Staff

Past Staff

Review for SeasonFresh

Simple, yet beautiful. I have a feeling that I’m going to enjoy reviewing this site. The font is large enough to read, but small enough so people aren’t going, “omigosh, what the heck is this?” I also like the colors you used. They’re unique enough, but at the same time not horribly clashing together. The site looks like a very well-organized personal site/blog, which is good. It also looks very original.

Information

Site: SeasonFresh
Type: Miscellaneous
Owner: Carina
Reviewed By: Sanosuke
Date Received: 2/3/06
Date Completed: 4/6/06
Preview

Presentation

Your navigation has a bit of a gap when viewed with IE. [Preview]

Edit: You changed layouts in the middle of my review. If you don’t mind, I’m not going to bother with this section. I probably wouldn’t have much to say anyways.

I would like to say though, for your new layout, the header seems a bit bland; there’s a lot of “free-space” that’s not getting used. Also, I personally prefer table layouts where the navigation and the content are the same height, simply because it looks cleaner.

Content

Home

You have a grammar error in your welcome message: “you’ll find many *fun and exciting* things at this website[comma] like my portfolio and weblog.”

I find your welcome message very redundant. Not to mention, what’s fun and exciting for me might not be fun and exciting for you. You’ve not only highlighted the words “fun and exciting,” you repeat them again a sentence later. Really, we get the idea the first time you said it. Another thing I’d like to mention about this page is the fact that your welcome message seems to blend in a little too much. Perhaps changing the color of the welcome message, or putting something to separate it and the actual updates might help it stand out.

Personal

What I’ve noticed about your sentences is the fact that they seem to be short. A lot. When you could so easily combine two or even three sentences into one, you tend to prefer to separate them as much as possible. But that, at times, is not a good thing. Lets take your first paragraph, for example. It could easily be turned into:

Hi, I’m Carina, people call me anything from ‘Cari’ to ‘Rina’. You can call me ‘aniraC’, if you wish. I have been thirteen years old ever since the eighth of September 2005.

I’ve italicized anything I changed that you could also change, and the last sentence was changed from a passive sentence to an active one. Also, the word “borned” in your second paragraph should be “born.”

You’re too wordy in your next paragraph. You don’t really need the My adventures currently invove being instead, a simple “I am current a moderator…” would be enough. Right now, that sentence sounds awkward. Moreover, you should try to put the target="_blank" function into your links so they open up in new windows. That way, people don’t navigation away from your page and have to click “back” again. It can be easily done:

<a xhref="something" mce_href="something" title="something" target=”_blank”>

In the paragraph that starts off, If I could describe my life in seven words, you need to capitalize the words that are names [John Grisham, Counting Crows.] And it would be helpful to cite why they describe you. What are Counting Crows, how do they describe you? Elaborate. Same with the next paragraph about the opposite of your life.

A rewrite of the next paragraph to make it sound slightly more “flowing.”

People who label others tend to annoy me. But what really bugs me are people who label others.

And the next sentence just confused me: Just be it, don’t be what you think you should be. Just be “it”? What is “it”? This is what I’m guessing you meant:

Just be yourself, not what you or others think you should be.

Overall, your personal page is a little too choppy. You move from one paragraph to the next and there’s really no flow. Try reorganizing your paragraphs to something like this:

your intro up until the paragraph about your family
“If I could describe my life in seven words”
Your likes [the paragraph that begins “I like Italian food”]
“If I could describe the opposite of my life in seven words”
Your dislikes [”I dislike invalid coding”]
People that tend to annoy you
Finally, the last paragraph

That way, it flows better than, “I like this, I dislike that, but here’s a more detailed list of the things I like, and then another list of the things I dislike.”

Photography

I don’t think this section is pathetic at all. But if it’s “only for viewing pleasures,” maybe you should also watermark them [aka. put your URL on the image] that way people won’t take them.

This section would also look nicer without the disgusting blue border around the thumbnails. You can get rid of the borders with border="0" like this:

<img xsrc="imglink" mce_src="imglink" alt="" border=”0″ />

If you want a border on your images, there are two ways of adding them. one would be to add the border on the image when you were thumbnailing it. The other would be to code it on. You can do that in your stylesheet.

Ramblings

“Please do not showcase or quote any of these articles without written permission from myself.” should be changed to “… without written permission from me.”

Graphic Trends “I still think they are, they are really nice to look at. Some of them, anyway. Anyway, here’s my two cents on various graphic trends.” A little too much repeating here. Change it to something like:

I still think some of them are really nie to look at. Here are my two cents on various graphic trends

“Note: I haven’t made or provided an example for this particular trend because nobody deserves to undergo such torture.” < -- I've personally never seen an "oversharpened" lip or eye. An example would be interesting to see.

