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Review for Anime Graphx
Oh look, giant “vote for me” just popped up on my screen. Why should I vote for you if I don’t even know what you offer? Right now, I’m staring at your first skin, and the only word I can think of to describe it is, “big” … not even “big” more like, “gigantic.” Borrowing a phrase from my beloved Kalliel, “and what, my dear, is that?” basically sums up what I’m thinking right now.
Information
Site: Anime Graphx
Type: Resource
Owner: Kamilla
Reviewed By: Sanosuke
Date Received: 2/5/06
Date Completed: 5/20/06
Preview
Presentation
Skin1 - Ensuing Providence
This layout shouldn’t even be categorized as 1024×768. I’m wondering why the hell you could possibly need this much room. Because from what I can see, you’re not really taking up much.
The header is blended in fairly nicely. Problem? It’s hard to see exactly what the hell that thing is. You’ve blended so well that there’s no focus. Everything is the focus point of the header, and it hurts my eyes because I have no idea what I’m supposed to be looking at. Not to mention, the font you used for the title does not fit the overall layout at all. The header gives an almost ethereal feeling, but the text doesn’t.
Your navigation does not need those hidious borders around each link when you hover over them. They’re so big that the entire navigation and content all move when you hover over one link. Plus, it’d look better without the hover.
Skin2 - Fragment of a soul
I’m not in full screen, nor do I want to make Mozilla Firefox into full-screen. And right now, this skin is bugging me. Because of the sheer size of it.
Doesn’t look like you did much with the banner. This skin is hugely contrasted with your first one simply because it has nothing on it. Picture slapped onto a background with minimal effects. Lovely.
Your text color is too close to the background color of the table. Thus, I have to squint to read. And look, when I mouse over the links, they get lighter.
Skin3 - Arcane Cessation
Better. Probably my favorite skin out of all four. I’m going to use this one to review your site. I like the blending of the image, I like the color usage.
I don’t, however, like the large banner. Especially since you could simply resize it and it’d still look nice. You’re just taking up a lot of space with things that don’t have to be there. The text on the banner itself doesn’t fit either, not “ethereal” enough for the effect. The cursor you chose isn’t very fitting either. Very big, bulky, and in-your-face. … seems to be a pattern with you. But overall, I like it.
Skin4 - Forbidden Love
Your banner for skin 3 was so big that I didn’t even realize there was a warning. I was wondering what’s wrong with the skin… do I really need to give you more reasons to resize the banners?
Random thought: actually, shounen-ai is boy love in Japanese. Yaoi usually has sexual content in it. “Yaoi” implies sexual content to most yaoi fangirls. So unless you actually want people getting the wrong impression…
I don’t like the way the header/banner for this skin just suddenly ends and your content begins. The way it ends doesn’t even blend in with the background. It just suddenly happens. Your text, again, on the banner does not fit with the overall theme. It seems to just stick out in the open. And the lyrics under the title looks like you were trying to fill up space.
Overall
To sum it all up: big banners with text that don’t fit. You seriously don’t need all that space. Plenty of web design sites use as little space as possible and still get a good result.
Some examples of sites that don’t take up a lot of space but are still effective are: The 7th Sense, Effluence, Element: rain designs, Hakunetsu Designs, Appassionato.
A coding suggestion I’d like to make is to color your input and textareas so they’re not that horrible default white color. You can do so in your stylesheet:
input, textarea, select {
style options}
I trust you know how to do the rest. Add background color, text color, and border color. It’ll fit in with your layout more.
Content
Most people read from left to right, top to bottom. So on a three-column site, your most important information should be top-left. Which would include your entire right navigation. Swap the two, then put the “website” one first. Then followed by the Graphics and all your rest. You don’t need to bold the “Main”, “Add to favorites” and “set as homepage” links because they’ll be the first people see if you put them in the top left. Also, centering them tips the entire navigation off-balance. [Though, centering your IMAGES won’t hurt. Your vote-for-me buttons and skins should be centered. Your text shouldn’t.] Also put a bolded “Terms of Usage” under “Website”, not under “Graphics” because under graphics, it gives off the wrong message. People might think that they don’t have to follow the terms of usage for layouts because there is only a link under “graphics.” Thus, by putting it under the subtitle “Website,” you re implying that these are the terms for the entire site.
Anyways, onto the actual content. I’ll do it right to left, top to bottom.
