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Review for Twyt no Sekai
The first thing I (Souji) think of when I see your layout is, “Well, what is that?” The fading effect that you used on your header is travels up too far that it really detracts from what the image is. After squinting to see your title, description, and witty catchphrases, I finally figured it out: it’s your science project. However, as both your text and banner are so faded, neither really seem to leave the visitor with a real sense of what your layout is. [And it actually took Sanosuke even longer to figure out that was a science project…]
Information
Site: Twyt no Sekai
Type: Personal
Owner: Tammy
Reviewed By: Souji & Sanosuke
Date Received: 10/12/2006
Date Completed: 4/27/2007
Preview
Presentation
Souji
In truth, I am not very fond of your color scheme. Though it all lies within the general vicinity of a red-brownish-yellow/beige theme, there is a wishy-washiness to it that puts me off. Some parts of it lean towards red-pink while the border is clearly yellow, and your background is dull mixture of all the colors you used; overall, it gives off the impression you yourself were indecisive about what you wanted to do with your layout.
Though I do like beige, it doesn’t fit well with your layout. Despite the fact you call your project “geeky,” science projects are meant to be exciting and vibrant. The purples, greens, and reds that jump out from the project itself does that more than beige you chose. Any of those would have been a better choice for the color scheme.
It’s probably too late to change your color scheme, but you can still lighten up your layout. It seems like you sacrificed contrast in order to have your layout fade out, which is also unnecessary.
Sanosuke
I, unlike Souji, like the colors you chose for your layout. However, nothing stands out. Everything’s so far blended in that it takes quite a while to figure out what everything is. Refer to sites like DigiCreation and Effluence and note how their layouts always have a focus of some kind and wonderful use of colors. Your links don’t even stand out. They’re not underlined or of a different color; how am I supposed to tell what’s a link and what’s just text?
Your layout is also incredibly big height-wise, which annoys me. You have a lot of free space in your header [which also adds to the problem of too much open space] which could be used for more content.
I’m not sure I enjoy the fonts you used; I don’t think they fit into the layout well enough. While your theme is ‘geeky’, the font you chose for your header and navigation don’t reflect that. They seem to stand out way too much. But then again, I’m not a font expert… so I don’t actually have suggestions for font choices.
I suggest also that if you’re going to use confusing titles for your navigation [”Chronicles, belongings and compilation”] you should use the alt and title attributes in your image map to describe what each link will lead to. Though, it should be a nice gesture to always keep your navigation simple and straightforward so that visitors don’t have to guess at where they’re supposed to click.
So, onto the coding. i see you’ve used the center tag to center your entire table. That works fine in Firefox, but in most other browsers [IE and Opera I’ve checked in] it centers everything so that your content ends up looking something like this:
And that, in turn, makes your own website look incredibly disorganized. In your CSS, put text-align="left" under body and it should align all your text to the left. And while I’m on that topic, usage of the <center> has been depreciated according to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). [=D According to the wonderful Erica~] Another alternative is using <div align="center"> instead to center text.
You also have a lack of differentiation. There’s no difference between headers, links and text. They’re all one size and one color. I suggest that you have one overall “header” that’s bigger than text [maybe bolded, styled differently?] for the opening of each page and also for the dates in each of your entries. I also suggest a different color for the links so visitors can tell what’s clickable and what’s not.
Finally, it actually took me a while to realize what your “spoilers” box was for, since I didn’t take the time to read your blog entry. Upon entering your site, I was actually quite confused as to why there was some random box in the middle of the page. I suggest making the box a little different, and also adding directions onto it somehow as to what to do with the box. It could be as easy as styling it differently in the CSS and adding a background to it; something like this, maybe?
Content
Chronicles
I’m not sure why the link “back to top” has an arrow pointing towards the left when top is obviously up. Perhaps a ^ would be more effective. There’s also no “back to top” links on any of the other pages, so I’m wondering right now why you have that link at all.
Your Past Entries page is a bit cluttered and inconsistent. You start off just listing month and year, then you move towards beginning month and year - ending month and year. Everything’s just incredibly inconsistent. If you want to archive your entries, try just dividing them up by month and year so that its just a list. This, for example, is what our archive here at Faltered Heart Reviews looks like; its just a simple list of months and far less cluttered.
Belongings
I’m not sure the “me” information fits into the same category as the “site” information.
What does the “ABC?” link lead to? At first glance, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with you. ABC of what? Perhaps the name you gave the page is better; “My Alphabet” seems more descriptive than just “ABC”. What ABC? Yes, I know the letters ABC…
The question marks after “ABC” and “more” aren’t needed. You don’t have them after the other links on this page, so why have them on these two specific links?
