Staff

Past Staff

Review for Akatsuki Designs

Ooo… I simply love the layout. Though the layout seems to be quite simple and plain (I couldn’t see any manipulation other than the debateable background and site title), it is actually really cute. The colours and styles works absolutely wonderful together. It certainly suits the ‘beautiful students of Ouran High School’ theme, especially with the combination of sparkles and flower petals. The matching disclaimer/copyright piece at the bottom of the page is also very cute.

Information

Site: Akatsuki Designs
Type: Resource
Owner: Rei
Reviewed By: Misao
Date Received: 12/30/06
Date Completed: 03/01/08
Preview

Presentation

Putting aside the initial reaction to the site, there are a couple of flaws, if you may call them that. The problem is mainly alignment. The header falls too short in width. It doesn’t run the full length of the actual layout itself so it looks somewhat mis-aligned. The main content/update entry textbox area is also missing padding space to the left and right. The copyright/disclaimer/credit/etc. links at the bottom of the page needs to be moved up a few pixels, or a change in background colour is required, because it currently overlaps the blue horizontal bar. These problems exist both in Mozilla Firefox and in Internet Explorer.

There are more complications when viewing with Internet Explorer. The background image (the row containing the affiliates links) also does not align properly. It is off by a pixel both to the left and to the right of the main content/welcome column. The navigation title ‘Site’ is aligned too far up, making it look like a big mistake. It should be moved down a few pixels to align horizontally with the welcome header. There is also a huge chunk of space between the update and navigation menu column completely not required. The update icon is missing padding on the left. Click on these links for preview of the layout: one for screenshot of problems existing in both browsers; and two for screenshot in Internet Explorer.

A few inconsistencies were found in the HTML source. I really don’t understand how you can use quotations in one section in defining attributes but disregard it completely in another section. For example:
width=700 border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 style="background-image: URL(http://www.designs.kyoukei.com/images_11.jpg); background-repeat: no-repeat;
Choose either with quotations (which is recommended for accuracy and efficiency when dealing with long strings of attributes) or without quotations for all. Also when defining values, make sure to include the value type (i.e.) pixels, point, etc. Since an external style sheet is referred, make good use of it. If used correctly, there is no need to defining strings of attributes in the main source. For example, the above would be defined easily in the style sheet as:

#TABLENAME {
width: 700px;
border: 0px;
padding: 0px;
background: URL(http://www.designs.kyoukei.com/images_11.jpg) no-repeat;}

Keep things simplified in the style sheet by combing same type attributes together.

Font: includes font-size, font-weight and font-family
Background: includes background-image, background-color and background-repeat
Padding: includes all four sides of padding (padding: TOP RIGHT BOTTOM LEFT;)
Margin: applies the same way as padding

Both the main source and style sheet failed validation. Do not declare HTML 4.01 Transitional in the HTML source unless you are 100% completely sure of your coding.

Content

I certainly like the style in which the updates are displayed. Very organized and efficient, although the table looks a little deformed in Internet Explorer (screenprint provided above) and padding is a little off on the left side. Because of the error in browser compatibility, I would remove the “Designs are fashioned so that they work and look good on most browsers” from the introductory paragraph because I have a hunch the same problem will arise. I would also consider rewording “We provide all kinds of things to keep visitors at their seats for hours: layouts, designs such as wallpapers, transparent images, icons, tutorials, guides, and more!” The sentence is misleading and does not make sense. Layouts are designs, so are wallpapers, signatures, and icons; the difference between each design is the type of design. The most recent date in which the site was updated is not required underneath the introductory paragraph. This date is already provided in the update entry and I highly doubt the paragraph is modified each time an update is made.

The colour scheme in the comments window does not match the current layout’s colour scheme. The faint text colour is also hard to read against the black background since it looks faded and dull. I also need to point out ahead of time that I dislike the green font used occassionally throughout the site to highlight important words. It doesn’t highlight, it blinds. I cannot read what the word is unless I move my mouse over the word and highlight it. To stick with the layout’s colour scheme, try indigo or purple.