Graphics
Terms of Use
The terms stated here on this page
It’s redundant. Either type “The terms stated here” or “The terms staed on this page.”
obtain wallpapers for other reasons than for use on your personal desktop
Rephrase that to, “utilize wallpapers for any reason other than to decorate your own personal desktop.”
I’m not in love with how you phrased the terms of usage. And a lot of people do this too. By putting “DO NOT” in big bold letters and THEN listing, you loose the efflect of the first “do not.” Half way down the list, my mind has already tossed away the “Do not.” Thus, by putting “do not” in front of EACH listed rule, you reinforce it. Example:
- Do not steal from Anime Graphx. This is strictly prohibited.
- Do not alter the graphics or coding in any way.
- Do not submit the graphics to another/other site(s).
- Do not copy the character profiles or anything related to the anime sections for your site.
- Do not obtain wallpapers for other reasons than for use on your personal desktop.
- Do not remove watermarks from layouts or graphics.
- Do not direct-link or re-distribute.
Avatars - Instead of width=150, use width="95%" [or whatever percentage you want the table to use up.] If you’re going to have a huge layout, why not make use of ALL the space provided? Also, it’s good to center the table, table align="center" because it makes the whole page look more presentable.
You also need a colspan for your paging, because some of it overflows to the next line:
My problem with these is the fact that you can’t even read half of them. White against light blue? Incredibly light orange against lime green… are you supposed to point at these and go, “Oh look, they move” or are you actually supposed to read the text on them? ‘Cause from the way they are right now, half of these are completely useless. What’s the point if you can’t even read what they say?
Buttons - You have another period after the “prev” in your navigation. I’m thinking you copied-and-pasted one code and got them all messed up. So go check all the ones where you have dynamic, PHP navigations and erase the period on them all.
Put more space between each button and more space between the buttons and the navigation. Table them if you have to. Right now, they just look like a clutter of stuff.
I’m also questioning the usability of these buttons as well. They look like you took an image, resized, then cut it up [or, even worse, used a template.] But you never took into consideration how usable they are. Try adding text on them. It’d be pretty hard to find a place to stick text without covering up the picture on some of these. And after adding text, some of them would look… not great.
I’m not saying all your buttons aren’t good. But have you actually test out some of these before putting them on?
Forum Banners - These are forum signatures, I believe. And this page really isn’t organized very well at all. There are a bunch of different sized banners crammed together into one space. Some you can click on, some you can’t. It’s just incredibly confusing and crowded. [Oh, and you have a period after the “1″ in your navigation now too…]
I suggest thumbnailing these banners and then tabling the whole thing. That way, you can have more information as well. I took your first signature, and I did this:
 |
Series: Series name File Size: ## KB Dimensions: # x # Etc. Etc. Download |
Or something like that. Don’t copy exactly what I did… but you get the idea.
Wallpapers - You have the same navigation problem with this page as you did with the avatars. And again, you’re not using your space efficiently. Instead of using all the space you’ve obviously given yourself with your huge layout, you put four wallpapers on each page and then crowd them together. Space out your tables more.
Anime
I didnt’ bother going through all of these. [Your icon for Daisuke Niwa is broken, by the way…] But I also don’t see the point of having profiles on a graphic site. The way you organized it is really annoying too. I have to click a link, read it, then click the back button on my browser. Click another one… it’s just annoying. If you don’t have the space on your navigation for each specific anime, don’t bother with the profiles at all. They’re rather pointless anyways. The galleries seem nice, but you should also organize those better. Like have a “gallery” section on your navigation then list the animes and be instantly taken to the images. [And the image thumbnails should be centered. It looks more organized that way…]
But really, the profiles dont’ need to be there. Neither do the links to all the graphics either actually, since they’re already linked on the individual graphic pages.
Skins
Center the thumbnail images to make them look neater on the navigation. I’ve also noticed that for some of your skins, the thumbnails are vertical, and it’s not very attractive:
Webite
Your “Set as homepage” and “add to favorites” pages don’t work. I have no idea if I’ve already said this or not. At least, they don’t work in Firefox.
Awards Won - Instead of “Site name @ link to award,” which sounds confusing and looks like the site won the award or something, organize it more, “award name -from- Site name” or something like that
Contact Us - Provide the visitor with an email. Just in case the form doesn’t work. It doesn’t have to be anything big, just a simple:
In case the form doesn’t work, email us at fhreviews[at]gmail[dot]com.
