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Review for DigiCreation
The details of the layout, the functionality of the layout, the welcoming message: on their own, they’re impressive, but together, DigiCreation sends out an “I know what I’m doing!” vibe. The title font is big enough, the welcome message is clear, the navigation is orderly…you make a great first impression. Right now, though, I’m thinking that the contrasts in the main banner could use more contrast and interest—more about that in the layout section.
Information
Site: DigiCreation
Type: Resource
Owner: Veve
Reviewed By: Sanosuke & Megumi
Date Received: 7/4/06
Date Completed: 11/1106
Preview
Presentation
Layout Design
In terms of functionality and efficacy, your layout succeeds brilliantly. You’ve found a midpoint between being “overly functional” and “sporting a huge, brushed-up banner”; you’ve managed to make an unusual color scheme work; and the overall craftsmanship is of high-quality.
I have a quibble with the footer image, though. At first, I didn’t like the solidity of it; but looking at it now, I like the way it draws the relatively soft, unbounded layout together. The reason I had misgivings about it at first, I think, is the color. Gradient wise, your layout is top-heavy; all the solid colors seem to be at the bottom. A vertical gradient that transitioned the white of the content and navigation area to the beige (as used at the top of the content area) would help to unify the bottom of your layout.
Also, I think that the textual copyright statements makes the bottom of the page look a little messy. With the footer you’re using, you could move the text to the right of the “Back/Home/Top” links, like this:
The box you’re using for your updates seems a little too dark to read comfortably. Instead of using medium-value shades for both the text portion and the “Updated On..” information, why not contrast them? You could lighten up the text part a little, and darken the date information to the dark red shade in the bottom-right corner of your banner (and use white text, perhaps).
In general, you tend to clump light-value colors with each other, and medium-values with each other…so while the colors mix well, the intensity is a bit bland. The contrast of “DigiCreation” in the main banner works very well—the rest of your layout could benefit from this as well.
And really, that’s it. You did well with this layout—the details are amazing.
Coding
Your coding habits are beautiful. The only thing I was slightly suspicious of was this, in your contact page:
<form action="" method="post">
It’s quite possible that you’re running a PHP script in the same page, or that you have a PHP statement for the action attribute that’s invisible when I view your source—but, on the off chance that it’s not, there you go.
On another note, I don’t know if it’s entirely logical to have your affiliate buttons be inside <p id="aff">, considering that the paragraph tag implies text. It doesn’t make any difference which one you use, but having a <div id="aff"> instead seems a little more logical.
Content
I like the fact that you move straight to the point. You list the important things on the first page: what this site is about, the terms of the site, and then updates.
Your pages navigation for your updates doesn’t fit into its surroundings. Everything else around it is centered nicely, while it’s just sitting aligned to the left. It’s also incredibly long. A few more updates, and the pages will start moving down to the next line. Perhaps a next/previous navigation like that of Blinding-Light or an actual updates archive like that of Harienju would work better. Sooner or later, your navigation would be one big sea of numbers all clumped together.
- “If typing it correctly is a task too difficult” –> “if typing it correctly is too difficult”
- “So, it’s been around for three years. (Wow, who knew it’d last so long.)” –> is this really needed? Granted, not all visitors can do basic math, but the sentence itself seems rather useless, especially since you already said that the site was opened in 2003.
- “All original materials (content, design and coding) belongs to Veve, or otherwise stated.” –> “All original materials (content, design, and coding) belong to Veve, unless otherwise stated.”
- “The layouts offered by DigiCreation may be used under the conditions written in the Terms of Service.” –> “may” be used is misleading. By definition, may indicates a possibility. Thus, by saying “the layouts may be used under these conditions,” the visitor is given the impression that it’s optional to follow the terms of service.
About Site
About “the” site would probably be more correct. I like the way you tell a story with your information. I also like how you explain the systems of your site. Though, the credential system seems to fit more into a Terms of Service page than an About this Site page. Not everyone who wants to download will read your About this Site page, but everyone who wants to download a layout would should read your Terms of Service page; after all, your layouts pages provide a clear link to the Terms of Service. I see that you have provided a link to this page on your Terms of Service Page. But instead of keeping information separated on two different pages, why not make the About page about the history of the site itself and the TOS/Information page more on the systematic point of view?
- “The “Animes Graphics Community” as those who are in it like to call it,” –> “The “Anime Graphics Community,” as those in it like to call it”
- “[…] consists of websites that either create designs with animanga (anime or manga) images themselves or are affiliated with such websites.” –> instead of defining animanga, why not just use an acronym tag? Granted, animanga is not an acroynym per se, but it is in need of an explanation, and for a reader to stop in mid-sentence and read the explanation interrupts the entire sentence.
- “[…] on a few fundamental philosphies that will” –> philosphies should be “philosophies.”
- “But if they don’t or don’t want to link back for whatever reason, that’s okay, too, because I want to, and I chose to provide layouts out of my own accord.” –> “But if they don’t or don’t want to link back for whatever reason, that’s okay too; I want to and I chose to provide layouts out of my own accord.”
