Staff

Past Staff

Review for Miss Misfit

Yet another new layout? That was fast… or maybe I’m just really slow at reviewing. In any case, I liked the last layout [the bold, green one] and I like this one as well. It’s an interesting combination of colors, and what’s more: it actually looks nice. It’s rare to find a designer who is able to pull off putting orange and green next to each other. The layout is vibrant and bold, a good combination.

Information

Site: Miss Misfit
Type: Personal
Owner: Lindsey
Reviewed By: Sanosuke
Date Received: 11/3/06
Date Completed: 1/11/07
Preview

Presentation

I’ve mentioned before that I like your layout; I’m not going to waste time nit-picking at it, seeing as that’s not my forte. The overall layout looks well-balanced; might I suggest though, a change in the footer? Since the header has the black-outline/white background protruding out at the very top, why not make the footer the same way? It’d look more balanced; here’s an example:

I’m currently using an 800 x 600 resolution with IE 6 as my only browser… your layout has a gap in it in IE 6:

I fiddled around with your coding, and I dont’ think you need the following coding:

You also have a problem with your blockquotes, at least in IE 6:

It occurs because of your padding; adding padding to the top and bottom makes the content below it move. If you changed padding: 0.5em; to padding: 0 0.5em; for your blockquote, it would work.

Content

After reading the first two pages or so, I’ve realized that your sentences are usually really short and list-like. [That’s like me saying “I’ve realized your sentences are short. I’ve realized your sentences are list-like.”] They’re repeatative. [Though, my example was slightly stretched.] I don’t want to completely rewrite your site for you, as me expressing your thoughts and you doing so aren’t the same thing, but I do suggest going back, rereading your pages, and rewritting a few things and combining more sentences. [Make them fuller, not so short and broken.] I’ve combined few sentences in your General Information page, and I didn’t bother doing so afterwards; these aren’t, you must do this or anything though, just suggestions.

Lindsey

“Here’s some information about me. I’ve provided extensive information about me and I’m hoping to add more soon to feature my art and other things.” –> It’s repetative; here’s some information about me, I’ve provided information about me. Try: “Here is some extensive information about me. I’m hoping to add more soon to feature my art and other things.”

General Information

“Basically, I’m 17 years old. I currently reside in Quezon City, Philippines.” –> You’re not basically 17 years old, you are 17 years old. “I’m 17 years old, currently residing in Quezon City, Philippines.”
“I have very dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. I have Filipino, Spanish and Chinese blood. I have some evident Spanish features. You will not see a hint of Chinese in me. I have large eyes, wavy hair, full lips and I have long eyelashes.” –> It’s possible to combine all these together to make less sentences and slightly more flow. “I have large, dark brown eyes, wavy dark brown hair, full lips, and long eyelashes. I haev Filipino, Spanish and Chinese blood and while I have evident Spanish features, you will not see a hint of Chinese in me.”
“I have two parents who have been happily married for 20 years. I also have a younger sister who’s a year and a half my junior.” –> “I have two parents who have been happily married for 20 years and a younger sister who’s a year and a half my junior.”
“I love my family. We haven’t had many trials as a family. We get along very well and I’m very happy about that.” –> “I love my family. I’m happy that we haven’t had many trials s a family and that we get along very well.”

Education

It’s interesting that you have your school schedule up, but for those of us who don’t go to your school, it might seem a bit confusing. For example, I have four periods a day, and it seems that you have 10? [And you’re taking Algebra and Calculus at the same time?] It might be helpful to explain your schedule a bit if you’re going to have it up. [For example, what are the blanks for? What is “internet”? What’s “club”?]

Also, the way you have the tables set up is a bit confusing to read. There are no borders, and the words are crowded together. I would also suggest centering the table and making each column the same size to add more organization. [If you’re going to make the columns the same size, Organic Chemisty might have to be abbreviated to OC.]