Site

I like the use of internal page links, though honestly, it isn’t required unless there is tons of content on the page resulting in extensive scrolling. The first three sentences to About the Site is more about you and the history of web designing than it is about the site. There are quite a number of grammar errors on this page. 1) “Originally, this website was known as Endless-Dreamz (ReMIXed), also known as EDR, which was created on May 13th, 2005″ - Do not use the word ‘has existed’ since the site no longer exist. 2) “EDR was more or less a basic graphic site” - Do not use ‘more of’ unless a comparison is drawn between EDR being a graphic site versus something else. “The site was re-Christened as Akatsuki Designs, which began on August 15th, 2006″ - The first part: I don’t know about using the term ‘re-Christened’ since the site isn’t alive and decided to be baptised again if you know what I mean. The second part: ‘has existed since’ sounds awkward. Consider using words originating from beginning to describe the site re-opening such as re-birth, began, created, re-opened, etc.

Unless you intend to provide fans with your age, do not include an age line and leave it blank. It just looks retarded. Listed as Sites Owned, there is no need to relink back to AD. Hello, we’re already at the site! The third, fourth, and sixth links are inaccurate. “Web designer, owner of KyoukeiCOM / Yume no Kakera and its subdomains, random surfer” are not statuses and neither is “student, a sister, a daughter, and a role model”. It is a position/occupation/relationship/title. Status relates more so to online versus offline, single versus married, old versus young, etc. Status is a position between two opposing choices. Active is an accurate status (provided a few lines later) but is it being applied to you as a person individually or to you and the site? The first sentence in the bottom paragraph is a run-on sentence. Too many sentences placed together. Reword it to: “I am a very friendly and outgoing person. Although shy and quiet (original word is misspelt), I have the tendency to get really loud at times, especially when I am hyper!”

I like how the Past Layouts are archived with basic information and a brief description. I am a little disappointed none of the thumbnails are linked to a larger image.

The Contact Me/FAQ page is not very helpful. Keep in mind you do not to have include only questions submitted to you. You can make up general frequently asked questions and post them here, to provide extra info and to prevent useless emails. Meanwhile, the answer to the first question is ridiculed with errors. Compare my answer with yours.

I do not hate you. I do not hate your web designing skills. I hate to remove my affiliates, but I have my reasons to do so. These reasons may include: (a) your site does not meet my new criteria of what type of sites I accept (graphic/designs and tutorial sites), (b) you have not updated or kept in touch with me over a long period of time, (c) I do not feel you have made any effort to be friends with me or be interested in my site, and lastly (d) I have moved your site’s link to the linkage page to prevent the navigation from scrolling too much. Please do not be offended. Sites that are owned by my friends or sites I cannot remove (for personal reasons) are also hosted on the linkage page.

The answer to the second question does not make any sense at all. Try: “Direct-linking is linking a file using the direct URL of the file from someone else’s webpage, draining his/her server of bandwidth and possibly lagging the server’s response time. Do NOT do this. Instead, save the file to your desktop and upload to your own server.” Ridiculing the email tag line with square brackets will not prevent spam. For some, it encourages spam but gmail does a good job of filtering spam mail so there is no need to worry too much about it. I recommend having the text field for the security code next to the captcha image rather than underneath it. So just so the page looks better aligned and coherent.

I like the linkware buttons offered to link back to AD. They’re very pretty, though I expected to see more, at least one to match each layout phase AD has gone through. Instead of titling the second half of the page as ‘General Rules’, try ‘Affiliation Rules’. It sounds less ambiguous and easier for fans to locate the affiliates application section. Some rewording is required (the numbers correspond to the order of the rules):

(1) Your site content MUST be suitable for all ages, meaning no porn, yaoi or yuri.
(2) Your webdesigning skills must meet or surpass my standards.
(5) If you are accepted, you will receive a congratulatory email from me. However, if you are rejected, you will receive a blank email as your reply.
(6) You should try to keep in touch with me. If you make no effort whatsoever to keep in touch with me (specify length/duration), you will be removed.
(7) Be active. If you don’t update at least twice a month, you will be removed.
(8) You may re-apply in three months time after the initial rejection.

I expected something completely different from the Joined page. Most sites use this section to provide a list of directories where the site is listed. I didn’t expected to see a Contest link. But it still falls in the same category, so I can’t complain. I like the resources page. The page is organized and informative. However, a links section always require regular update as some sites go on hiatus, moved or simply just closed down. The following links were broken: Anime Visions and Oniyuri.

