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Review for FEEL
My, this layout is big. It’s taking up my entire screen and then some more. Still, it’s unique. I can say right now I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I most likely never will. The colors are interesting, and the design itself is quite original, to say the least. I’m not sure the splashes of red that you added into the layout works with it, and overall, it could use a slight bit more color. I’ve visited before, and I anticipate that this will be a fairly good review.
Information
Site: FEEL
Type: Graphics/Resource
Owner: Linda
Reviewed By: Sanosuke
Date Received: 10/19/06
Date Completed: 8/13/07
Preview
Presentation
My screen resolution is 1024 x 768, and your layout side-scrolls a hell of a lot. I’d hate to be someone who uses an 800 x 600 resolution. The thing about your layout though is the fact that it could potentially be a lot smaller. If you didn’t specify the width for #container and #top, the layout could naturally snap into one’s screen resolution without the side scroll [because, trust me, nobody wants nasty side-scrolling.] Then again, you’ve left a lot of blank, unused space on your header image. The green texture off to the right could be resized a little and moved a little further left to make it fit more into a standard 1024 x 768 resolution [which, really, should be the minimum size at least, if you’re not planning on designing for 800 x 600.] Right now, everything looks very blank, and that’s caused by the fact that there’s only text on about 400px of space while there’s giant textures everywhere else.
The white bar you’ve used for your navigation is a bit bright in contrast with the overall layout and could be toned down a bit. Similarly, your green font on the navigation is also incredibly bright and could be darker. The font you’ve chosen for your navigation could do with a bit more spacing; right now, the words look very squished together, making them hard to read [it’s especially hard to differentiate between the c’s and the o’s.]
I’m also not sure where you’ve gotten the red for your links and headers, as the overall layout has virtually no red in it whatsoever. It’s best to stick with different shades of green, brown, gold, and black as the red just doesn’t seem to fit in with the overall decor.
Content
Site >> Terms of Usage
Overall, very concise and easy-to-follow terms. Though, I don’t think “restrictions” is the right word to use in this situation considering term #1 isn’t exactly a restriction of any sort. “Condition” might be a better suiting term. Also, it would be wise to describe what exactly direct linking is, seeing as I’ve found in my days that those who direct link sometimes have no idea what they’re doing is wrong.
- “valueable” = valuable
Site >> Credits/Disclaimer
For your earlier credits, listing what exactly you took from those sites might be a good idea. If I’m going to click on a link, is it going to give me textures, brushes, bases, or just resources overall?
Site >> Link Us/Exit
I don’t see the point of having two separate pages for these. You can easily combine the “Link Us” and “Exit” page into one big “Linkage” page. Other than that, I like how you’ve given specific details as to what each site provides on your Exit page.
Site >> Contact
Your form’s submit and reset buttons look awkward against your current layout. The buttons themselves are smooth and white, which doesn’t match at all with anything else on the site. I’d suggest just having a normal, text button or to make a button that would fit more with the layout.
- “Send suggestions or comments.” –> “Send suggestions or comments” is an incredibly incomplete and rather awkward sentence. “Use the form below to send suggestions or comments” sounds more complete.
- “For links exchanges and affiliations, I have no other requirements than that I have to like your site.” –> Awkward phrasing; considering changing it to: “I have no requirements for link exchanging and affiliation other than that I have to like your site.”
Resources >> Icon Textures
Personally, when I’m in need of textures to use, I like directly saving each one onto my computer and not having to download an entire zip file just for one or two. But I suppose that’s a matter of personal preference. However, I do feel that your preview system is a bit useless. The reason I say that is, out of the 20+ or so textures included in the pack, we only really get to see a sample of two; and they’re not even full samples. The textures in the pack might all be similar, but obviously, they’re not exactly the same; and thus how would anyone be able to pick which one they’d want to download or which one would suit their icon best?
Also, the green text used for your previews [I believe it’s the one that says how many textures are in each set] is extremely blinding and hard to read
Resources >> Textures
What’s the difference between the first set of textures and the “misc” textures? Now, I haven’t went through and clicked every single one of your textures, but from what I can gather from selecting a few at random and clicking those, the photos and scans don’t seem to be the usual 800×600 while the other textures usually are. It might be a good idea, then, to put a slight note next to the photos & scans section that most of them are bigger than 800×600, simply because it would be a bitch to download one thinking it was 800×600 just to have the texture crash one’s computer due to insanely huge size. Also, on that note, using an alt and a title tag to specify what each texture’s size is would be a good idea as well.
Tutorials
I’m not sure why the Font Corner gets it’s own layout or it’s own splash page if it’s simply acting as a part of the original site. I’d suggest, however, if you’re going to keep the separate layout, to at least delete the splash page [seeing as it’s serving no real purpose right now] and to add a link onto the Font Corner somewhere that links back to the tutorials page on FEEL.
Also, a lot of these tutorials don’t explain why one would need certain tools. For example, in the “Sharpening Using the High Pass Filter”, it would be nice to explain to the visitors why and when such sharpening would be needed.
- The Healing Brush: “This tool can be used from anything to adjusting someones skin, to repairing an old broken photo.” –> “This tool can be used for anything from adjusting someone’s skin to repairing an old broken photo.”
Misc >> Icons
What would be a really nice thing to have is a “view all” page for your icons. That way, visitors can just go through the entire list of icons without having to click one series, look through, go back, click on another series, look through, etc. It becomes a lot less time-consuming.
Misc >> Wallpapers
An impressive wallpaper, but that’s it. There’s nothing in this section that gives me the impression that you’ve spent a lot of time working on it. Not to mention, typically, those who provide wallpapers provide more than one screen resolution for their visitors.
Final Statement
Overall, I like your site; I’ve liked your site for a while now. However, taking a closer look at it, I think you should focus on certain aspects - the resources and the tutorials - and rethink other aspects that you haven’t/don’t intend on updating often - the misc section, especially the wallpapers. I’m not saying that you should update constantly, just that if you’re going to have a section on your site, it should (1) pertain to the overall theme of the site [that being - I’m assuming - resources] and (2) be something you’re willing to update/prune through regularly.