- “Welcome to the “belongings” section, where you will find a more in-depth description of me as well as other things such as my doodles and my previous blog entries.” –> “Welcome to the “belongings” section of this site. Here, you will find a more in-depth description of me as well as my doodles and previous blog entires.”
More Information
One fateful grade 8 or 9 day, Misha and I were analyzing our initials. Initially it was just our first and last name and thought it would be interesting to look at our full initials. Then, it came to my realization that my full name actually makes something pronounceable thing unlike my sisters. Thus, this screen name formed.
Which screen name? After staring at this paragraph, I came to the conclusion that it could possibly be Twyt… but I could be wrong; after all, you didn’t specify which one, and you do have more than one. Perhaps something more like the following? I’m also confused as to what you mean by “first and last name” and then “full name”. You meant middle name? Second name? How long are full names anyways?
Twyt - One fateful day in grade 8 or 9, my friend Misha and I were analyzing our initials. Initially, we were just looking at our first and last names, but we thought it would be interesting to look at our full initials instead. Then, I realized that my full name actually makes something pronounceable, unlike my sister’s.
You’ve described what takoyaki is and you’ve also said that you’ve tried it. What did you think of it? Did you like it, dislike it, think it was interesting? You seem to have moved from one point [describing what takoyaki was] to another [saying that you just randomly used it one day] without a real connection. Why did you choose this name? Why not sushi or steak instead? Was it because you liked the way it tasted? Thought it was interesting? Isn’t that the whole point of having this paragraph?
I suggest that you organize these two paragraphs about your alias better; something like this:
Twyt - description here
Tacoyaki - description here
And so forth. People aren’t going to read your mind and automatically know what you’re trying to tell them.
Again with the misleading titles. I know you’re trying to be creative, but navigation links and headers should be kept relatively easy to figure out for visitors so that there is little guesswork and more actual interaction with them. Along those lines, you’ve mentioned a few people in your descriptions yet those who don’t know you [and them] have no idea who they are. Instead of just saying something like, “Souji told me the other day that she likes the color pink”, it’d be better for the visitors to read something along the lines of, “my co-reviewer, Souji, told me the other day that she likes the color pink.” It doesn’t have to be done every time you mention people, but the first mention of a person on a specific page should always warrant an explanation as to who they are and how they’re related to the topic. For all the visitor could know, Souji, who likes the color pink, could be some random hobo I met on the streets the other day.
- “For the most part, people describe me as a perky, smart, short moron.” –> “For the most part, I’ve been described as perky, smart, short, and moronic.”
Back to Belongings - you have a lot of room for your links, so its safe to explain them a little more in detail. For example, next to the “Fanlistings” link, you could write: “Fanlistings [opens in a new page]”.
- “Friends’ Gifts” –> “Gifts from Friends”
- “Anime North” –> “Anime North Notes and Reviews”
- “A series of sad events” –> “A Series of Sad Events - an original comic”
Descriptions are good to have. Along those lines, it’d also be a good idea to specify that your link to your showcase of icons, desktops and layouts opens to a new page.
Compilation
I’m actually not sure why you have the “In The Spotlight” link, seeing as that screenshot is not only old, its also part of one of your other pages. If you want to use larger screenshots for your previews, you could always link the smaller thumbnails to a larger one or just have a link at the very end of your descriptions that states, “view a bigger version?” This section is actually really fun to browse through, because I enjoy looking through other people’s old stuff. [Because I’m a total nerd?] A small padding could be used, however, between the previews and the descriptions so the text doesn’t stick so closely to the image.
Final Statement
Sanosuke - You should work on your differentiation. Having a plain page of text that’s just the same color and size gets very boring, not to mention confusing. Also, you have “Back to top” links under some pages and not others. I suggest [especially with your type of navigation and layout] a “top” and a “back” link at the bottom of every page.
I can understand your want to be unique in naming pages, but for the most part, navigation and heading of pages should remain as standard as possible, because it saves the visitor a lot of confusion. Be creative and unique in other ways: the naming of your site, your content, and your design. But keep navigation and heading very basic and simple.
I’ve been to both your sites before, and I have to admit, I’m a very big fan of your wallpapers. I think right now, you need to focus a bit more on organization.
3 Comments to “Twyt no Sekai”
Tammy Says:
May 13th, 2007 at 9:55 pmThanks for the review. I’ll be looking at it more indepth when I manage to update and such. I’m still debating whether to write the review feedback or not but we’ll see what happens. I’m pretty sure many suggestions will be considered and such when the site will go through an overhaul.
Sanosuke Says:
May 14th, 2007 at 10:02 amI’d like to read your feedback if you have any =)
Tammy Says:
June 13th, 2007 at 4:10 pmJust wanted to notify you that I finished writing the feedback today. Feel free to look at it: http://tns.simply-torn.net/review.php Thank you again for the review.