I’ve had times when I needed to email someone about something non-site related, but I forgot to record their address from before, and I go to their site to find it, but it’s not there. And the form doesn’t work either. So it’s better just to provide a back up.
Credits - This isn’t a credit page. Credits are links to places where you’ve actually used material. This is more like a links page. Not to mention, it’s impractical. You have like, ten links per page, and it doesn’t even go 1/10 of the way down your page. You can afford to have more links per page, trust me. What are you afraid of? Your site is already huge as it is.
Staff - You’ve bolded Sona’s name and age by accident. I also don’t recommend adding the n/a categories if there’s nothing there. Instead, just take them out. The countless n/a’s make the page look a little too over-crowded.
Sign/View Guestbook - Don’t call it “sign/view” if it only leads to a sign page. Either call it “sign guestbook” or make a different link for the “view guestbook.”
Layouts
I don’t like how the “new additions” only has five layouts. You’ve categorized your layouts in every way possible except for the one I like to browse in: view all. What if someone just wanted to go around looking at the layouts for fun? You also need a space between “Preview” and “||”. It’d look better that way. Alright, lets see if I can get through all of these… I’ll go down your layout list in order from DIV to Frames to Table. I’m too lazy to type out the name for each, so I’ll list the ID numbers.
79 - Image isn’t bad. I don’t like the centered text. Don’t like how the footer is situated, and I definately don’t like the pixel-stretch used. Overall, it’s a rather poorly done layout. It also lacks color…
78 - It’s too big, the font you used for the title doesn’t fit with the effect you’re trying to give the layout, and the text is hard to see because of it’s color. I am definately sensing a trend here with you.
77 - Image with text. It looks like you didn’t spend too much time on this layout. Blend an image together, and then code it into a DIV setting. The background doesn’t really fit either [hot pink? it’s rather blinding.]
DIVs by Kamilla Alright, well, I’ve gone through 3 detailed reviews of your layouts, and I see a trend here. I’m not going to bother detailing the other layouts you’ve made because I can generalize them all here: they’re huge. A lot of them need padding on the left side because the text touches the border of the browser and is hard to see. And many of them have text colors that are so close to the background, I have to lean in to read. Pixel-stretch, by the way, is not user-friendly because it makes the text harder to read. #20 also has this HUGE gap between the content and the header… which bugs me to no end because there’s NOTHING there. Out of all your DIV layouts, I’d have to say that this one is my favorite. And that’s really not saying much.
Frames - I notice a pattern here too. They’re all boxed in. You chose a specific height/width, edited an image, and then stuck little frames in them in an attempt to make them look nice. #87 is probably my favorite. [If only the font wasn’t so freakin small…] I don’t see how anyone can read the text on #83. This is a reoccuring thing with your premades; the text simply cannot be read by people because they’re so close to the background color. Either that or the background is insanely bright. Layouts like #50 make me want to shoot someone. I don’t know if it’s intended, or if it’s just a lack of coding, but there are many layouts that have completely black text [at least, they do in Firefox.] And it’s like you didn’t even code the layout. Not to mention, there is no border around the layout, there’s this ugly white background, and it looks like you too two minutes to edit an image then fake out parts of it to make it look “Iframe-like”.
Tables - I like #65. But with the exception of that layout, I have to say, your tables layouts are the weakest of the entire premade section. All I see is the same thing over and over again: image + table coding + odd placement of layout. I dislike how they’re all over-larged as well. The layout themselves leave a lot more to be desired. Anyone can take the coding of one of your layouts and then just add their own little images to it. “Tables” does not mean the same coding and structure over and over again. Take a look at the tables sections of Dixy-Pixy, Element: Rain Designs, and Would-Elven Designs. Notice how, even if they were using the same structure as your layouts, theirs are still more appealing because of the colors they used and the effects on the images.
Signs
One problem I have with these signs is the fact that I can’t view them as a whole. What if I, the visitor, did not have anything specific in mind and just wanted to pick out a nice looking sign? It’s an absolute waste of time to go looking through every page until I came to one I like.
Again, I’m faced with the same problem I had with your forum banners. They’re all differen sizes, and the page is so disorganized, it makes me want to hurt something. Not to mention, that ugly textbox you have doesn’t really help make the page look any prettier. This goes for all your pages.
