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Review for Effluence

Ew, what might this be? Considering I visit your site every single day, spam your inboxes every single hour, and own Kalliel’s soul… what can I possibly say other than I love you guys? Taking on the title of, “first time viewer”, though, my first impression would be, “now this is different.” First thing I see is a huge ExtremeTracker image. Probably not the most attractive and welcoming thing to be looking at first.

Information

Site: Effluence
Type: Resource
Owner: Fanta & Kalliel
Reviewed By: Sanosuke
Date Received: 1/31/06
Date Completed: 8/20/06
Preview

Presentation

I like the color-combination though, rich green-and-purple, definately not something you’d see every day. The coding is very clean; I marvel at your ability to code in DIV.

Your headers overlap:

And it’s awkward to read. A bit more padding would be nice.The dark… is that purple? Purple background for the links are too dark to see in those little update boxes, but too obvious against the normal green background. A lighter… green background with dark purple text perhaps? Then again, don’t listen to me. I have no color sense.

The Older Updates box should be centered, along with any other navigations on other pages pages that aren’t centered. [Your layouts page isn’t centered either. But avatars and textures seem to be doing fine.]

Overall though, beautifully made layout. Clean, simple, unique. Yeah. I’m at a loss of words.

Content

Graphics >> Layouts

What’s with the mouse-overs? Every image and/or link I hover over has the title, _blank Oh, but that’s misleading. Because after I click on the link, I’m lead to… the same page? But, I thought _blank meant a new page. Unless the _blank was supposed to be some secret code. Most likely though, you meant target="_blank", not title="_blank". That would be nicer, I wouldn’t be torn between going to a new site after looking at your layout, or actually moving and clicking that annoying little back button. On that note, the zipped, download files do not need to open in a new window, so they don’t really need the target="_blank". Because it’s definately fun to have a fresh, white, blank page POP up just so another little POP up window can ask you if you want to save or open the zip. Oh no, more work for Sanosuke, she actually has to close the window now.

Some of your layouts overlap the bottom border, most likely because your description wasn’t big enough. There isn’t much overlap for the most part, so perhaps adding one line to each description would be nice. Here’s a thought: instead of having the series featured in the header along with the name of the layout, move that part down to the actual description section. That way, your preview thumbnails won’t overlap, and some of the longer series names won’t go down onto a second line [which also has a rather unorganized look.] Anyways, onto the layouts…

• Function - Very beautifully done. Simple, but at the same time, not something that anybody could duplicate. [Very Fantaesque?] I like the color-choice, and the overall alignment of the layout. I’m not quite sure I’m in love with the second box under the navigation though, it seems like it’s out of place, as if it has no purpose and doesn’t quite fit in. Also the way that it suddenly cuts off into the blue footer is awkward, unlike how the navigation above it ran through the top blue header. [Am I making sense?]
• Laconic - I like the choice of color. Props to you for using bright yellow and making it actually work. The layout itself, though, seems a bit plain. I’m curious as to whether you took that picture yourself, or if you took it off of another site. [If you got it off of another site, it would be nice to credit them.] This layout doesn’t have as much fancy ’stuff’ as the others, and while the colors are gorgeous, the overall layout looks a little too simple for my taste.
• Garden Mist - Another gorgeous layout. Even though this one only uses one image, like the last one, it’s a lot more advanced. [I copied it once, so you know what I think of it?] The colors, again, are awsome. One pet peeve I had about this though, is the small protruding header at the very top. It seems oddly out of place.
  
• Preamble - Wow, look at the colors. If there’s one thing Fanta isn’t afraid of, it’s to use colors. I kind of get mixed feelings about this entire layout. I’m not sure I like all of the color usages, but I can’t help but stare at it all the same; so, I asked a friend, and she said that it’s not anti-aliased, which makes everything pixely. Don’t ask me, I know nothing about that, but… *cough* onto the rest of the review. There are a few misalignment problems, like the below:
  That little brown piece looks incredibly out of place and uncomfortable. Everything on this layout does look pixely, especially some of the font that you used. For example, that footer that starts, “Site (c) your name…” looks smooshed together.
• Stairway - … What is it with you and these layouts that make me sit and stare for hours on end? Seriously, it’s like, *open* … *stare…* [half an hour later] *… stare* [And I’m at work too…] *Ahem* In any case, it’s a beautiful layout, though slightly overdone at parts. I think the image itself is brilliantly characterized by the environment you put it in, but the layout just seems so freakin busy. Also, your home][ ][back][bookmark thing confuses me, what’s with all the brackets? And that random blank spot. Either way, it’s beautiful.
• Autumn Breeze - I can’t find anything to say about this. Its probably one of my favorite premades.
• Seventh Sin - Maybe I’m getting lazy, and my brain has died from the crack overload, but I can’t think of a single thing to say about this layout either. I like it? So I’ll babble instead. I remember seeing this layout back when I first visited Effluence [yeah, you updated that around the time I first visited I think…] I remember thinking, omigosh, she likes Roy, I’m so totally friending her. Yeah. End of useless rambles.
• My Planner - I’m not sure I like the rainbow background. I personally think this layout would work a lot better if its given a solid background instead, and not such a dark shade of purple either. Perhaps a lighter lavender would work better? The link to that tutorial is broken, so consider finding another one? It would also look better if the headers were fully running till the end and not padded at the right:
  
• No Title - Mmm, maps, interesting concept. I like the overall feel of it, though I’m not sure its very useful for most people because of the navigation. I’m also wondering how the heck one changes the “your site name” thing on the graphic if they don’t have Photoshop and is a complete noob. My only real problem with this layout is the fact that the top margin is smaller that the bottom margin in the preview below:
  