The alignment on this page is obscured. There is an unnecessary <ul> tag following each category header and there is no closing tag at the end of the table. As well, there is no closing tag for each <li> bullet. Though technically, it isn’t required, but this is a graphic site and the copyright links at the bottom of the web page boasts valid HTML validation, I suggest correction this same error.

The Terms of Use are pretty straight-forward. But some corrections is needed. There needs to be a line break between the disclaimer sentence the first term of use. The second sentence in term II is missing a period. Term II can also be combined with term I since term II is just an elaborated rant supporting term I. Term III suffers from major grammatical error. Try rephrasing the sentence to “Multimedia; all downloadable including programs and scripts - I do not claim to be neither the author of the scripts or the creator of the programs.” The last sentence in term IV is missing a period. The first sentence to term V is a run-on sentence; a period is required after the ‘ahead’. Term VI and VII can also be combined into one sentence as they follow the same notion about stealing any or all parts of the layout. I find that half of the policies are basically different versions of the terms of use, which for the most part isn’t necessary.

For You

Even though this section is interesting and fun, it is much more suitable for blogs and personal sites, rather than graphic sites.

The Birthday List is a nice interactive page to keep your fans updated on one another and is a great method to keep fans. There are two things I don’t really like. The first being the size of the submit and reset buttons. They’re huge! Perhaps reduce their width by half and place each button next to one another on the same line. The second is the green text colour of the birthdates. The green is extremely bright over the blue background, making it extremely hard to read. I cannot make out the numbers without highlighting the text.

I love the Family page. The story is very true and for many people, hits straight at home. And I have never noticed what F-A-M-I-L-Y spells out as. It is a lovely reminder for everyone who takes too much for granted and become too wrapped up in the working world. Giving it 100% is also very interesting but the scope of this page is very narrow-minded. After all, not everyone believes in God. It’ll be nice if another word unrelated to God could be formed to equal 101% for the other half of the population.

I was deeply touched by Information Please! I am sorry to the narrator never had the chance to return to his hometown and meet with Sally before she passed away. But at least he made a difference in someone else’s life.

There are quite a few tutorials available. It would be easy to differentiate if the category heading for each tutorial is moved upwards to appear underneath the tutorial title. The ID number for some of the tutorials on the actual tutorial page differs from that on the main page.

There are two errors found on tutorial #33. _top target will open links in the home window, not the old frame. Meaning if a link is using this target on a webpage that consists of 3 frames, the link will open in the home window (the entire window browser) overriding all three frames. _self target will open links in, not on, the same window, which is the same as not, not now, using any target attributes. There is a broken image following the description for tutorial #27. Grammar mistake was found on tutorial #15. “Replace DOMAIN.COM with your domain, and replace rewrite rules, the (gif|jpg), with the extensions of files you wish to block from being direct-linked, each file extension separated by the vertical slash. There is an extra empty box/divider at the bottom of tutorial #5, which I believe is a typo.

Designs

I enjoy the icons. There is so much variety to choose from and they are all made beautifully. Your designs are are also very well-made. It would be helpful had this page had a “Sort by Type” search option as some visitors may be looking for a specific type of layout. Each page can properly host more than 3 layouts. Consider 5 layouts per page to reduce the amount of clicking to next page. As a visitor, I prefer to view between 4-8 layout previews per page. In addition, the left border padding for the thumbnail preview is skewed with Internet Explorer, much like the avatar on the updates page.

The name ‘Designs’ for layouts should be renamed to ‘Layouts’ for several reasons. 1) Designs is already designated as the title of the section. 2) Design is an ambiguous term, which could be referred to icons, layouts, textures, wallpapers or all of them. 3) Layout is exactly what they are.

The /ul> tag was not closed properly at the end of the navigation links section in layout #37. The dark burgundy left border to the headers do not blend well with the layout #25’s colour scheme. Any brown shade taken from Cloud’s hair would be a better match. Horizontal scrolling is visible in the iframe for layouts #23 and #22. Consider the coding for layout #16. The text alignment at the top is not exactly aligned properly against the curve of whoever’s head. The left border to the headers in white for layout #03 doesn’t blend well with the layout. The white is too blunt. Consider a yellow-tint, perhaps a colour similar to the white outer glow in the layout title. The wings end abruptly to the right in layout #02. Consider feathering the edges so it blends into the background.

