homepage, so that the visitor can check it out for themselves.
A Tour of My Bedroom: This was a fun page, but there were really too many links to click. I think you did this to cut down on the loading time, but if you just optomized the images, they would load much faster, enabling you to put all the subsections on one page. Also, I didn’t know how long this “tour” was while I was clicking the links. If you want to continue having this on multiple pages, maybe numbering the pages ( 1 / 2 / 3 / Next / End ) would give visitors an idea of what they’re getting into.
Just for You
On the Importance of Being Nice: The house analogy is a good one. But you neglected to mention the fine line between being nice and being truthful, which would have been an interesting read.
On the Importance of Text Links: Yes, that’s all very well and good, but what if the visitor doesn’t know how to make text links to back up their image-maps? I myself am not sure what you mean. Do you mean having just a sentence that says something like “If you can’t see my image-maps, click here for so-and so…”?
Fonts for Download: I’m presuming that you didn’t make these fonts, and if that’s the case, there should be some form of readme file that goes along with the zip file. For the two that I downloaded, there wasn’t… but it seems respectful to credit the maker of the font when you are redistributing them, no?
MSN Messenger Display Pictures: You’ve got nice avatars, but why is each avatar saved as a *.png? I would save them as a *.gif, or maybe a *.jpg, so cut down on loading time. But really, they are very nicely made. However, you’re using an alt tag to display who the icon features. For Firefox and Opera users, the title tag should be included also.
Silent Space
I like that this is all one page. Everything is clear and concise, though the Rejected Domain Names is dangerously close to being a) useless or b) visitor content. Also, shouldn’t the pending links to review sites in the navigation be moved here, to Site Reviews?
Slave to the Work
MSN Messenger Display Pictures: Oy, you have this page twice! I think it belongs in Just for You more than Slave to the Work, personally.
Book Projects: I’d like a little more description on why you chose these ratings. For example, I think that Ready or Not deserved a lesser rating than you gave it, as it is essentially a remake of The Princess Diaries books, and I’m wonder why you gave it four stars. Also, instead of using asterisks to denote stars, try using graphical stars. The asterisks are rather small and it’s sometimes hard to tell if it’s three or four stars; but with graphical ones, it would be immediately clear.
Final Statement
I really do like this site. The ratio of personal content versus visitor content is proportional for this kind of site, and things like The Original Soundtrack and Book Projects were really unusual—definitely not the generic content on many personal sites. Your layout could use some work, but really, it’s not a big deal, because the content is the focus of your site. Mostly, there are just little problems with the content—just things you need to touch-up. All in all, I really enjoyed my visit to Beautiful-Dawn. Good job!
3 Comments to “Beautiful Dawn”
Sonya Says:
February 7th, 2006 at 10:22 pmGENERAL
Thank you for the review. I don’t agree with very many of your criticisms toward my content- I worked hard on it, and it has been split into the pages I believe to be appropriate. As for my BR tags, I use them for a reason: they validate. The P tag has essentially been deprecated.THE CURIOUS GIRL
The headings and separations offer the visitor a choice: how deeply they’d like to delve. You can have your on-the-surface, you can have your deeper meanings, and you can have ‘only if you’ve time on your hands’ type content. A long, long list would be kind of intimidating, no? I tried it both ways, and it bored me.I have a separate page for my musical tastes because they are very broad, and it has nothing to do with what I like. If I really love a particular artist, I’ll list them in the ‘What I Like’ section, because I like their music AND the singer or band. It’s an entirely different matter.
As for the ‘Favourite Things’ section, I’m not sure how you can claim it’s ‘repeated’ information. You request here that I go into more depth with my likes, and here I have done that, things I specifically like and why.
I don’t understand why you feel I should save my images a certain way. If they’re saved a certain way, it means I wasn’t happy with the way it appeared using another format.
My ‘Dictionary of Slang’ page? I can understand it, and that’s what’s important.
THE VISITOR CONTENT
MSN Display Pictures- Why are they saved as PNGs? Because I wanted to save them that way. And because the avatars use these things called colours and text, which don’t look all that crash-hot in JPEG.Text Links- No, I mean that it is possible to define a line of text links in a separate DIV or something. Was that really not clear? I shall have to look at the page.
MAKE AND DO
Book Projects- I give a rating, a comment, that’s it. It’s enough for me. And the asterisks are there because I want them there. And they can be interpreted by most browsers.MY LAYOUT
Why butterflies? Because I like butterflies. That’s why there are butterflies there.CODING
Yep, heard this stuff before. I’m reworking my site lately, you might have noticed a BRB notice on the main page if you’ve visited again.
Sonya Says:
February 7th, 2006 at 10:23 pmBTW, the Book Project pages aren’t about my visitors’ opinions, they’re about my opinions. I’m not sure why you felt the need to comment on that?
Megumi Says:
February 9th, 2006 at 12:23 amA lot of your comment was just “Well, so-and-so works for me, so that’s all that matters.” (”Dictionary of Slang,” “Butterflies,” etc.) Essentially, is the purpose of a review is just that: to find out what doesn’t work for the visitor, which your site is geared towards.
“MSN Display Pictures- Why are they saved as PNGs? Because I wanted to save them that way. And because the avatars use these things called colours and text, which don’t look all that crash-hot in JPEG.”
Really? I’ve made avatars with the very-special color and text you mentioned, and they look perfectly fine as GIFs.