• Soliloquy - For some reason, its not aligning properly in Firefox. I’m not sure why though? And I don’t like the lack of color in the content box. The entire content area is black, with the exception of one orange link. Making the header a dark brown and perhaps the font a dark, dark green might look better.
• Goddess Glow - haha, the terms of use are different for this layout. I can tell its an old one. To be quite honest, I don’t like it; probably because I know you can do a lot better. Actually, I take that back. Sort of. I like the bottom, I don’t like the header. It looks a little too ‘plain’, and I’m not sure I like the jagged top. In short, Fanta could do so much better.
• And the Apple - I know, this layout’s being reviewed last. ‘Cause Fanta was being a poo-head and adding new stuff. In any case, it’s nice. Really nice. I love the colors, the effect, just everything. Except for a few minor details. The backgrounds of the headers [”Welcome to” and “Latest Update”, those things] seem a bit too much; they’re rather distracting, and a solid color for the background might do better. Also, there are these gray spots at the right of your overall header, pointed out [rather poorly] by me in the following image: Not sure if they were meant to be there, but they look like they weren’t.
  

Graphics >> Textures

I’m not sure some of these textures are fully usable as far as textures for graphics go. Some of these fabrics that you scanned look a little too busied to be used for graphics, especially the flowered ones.

Graphics >> Avatars

I really love your avatars. For the most part, they’re beautifully made, but there are a few [like this one] that have fonts that really don’t work with the avatar and stands out way too much.

The qualities of the last four icons lessened a great deal compared to everything before them. They look less thought-out and unique. Then again, it could just be the fact that Fanta’s lovely and sarcastic comments aren’t pasted all over them.

I’m liking the alt tag you used for these icons, but a title tag with the same information might also be useful since alt does not show up in browsers like Firefox.

And hey, what’s the difference between “None” and “Generic”?

Et Cetera >> About Effluence

You named this page on the navigation About Effluence and on the actual page, About, it might be nice to keep things consistant.

Effluence was established [on] May 18,2005.

Oh look, I just corrected a grammar mistake on a site owned by Kalliel. The world has ended. *Ahem* In any case, The Dictionary.com definition of effluence states:

1. The act or an instance of flowing out.
2. Something that flows out or forth; an emanation: “tremendous emotional effluences that affected blocks of people at a time, causing them to walk faster” (Coleman Dowell).

So not exactly litter? Though, I suppose that stuff flows from the sewers… but a lot of other stuff flow. But anyways, onto pointing out grammar mistakes because they make me feel better about myself.

And then[,] after many hours of coding the overly complicated [and] brilliantly wired graphics database, I [opened?] the site with some of the graphics I’d made. (etc. etc.)

I’m not sure you need to start every paragraph with the word “and”. And then, and up… you can just take the ands from the beginning out.

Up sprang another graphics site with an unoriginal three-column tables layout that no one could really care about, frequently visit, or even acknowledge… completely unoriginal[, that is,] except for this very fine Ooga Booga tag:

Cute tag, by the way. Very original indeed.

I enjoyed reading this page. It’s definately different, and it has a very Fanta-and-Kalliel air to it. One can really see your personalities shine through the page. [Or at least, they can see it. I’m not sure about the shining part…]

Et Cetera >> Linking & Credits

Again, you named this page differently on the navigation and the actual page itself. Perhaps “Linkage & Credits” might be more fitting for the navigation, since there are two basic sections in the page: Linkage, and Credits.

A “What is direct linking” hover might be nice for that link to the explaination of direct linking. Again, with the title tag:

<a xhref="URL here" title="What is direct linking?">direct link</a>

I like the way you formatted your links out page with little descriptions of each site. [Oh look who’s first…] For the description for Infradia though:

Just when you start to think, “okay, there are no original ideas left,” you visit Infradia[…] and not only are [the] layouts original, they’re well-designed too.

Your credits are inconsistant with your links out. Your links out are listed:

Link: Description

While your credits are:

Link - Description

Minor detail, maybe, but small details can make a big difference. [Or something like that. Just… change the darn links so they all look the same.]

Your description for APAG needs to be updated, because I highly doubt you used an image from there for the current layout, and the link to Beatrix in the description for the Celestial Star gallery needs to be updated as well.

Et Cetera >> Contact Us

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but you spelled your email wrong. Last time I forgot Fanta’s email and went to copy-and-paste that one, it got sent back to me. And just to show off my wonderful memorization and stalker skills, I’ll give you your real email: shep [at] overthefalls.com. See? You don’t even need to go look it up, just copy-and-paste.

The text for “Website URL” is pushed down a line [at least it is in Firefox.] It’d look a lot better if everything was aligned [hint hint: the textarea needs to be resized] and none of the labels took up more than one line. Just ’cause I’m an organization nazi.

The colors you chose for the contact form [that ucky brown color] doesn’t quite look right with the beautiful, rich greens and purples of the layout. Perhaps a darker reddish brown would do better. Also, when you click “submit”, the text is a bit too far up in the page.

Oh, and you spelled “asterisk” wrong.

Et Cetera >> Terms and Disclaimer

The dates for the terms and disclaimer aren’t in the same format. The first is:

Month day, year

While the second is:

Month/day/year

So call me anal, but everything should be in the same format. For organization sake and for my sanity. Likewise, the fourth term under general has a period instead of a colon after the bolded portion.

And right under your terms:

If you do either of these three things, I will be “LIKE OMG YOU SOULESS EVIL ANTEATER, YOU!!!!11one!”

I thought you had four?

You’ve used Chobits, Final Fantasy, X and .Hack as well for your avatars, so the Disclaimer needs to be updated.

Final Statement

You make me speechless. And unprofessional. Overall, I love your site. I love you. And there really wasn’t much I could say about the site other than that.