- “They made design possible” –> “They made the designs possible”
- “Long before I learn the name of a site, I learn to recognize their layouts.” –> either “the name of a site … its layouts” or “the name of sites … their layouts”, but not both.
Linkage
For a graphic site, perhaps you should provide more link buttons of various sizes. It is true that the animanga webdesign community rarely use buttons of other sizes, but it is possible and since it is a resource site, and also one focusing on providing useful materials for everyone, shouldn’t you also provide linking buttons for everyone as well?
- “I link websites because I like them. I like these websites.” –> “I link websites because I like them, and I like these websites” (though, I’m not quite sure why you’d repeat that you like these if you’ve already established that you’ll only link ones that you like. Rather repetitive, don’t you think?)
Credits
I like how you’ve listed everything out, especially the fact that you’ve given credit to all the owners of the various series that you use for your layouts.
“About the Layout” would be more fitting if it was called “Current Layout Credits” or something in that form. You’re not really describing your layout as the “about” would suggest, you’re merely listing the credits for the layout.
- The link to Elysa’s site doesn’t work.
- Programs: “The tools that I use from creating the site” –> “The tools that I use for creating the site”
- Miscellaneous: “The little odds and ends makes all the difference.” –> “The little odds and ends [that] make all the difference.]
- Galleries: “The gallery where the images, of each provided layout, were obtained” –> “The galleries where the images of each provided layout were obtained”
- “W3Schools - Start from ground up.” –> “W3Schools - start from the ground up.”
- “Webmonkey - […] the place where beginners should start off at.” –> “Webmonkey - […] the place where beginners should start off.”
About Me/Contact
Why do you have a “tools” section if you’ve already listed them in your credits page and what do your tools have to do with you?
I see that when you list your emails, you bold the important, email parts and not the parts that need to be removed or changed. So why isn’t “com” bolded? It shouldn’t be removed or changed, and yet it’s not bolded, but if someone typed an email as faltered@hotmail. for example, that wouldn’t wouldn’t send, would it?
Moving onto the contact form, maybe it would be proper to indicate somewhere in that space what the asterisk (*) stands for. While most people would probably know that an asterisk (*) stands for a required field, you can’t assume that everyone knows what it means.
Also, from past experience with your contact form, if someone misses typing in a certain field, it refreshes back to the top of the contact page. Except, there’s an error message all the way at the bottom of the page where the form is. How would someone be able to tell that they missed something if they’re assuming that they’re just being refreshed back to the original page because the form has been processed? An actual page containing just an error message or a “your email has been processed” message would be more understandable.
- “Naturally, longer than 3 years as I’ve only started this DigiCreation once I’ve accumulated enough experience to not screw people over.” –> “Naturally, it has been longer than 3 years as I’ve only started DigiCreation once I’ve accumulated enough experience to not screw people over.”
- “I believe a good design already have itself embedded in the image.” –> “I believe a good design already has itself embedded in the image.”
- “It gives me the general idea of where you’re coming from and reminds of your online presence.” –> “It gives me the general idea of where you’re coming from and reminds me of your online presence.”
Affiliation
There is an error with your page in IE:
It only occurs at that line (where your description for Blinding Light is) and in IE. We can’t figure out what’s causing it, so we’re going to blame it on the cursed IE. Perhaps you’ll have more luck?
- Your choice of design for Clawed Designs leads to a broken link.
- “Clawed Designs owned by Fanta and Kalliel” should be “Effluence” instead of “Clawed Designs”
TOS/Information
I like the fact that you’ve provided a very detailed description of everything.
- “newer designs will undoubtfully be ‘accurate’ and efficacious in its coding and structural logic” –> “newer designs will undoubtedly be more ‘accurate’ and efficacious in their coding and structural logic”
Layout Sets
- No doubt you’ve been mentioned this before, but we’ll mention it again. Your DIV/CSS layouts have a horizontal scroll in IE 6 for the frame. (it’s only in IE 6, but unfortunately, some people - like the public library and my school computers and my parents… - haven’t switched to IE 7 nor are they planning on doing so)
- For the series for Dawn of Tomorrow, you wrote “Final Fantasy –”. Just letting you know that it’s Final Fantasy X. And Google isn’t an image source. It would be better if you credited the place you actually got the image from. If I googled “fullmetal alchemist” and got some sort of wallpaper, does that mean I can use it as an image on my layout?
- Your first three layouts, Summer Love, Gentle Petals, and Dawn of Tomorrow all contain faint watermarks with your URL on them. Now that just defeats the whole purpose of having “freeware, not linkware” graphics, does it not? I can understand that these might have been added before the new freeware rule was implemented, but that doesn’t excuse them from following the same system.
- Sensorial II is listed as “Original Artwork” under series while all of your other original stuff are listed simply as “Original”. Small thing to pick on, but constancy is a very good thing to have, it keeps visitors from becoming too confused.
- The introduction of Whispers | Zodiac is a bit hard to read, especially the underlined portions:
Your background for that portion is too bold, and if it were faded back a bit more the words could be more easily read.