So, instead of what you have now, try for the first few lines of your coding:

<table cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" width="90%" border=”1″ align=”center”> <tr> <td width=”18%”>Monday</td> <td width=”18%”>Tuesday</td> <td width=”18%”>Wednesday</td> <td width=”18%”>Thursday</td> <td width=”18%”>Friday</td> </tr>

And the rest can remain the same.

Convalescence

“Refer to these entries to find out what happened before and after the operation […]” –> one of the links you provided is a 404 page instead.

Music

Music files tend to take up a lot of bandwidth when directly downloaded, and I don’t recommend allowing people to directly listen to music. Then again, I’m one of those people with a terribly old and slow computer; and clicking on a music file would not only take forever for it to load, it might potentially blow up my computer.

I suggest saving the files in a .zip file instead and allowing people to download that way.

There’s also an inconsistancy in the way you’ve displayed your files. The first two sections [you singing and you singing with the piano] have the file size contained within the link [i.e. Link (# MB)] but the last category [you playing the piano] has the file size outside of the link [i.e. Link (#MB)]

Challenges

It would be nice if the site you won the challenge from was listed as well. Something more like this, perhaps.

Writing

Your articles were interesting reads, but I felt they lacked details. If you’re going to take the time to type up an article to try to help others, why not add more helpful details? A lot of times, the only reasoning you use for justifying your points is, “other people don’t like it.” [For example, I personally like sites with text justification because I like the neater, cleaner look; so I wouldn’t have taken your text alignment article seriously. Are there any other reasons why people should align their text to the left? And how would you be able to dictate what the ‘majority of people’ like?]

I would also suggest more examples [text, link, or graphical.] Compare and contrast things visually. [”This is what your site looks like with this size font; this is what it looks like with a bigger sized font.”]

The Nitty-Gritty on Web Design

Separating your styling from your content

“[…] article that will hopefully inform some website junkies some extra tips on handling your website.” –> “[…] article that will hopefully give some website junkies extra tips on handling their website.”
“It is important to separate the codes that will style your website from the actual content.” –> Dictionary.com defines important as ‘mattering much’. However, I don’t think it matters too much on the actual ‘quality’ of ‘design and content’. Perhaps “it is highly recommended” might be a better way to phrase this than “it is important”. Also, the tutorial/article that you linked would be of no use to beginners who have no idea what CSS is about. If they didn’t know about CSS beforehand, the tutorial wouldn’t be of much help.

Overdoing your images - It’d be great if you used examples of other sites for people to look at. [”This is an example of a site with minimal graphics that still looks nice.”] It might also be useful if you mentioned the side-effects to having huge headers, since ‘it doesn’t always look nicer’ usually isn’t someone’s main concern in making graphics. [It wouldn’t load properly would be one reason, another would be the fact that people with smaller resolutions wouldn’t be able to view the full site.]

“In fact, you don’t need the a very complex graphic either.” –> “In fact, you don’t need a very complex graphic at all.”
“[…] more important than design, most especially in persona websites.” –> “[…] more important than design, especially in personal websites.”

Image Quality vs. Speed - it’s interesting to read about the different formats, but it would be recommended that if you’re writing an article, you should explain more. For example, what is optimization? Why should people do it, versus just normal saving? I was under the impression that articles were to help others, not make them look up stuff on their own.

The Nitty-Gritty on Web Design Continued

Text Size - It might be helpful to specify how big each size looks as an example, so people know what they’re putting on their site without having to experiment with different sizes.

Navigation

“Keep in mind that (most especially for Personal websites) your Visitor content is not of high priority!” –> That’s your personal opinion, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what everyone feels. Some people might just believe that their visitor content is more important. I agree with listing things by importance, but what determines which parts of my site are more important?

Header Images - Okay, so the ideal height is 300px or 400px; why is that a good size? What about making them smaller? And what about the width of a header image? How big should those be?