"I started notcing theis trend around 2005-ish." <-- Spelling errors galore! Change it to: "I began noticing these trends around 2005."

What? You like tiny font?! *takes out gun* Oh, but wait, you meant on graphics and not on the overall site. See, you need to specify that you enjoy the tiny font design on icons. Because if you like reading font that puny on a website, I think I'm going to scream my head off. [Oh, and the links should have the same target="_blank" tag I mentioned before. It's a bit annoying to navigation to a different page in the same window and then have to click "back"]

"I don't like this trend at all don't see the point." < -- Add a comma between "at all" and "don't see the point."Further down, in your pixel stretch article, "As far as I know, this trend has died and will rest in piece." should be "rest in peace."

Overall, you don't really go into detail about why you like or dislike something. You basically said, "I dislike this because, omigosh, it's so horrible." [Ignore the exaggeration.] The examples are pretty cool, but why do you dislike? Add more details into it.

Killer Kitties I like the bibliography idea. But along with giving the URL, you should also link it so people don’t have to copy-and-paste the whole thing.

‘That’ Autobiography I don’t get why you have this here. Other than the fact that spelleng is important. I don’t see your point in having this page at all.

How to be ‘Cool’ Third bullet: turn “Don’t forger to pout” to “Don’t forget to pout”

Meaningful ‘Poems’ I’m staring at your coding, and it’s incredibly crowded. I reorganized it a little. I fixed some of your grammar/spelling mistakes while I was at it too.

<div class="left"> <p class="aligncenter"><em> <br /><br /> Because of you...<br /> Heartache Goes on FOREVER.....<br /> I wanna Hate you<br /> But How?<br /> I loved you too much...<br /> And i still do...<br /> But i noe<br /> That you dont<br /> So why am i even trying?<br /> Thanks for wasting my time...<br /> </em><strong><em>You were a </em>HUGE<em> mistake</em></strong></p> </div> <div class="right"> <p>To the left is an example of a 'meaningful' poem that all the 'cool' kids are writing. I actually just copied and pasted it from somebody's <a xhref="http://xanga.com" mce_href="http://xanga.com" title="xanga.com">xanga</a> (of course, it was in a size 20pt font). Look at the poor thing, it's full of spelling and grammar mistakes, and surprise, surprise, the author is thirteen years old! You'd think we'd have learned where capitals are supposed to be, what makes sense and what doesn't, and how to use apostrophes! Unfortunately, society says that if you constantly make spelling and grammar mistakes, you're cool.</p> </div>

I think that should work… You had one too many </div> in there.

Reviews

Wait… you do unrequested reviews? That’s the message I’m getting while reading this page. Are you sure people want you to review their site? It’s one thing to look at a queue and think, “ew, I have to do all these?” it’s a whole other thing to point to a random site and go, “I think I’m going to give them exactly what I think without their permission first.”

Domain

It would actually be easier if you just listed the credits instead of writting them all in a paragraph. A list would be easier on the eyes, and simpler to organize. The link buttons would probably be better off on your “links” page. They fit better on a “Links” page than they do on a “Domain” page.

Final Statement

Hopefully this review was somewhat worth the wait. I actually enjoyed reviewing this site, despite the hellishly long time it took me.

Overall, your site is very organized and easy to navigation. Not to mention, it’s also simple and easy on the eyes. Your content was amusing and entertaining as well. Just watch out for those long run-on sentences and occasional grammar/spelling mistakes.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 6th, 2006 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Comments to “SeasonFresh”

Carina Says:
April 7th, 2006 at 4:53 am
Obviously, you don’t know much about Web Standards. I don’t put ‘target=”blank”‘ because there’s something called ‘tabbed browsing’. If people want a link to open in a new window, they could just shift+click. Also, I don’t put ‘border=”0″‘ because my XHTML is Strict (I know I can do it with CSS). The borders aren’t blue, and they’re supposed to have borders.

Other than a few other things, this review was quite helpful. I changed my layout because I assumed you hadn’t started on my review yet. Most of the grammar mistakes you mentioned had already been fixed by previous reviews.

Sanosuke Says:
April 7th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
‘Tabbed browsing’? Yeah, I use that. “target=_blank’ links open in a new tab for me. There are options in tabbed browers for each “new window” to open in another tab.

As for the borders, they were blue on the last layout when I was reviewing. Everything for the content was on the last layout, and the blue borders did not fit with the layout, so I commented on them.