- Untitled (Rurouni Kenshin) is aligned awkwardly. It’s not quite at the center, but not quite at either side either. Not to mention, it side-scrolls when my browser isn’t open at full screen [here is a preview.]
- The hover you used for I’m so Sorry is way too distracting. It’s a nice layout overall, but as soon as I hover over those red links, I get this blinding, bold white line. I remember you telling the girls of Acerbic Bitches once that even when one hovers over a link, they’re still supposed to read it; well, the bold white underline makes it incredibly hard to read the red.
- Heroes Never Die looks beautiful and unique. It’s kind of interesting watching you transition from soft, light layouts to bold, sharp ones. One problem I have with this layout though, is the link color for your navigation. The light, orange color that you chose is very hard to read, especially at the very top [as shown in the screenshot.] If you’re going to go with using yellow/orange in the navigation, I’d suggest going with a dark brown shade, because right now it’s not readable and it won’t be readable if you go lighter either.
Final Statement
Considering that one of us is affiliated with you and the other is currently sponsoring you, I probably don’t need to tell you that we’re both fans of your site. I can’t say my impression of your site has changed with this review, but there are a few freeware layouts that don’t follow your current systems of freeware-not-linkware and quality-over-quantity, and that ruins the validity and credibility of your site. Overall though, we enjoyed doing this review.
One Comment to “DigiCreation”
Veve Says:
November 12th, 2006 at 12:16 amIn response:
The footer was made with solid colours because I had intented to “ground” the layout. I never thought about adding a gradient to the footer, but I do like what I see. I’ll try it out as soon as I find the time.
“In general, you tend to clump light-value colors with each other, and medium-values with each other…so while the colors mix well, the intensity is a bit bland.”
Heh, you’re not the first one to tell me this. I have the tendency to fall into the same tone of colours. ‘Tis why I try to experiment with colours that are contrasting by nature. But I’m getting some mixed signals here. On one hand, you think the updates box is too dark yet you also think I clumb together like values?
“You did well with this layout—the details are amazing.”
Thank you! I really do feel it’s one of my bigger accomplishments.
“It’s quite possible that you’re running a PHP script in the same page, or that you have a PHP statement for the action attribute that’s invisible when I view your source—but, on the off chance that it’s not, there you go.”
That is odd to say in the least. The script works and I have commanded it to print, but it’s not printing what it’s supposed to.
“On another note, I don’t know if it’s entirely logical to have your affiliate buttons be inside [code], considering that the paragraph tag implies text.”
You’re right. It should be a unordered list of inline items. I need to get around to fixing that.
“It’s also incredibly long. A few more updates, and the pages will start moving down to the next line.”
I know it’s long because I like all my links layed out infront of me. Many sites limit their pagnation to a few links while it has the capacity to fit in more. It’s misleading because you don’t know where it is going to end. Rest assure that it will not move onto the next line; once it reaches a “limit”, it will set off a conditional statement that will shuffle to the next set of links accompanied by the total number of pages.
OT: Do consider a top margin for heading level 2.
“…instead of defining animanga, why not just use an acronym tag?”
The abbreviation tag is the more appropriate suggestion.
“For a graphic site, perhaps you should provide more link buttons of various sizes.”
Reviewers never fail to tell me that and I never listen. Once my communities start using those other dimensions, I’ll start creating them. The second most popular graphic I see is the 468×60 banner for rotations. I have one of those. I just don’t like it. I never had much of a talent for these small graphics.
“An actual page containing just an error message or a “your email has been processed” message would be more understandable.”
Thanks. A new page is not necessary, though. I’ll just create an internal link.
“We can’t figure out what’s causing it, so we’re going to blame it on the cursed IE.”
It’s a variant of IE’s flickering/peekaboo bug. There are a number of fixes but none of them seem to work for all situations. Solutions include a double background (one on the actual element and one for the container holding it), a javascript command, add a line height and relative positioning.
“Clawed Designs owned by Fanta and Kalliel.”
I am extremely sorry for that, Fanta. ^^;
“No doubt you’ve been mentioned this before, but we’ll mention it again.”
A suggestion for a fix would be nice.
“Now that just defeats the whole purpose of having “freeware, not linkware” graphics, does it not?”
I use to have a clause for that in the Terms of Service. I guess I deleted that when I updated it. Thanks for pointing that out.
“Sensorial II” and “Untitled (Rurouni Kenshin)” are both in line to be scrapped in the next update. I’ll fix that hover on “I’m so Sorry”; I didn’t find it to be distracting when it was first implemented. And yes, when a link is hovered, it shouldn’t disappear into the background as with the case on AB.
“I’d suggest going with a dark brown shade, because right now it’s not readable and it won’t be readable if you go lighter either.”
Actually, going darker doesn’t help the cause because that shade of blue is darker than it is light. I have tried a dark red before I settled on the orange. If you have a hex code recommendation, lay it on me.
“…that don’t follow your current systems of freeware-not-linkware and quality-over-quantity…”
You have made your point about freeware vs. linkware, but I may have missed the point about quantity outweighing quality.
Thanks for the review, ladies.