Obiter Dictum

Combined Review of Stand-in-the-rain.net
Date Submitted: Jan 27
Date Completed: July 15

Design

Ohh goodness. As you can see from the screencaps, your site looks different in IE and Firefox, and I can only imagine the differences in other browsers. I don’t know if you use IE or Firefox (or something else)… I just hope it’s meant to be centered. That said, you might want to revise your code a bit. Clearly, some of your visitors aren’t getting the full experience.

My “ohh goodness” has many layers. Hilary Duff is one of them. So are your font size, spacing, and color choice. On first glance, this design isn’t overall bad - it centers, it’s clean with straight edges, and it holds all your content pretty well. That’s just the first glance, though, and on second glance I see everything annoying about it. I’m not going to say that things are “wrong” - I’ll give you that much. Obviously everyone has their own opinion of “right” and “wrong” and I won’t overstep my bounds as your reviewer to tell you your ideas are “wrong.” From my first glance I can see that you could probably make something pretty awesome if you put your heart and head in it, but that perhaps you’re just not going that extra step. Read the rest of this entry »

Content Only Review of Dancing in the Rain
Date Submitted: January 20
Date Completed: July 15

Content

Aesthetically your site is just a tad bit blinding to me; you asked for a content-only review so I’m not going to comment too much on the design, but as I have to read the words somehow, you should know a few things. The yellow on the brown would be fine for your links in the sidebar if the white wasn’t so bright under your content. I feel like I am straining to read some things, and that’s never good if you want people to continually visit your website! Issues arise with the yellow links (on the brown, but also below the content in your footer navigation), pink on pink, and that splash of pink in your “about” blurb that looks sickening with the yellow (again, the yellow), but also makes the black hard to discern. Otherwise, the font size is big enough and the fonts are readable. (Except when you mouseover the links in the sidebar; there you seem to have decided to throw readability out the door. What’s with the dark brown on dark gray? Bad choice.)

I’m going to start with your sidebar because, despite the fact that your content is on the brightest color shown in your page, your sidebar still manages to draw my eyes immediately. Let’s analyze why: First of all, it’s busy. Too busy. Is it necessary to have all that? And can’t you style the Google search bar to match the sidebar colors, rather than having a random white box among all the pink, yellow, and brown? Secondly, your tags stand out more than your subject lines in the blog, so when I landed on your page I was immediately drawn to those. Is that what you want? My suggestion is either to move them further down the page or make them smaller. Read the rest of this entry »

Things have finally settled down enough where I can start reviewing again. I apologize for the unnanounced hiatus - 2008 has not been good to me. I’ve had several deaths in the family and other changes that have disrupted my online life. This is a project I do not intend to close, however.

Thanks for the patience, a few waiting reviews will be posted soon.

I’ve also updated the queue. If your site was down or “couldn’t be found,” I deleted it; if you’re currently using a template for your layout, I switched you to a content-only review, and if you submitted for re-review and don’t have a link back here, I deleted you all together (as per the rules). If you notice any problems with the pending page, please let me know.

I’ve had this theme layout for a few weeks now, and I just wanted to let you know that I am working on a new layout for the site. I got too sick of the other one to keep it up a moment longer! In any case, this is part of what is delaying my reviews (this layout as well as the layout at my domain which I recently completed and have still been tweaking), but I’m getting back into the swing of things.

I also wanted to tell everyone who cares that I have a lot of fun reviewing sites - good and bad ones. Never fear, I won’t be one of those people who close the review site because of one negative response to one of my reviews, or because I just “didn’t feel like it” anymore. Though my posts are far between, no one in the queue will be left unreviewed.

I may not be the most excellent web designer in the world, and I may not always be right, but I have a pretty good idea for aesthetics and language, and that’s what I base my reviews on. No review will be half-assed and all will be completed in time.

You may now return to whatever you were doing before you decided to click the link that led you to this website!

Content Only Review of Zwinkyness
Date Submitted: January 3
Date Completed: April 11

Content

Looks like there’s a lot to get into here! Your blog posts are long and at first glance they don’t seem to be about random uninteresting tid bits. I’m not going to read all your currently displayed blogs, but I’ve sort of skimmed them and I can see that if I wanted to take the deeper time to read them I’d probably learn a lot about you in a short amount of time. You write very well with acceptable spelling and grammar (always a plus) and your posts are detailed with your thoughts and ideas.

There is a lot of information in your sidebar and footer. I like the ability to change the font size. I am okay with asides (or Twitters, or whatever you want to call them) and you’re not showing too many, but I would put the blurb about you before the asides. You should put sidebar content in order of importance - if possible, I’d even put the about snippet first or right after the font size changer.

It’s always interesting to me the about details people choose to put in their sidebars. Some people just list of some interests, some people define themselves with descriptive words. You’ve done a bit of both, though I’m still not 100% sure how I feel about the “random words” thing being chosen over an actual paragraph that sums up some basic facts. Some errors - You aren’t “17th” years of age - you’re either “in your 17th year” or “17 years of age.” Your “author” link leads to your blog, the page I’m on, and I’m not sure why. Read the rest of this entry »