You’ll need to test all your designs to make sure they can be viewed properly with Internet Explorer since many users are still using IE. A common issue that shows up in all your designs, including the graphic site itself, is alignment. The left padding/margin, however you’ve attributed as such, does not appear properly in IE. In addition, some layouts uses the same Gundam Seed Destiny (?) avatar under the ‘About Me’ section. Try designing matching avatars and linkware buttons/banners to go with each design as a set.

A spelling error is found in the second sentence on Textures. “Keep in mind that these graphcis are also link ware, and thus you must link back to AD.” Here are a list of errors according to each page (the preview errors occur when viewed with IE):

24-29; When I click on the thumbnail previews of texture #29 and #28, I am given a 10×10 preview. The link reference has an extra forward slash at the end, which may have caused this error.The download link to texture #27 is invalid, and the links from each thumbnail preview are broken links. I suggest linking each thumbnail to a larger reasonable sized preview of the texture, say 250×250.
18-23; The link from each thumbnail preview and each ‘download’ (with the exception of texture #23) takes me to a new window with a 10×10 preview. The download link to #23 takes me back to the homepage.
12-17; All links from thumbnail preview and ‘download’ takes me to a new window with a 10×10 preview.
6-11; All links from thumbnail preview and ‘download’ takes me to a new window with a 10×10 preview.
1-5; All links from thumbnail preview and ‘download’ takes me to a new window with a 10×10 preview.
There is a small error with the coding, which misaligned the previous page links on the last page to appear on the right column as though it was a part of the textures. Click here to view visual.

The Transparent/Extracted Images collection is large, which is a benefit. Some images were extracted a little better than others, where the tricky areas are edges around faint coloured hair with very thin borders. I notice all the extra images are anime images. You should consider extracing a few manga images. All links from both the thumbnail preview and download ‘view’ gives me a 10×10 preview when viewed in IE. You might want to take a look at the properties in the image source coding. Thumbnail #13 refuses to load though the original file loads properly.

The introduction to Wallpapers needs to be re-written. There are only two sizes offered, not three. Again, the links to view the actual sizes of the wallpapers gives me a 10×10 preview when viewed in IE. Check the image source coding.

Media

The calendar set is a great idea, though you may want to consider using different images for each month to make each set a little more interesting. No calendar set for 2008 is available, and the alignment is a little skewed on this page. The 2007 calendars are aligned left while the 2006 set is aligned in the center. The emoticons are also very cute. I may consider downloading a set for my blog.

I normally am not supportive of graphic sites mass distributing free fonts since they are legitimate websites who buy licenses to do the same thing. If you’re going to allow font download, I suggest offering the unique types or those which are hard to find, but don’t go crazy offering 80 different fonts. The download to Crack Babies (Font) is broken.

Two grammar mistakes were located in the PS Brushes page description. “They are not password protected for your convenience but please do not abuse the privilege. They are sorted with the newest additions at top in descending order.” There are no problems with the PS Patterns. PS Splash is a wonderful unique idea. I really like it, though I definitely would be concerned if changing the splash image will affect the program in a negative way. Have you tried it yourself and does it work? By telling visitors your experience with it will encourage more people to use it.

Final Statement

In general, this is an awesome graphic site. Akatsuki Designs has a lot more to offer than a lot of other graphic sites. It is nice to see someone who enjoys graphic designing and dedicates a lot of time and effort to it. I would love to see more tutorials, possibly related to graphic designing, and definitely more layouts. But remember, in order to promote proper HTML and CCS coding, Akatsuki Designs must also have proper coding. Or else, it defeats the whole purpose.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 9:02 pm and is filed under Graphics/Resource. 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 “Akatsuki Designs”

Rei Says:
March 7th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Hello,

Thank you for taking the time to review Akatsuki Designs! I appreciate the time and effort that has gone into this review, and I will take your comments/feedbacks and try to fix the mistakes you pointed out.

Apologies about the IE problems; I gave up after a while, and haven’t used the browser for ~2 years.

However, thanks again for the review! Have a nice day!

~ Rei