Splash Pages - There are a lot of sites that use splash pages for other purposes. Brenda of Little Wonder gives a good explaination of why she has a splash page on her site. Other sites like Ainoyume.net use splash pages for different versions of their sites. Instead of just saying it’s useless, perhaps you should elaborate on how it’s useless. [For example, if my site only worked in one browser, why shouldn’t I have a splash page?]

Tables vs. Divs

“Why have tables when you can use the really awesome, CSS powered DIVS!” –> Because it’s harder to master? I usually recommend beginners to grasp the hold of tables before they learn how to use DIVs. Tables are a lot easier to code for more complicated layouts, and DIVs have a lot of padding and browser compatibility issues that tables don’t. If someone is advanced in tables already, I’d advise them to try out DIVs because it would benefit them. But if they’re just starting out - or even if they’re somewhat intermediate - I wouldn’t mislead them into thinking they should try out DIVs.

Site Differentiation

Your article’s introduction claims that it will be about the different types of sites in ‘our little online community’, but you’ve only addressed two different types of sites. You don’t actually speak of product/site differentiation until the last two paragraphs when you start addressing WPRs. The article might’ve been more properly named “Differenciation between Personal and Graphic sites” or something of that nature, because the current name is slightly misleading.

“This article is all about distinguishing the different types of websites our little online community has to offer.” –> “This article is all about distinguishing the different types of website that our little online community has to offer.”
“Shouldn’t a personal website contain more personal content rather than graphics? Number one mistake, kiddies.” –> Are you trying to say that the idea that personal content rather than graphics is a mistake or the thought in itself is a mistake?
“The first gives a compliment to the layout design of your website, the overall look. The second merely compliments your graphical content.” –> Actually, the term ‘graphics’ typically doesn’t refer to anything that has to do with a layout. An icon could be a graphic, as would buttons. But a layout isn’t a ‘graphic’.

Domain

“I generally get along better with people who are old than I am.” –> I generally get along better with people who are older than I am.”

Hosting

It would be nice if you specified some rules for hosting or preferences you have, seeing as you’re probably not going to take any site that applies for hosting. For example, if I were to apply for hosting for my only site, do I have to have two other samples of my work in order to apply, what kinds of stuff are considered ’samples’ [can I give you three icons I made, or do they have to be three layouts?] It is better to list conditions and requirements first, rather than have the visitor/applicant sit and wonder.

Layouts Archive - The way everything is laid out on this site right now is cluttered. After scrolling for a long time, I had a hard time telling where one layout started and the other ended. Perhaps it might be easier to list everything with the image aligned to the left and the text to the right; similar to how our site thumbnail previews above look. It might also be helpful for you to provide image credits [and any other credits] when applicable, seeing as I highly doubt you took all those pictures by yourself.

Awards - I think I mentioned this before, but linking the site where you got the award from would be nice.

Credits and Resources - More information to the links [especially the FamFamFam one] would be nice; what kind of help did these sites provide for you? [Ex: what did Akismet do? How did Hybrid Gensis help you?] An example of a really well-built credits page is this one, notice how she lists the reasons each site is on her page.

Visitor

Avatars - As someone who likes viewing other people’s avatars, I’ve always found a preference for viewing them in bulk instead of by category. This is merely a suggestion, but perhaps a “view all” page would be a nice addition, for those of us who just like browsing.

Color Schemes - While you have a lot of very pretty color schemes, I’m not sure how people would be able to use them. Perhaps adding the hex codes to each color would be a better way of displaying these color schemes.

Final Statement

Overall, I found this site a very interesting read. There’s a lot of information here, ranging from very personal to visitor-centric. I would suggest, however, restructuring your sentences a bit more for an easier read and perhaps adding more detailed credits [especially on your Layouts Archive page.]

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 11th, 2007 at 4:41 pm and is filed under Personal. 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.

One Comment to “Miss Misfit”

Lindsey Says:
January 14th, 2007 at 3:45 am
Thanks for reviewing me. I’ve added it to my website together with my replies on this page:
http://www.miss-misfit.com/domain/site-reviews/review-by-sanosuke/