Also, the category “DA” in the Moved Signs category means nothing to me. Abbreviations in the world of helping out others doesn’t do you any good. Avoid all abbreviations, even if it’s a pain in the butt for you. Afterall, it’s all for the visitors, is it not?
Neo. Graphics
I think “Neopets” would get the message better than “Neo Graphics”. Your Top Banners are too big for the content area provided, at least in one of your skins. So I suggest thumbnailing them the same way I showed you for the Forum Signatures.
A lot of your Guild Layouts don’t work either. Many of them are broken. The CCS ones, Kenshin, FFX-2, Gravitation, InuYasha, and Love Hina all have broken images. They’re also not organized very nicely. I still say, go for the thumbnailed-table look I showed you in the Forum Banners section, because it makes the page look a LOT more organized than what you have now.
User Lookups - Again, page is disorganized. The thumbnails you have are way too big, and they make the page look cluttered.
Downloads
Bookmarks - You spelled Full Moon wrong on the list. I also don’t like how they’re so big, just so people can go and click some of them for an even bigger image. There’s a broken image for the last bookmark on the Others category. And I think that the third and second to last one [they’re the same image] are CG arts. Which you have a category for.
MSN Icons - I’m wondering why these aren’t under the same category as the avatars. Either way, you have the same table coding mistakes as you do in the avatars page. Not to mention, your “View as Series” links lead me to the 100×100 avatars instead of the MSN icons.
Templates - You have “nnnnnnnn” at the top of this page. … What is that? Again, same coding errors as the Avatars page. And, I dislike how these are different sizes thrown into one page. If you can separate the avatars into different pages, you can do the same for the templates.
PNGs - Your first box for the view by series page is empty, save for the number [1]. I also dislike how you only have a few on the “View recent” page. Why not just make a “View all” page? It’d be easier, since some of us don’t have an anime in mind when we view PNGs. I didn’t bother looking through them all, since I don’t like clicking on each page, flipping through, then going back to the previous page and clicking on another one. However, the tables are too small. You end it at width = 300 when you have so much more space to fill. Width = 100% or even width = 95% please.
Tutorials
Articles - I’m not sure why you divided up the Website Basics stuff into so many parts, since… each part seems pretty sure to me. You spelled “knowledge” wrong in Part I. Instead of naming them, “Part I”, “Part II” and so on, why not just name the based on their topic? It’s easier to browse that way. So, “Website Basics: Gaining Hits” or something like that instead. I also kind of disagree with your affiliate/link exchange point on your article about gaining hits. You make it sound like affiliation is for gaining hits, but for most sites, it’s more about making friends.
CuteNews - There are two ways you can do this in a few simple You cut off there without saying anything else.
Misc - It’s typically better to add “” for the codings. For your anchors tutorial, anyways, a name=”section” and it might be nice to give examples and explain what exactly anchors are. I find that you don’t really explain the scripts you give, you just hand them out going, “do this” and that’s it. But how do the visitors learn?
You also have a lot of errors on your Web Dictionary one. For one thing, you don’t explain what things are. For another thing, my dictionary explains HTML as “A set of tags and rules (conforming to SGML) for using them in developing hypertext documents”. It’s not a language that computers use…
Your intro to Javascript tutorial has the header CSS. I’m also confused as to what exactly you’re explaining. This isn’t an intro to Javascript, it’s… a really badly written introduction to HTML.
As for your HTML starters article, h1 is a header, it’s not “big and bold” as you claim. And some of your examples don’t fit with the given description of what they’re supposed to be. Not to mention, a lot of them go off the page.
And your CSS tutorial is just screwed. Take a look at the page yourself.
Overall - Your tutorials are not tutorials. Instead, they’re just a bunch of scripts you decided to put on a page. Tutorials are supposed to teach people something, what exactly are you teaching them?
Final Statement
Overall? I gave up reviewing. Your content is jumbled and very hard to get through. You have a lot of errors on your site, and it makes me think that you don’t proof-read what you write. Or, at least, you don’t look at your own pages after you’re done uploading them.
I also think that you have too much content, most of which are useless things that seem to be filling up space. Not to mention the bajillion pages I had to flip through to get what I wanted. My two key tips for you are to (1) thumbnail everything and use tables to organize them better and (2) go back and reread/check everything you put up. A lot of errors are glaring and obvious.
I think you need to go back and prune some things, make some quality-checks, and just organize the site better. Because right now, it’s just a bunch of things crammed into a large layout.