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someone's brave
wednesday january 2, 2002



well, someone got brave and submitted her site for a review. ;) but if friends won't be your guinea pig, who will be? lol so, here's my first review (which also helps me see where i need to tweak my format a bit, and i'm already putting design and layout in one category, but i added an interaction section to make up for it - which actually gave this site an extra point):

meghanns.com
total points: 34

splash: 2/3
she has a nice, clean design with minimal graphics, but not so few that it looks boring. the green isn't quite a color i like, but she does say it's her favorite color, so that works - and at least it's not orange or yellow or fluorescent or something equally painful to the eyes. the two problems i did find was the fairy's transparency shows through on her legs and face (try her as a non-transparent gif or a jpg) and no credit link to amy brown (at least it looks like one of amy's images), tsk tsk.

contact info: 2/3
while she has her guestbook and email on the splash, and her email scattered through the site, i really feel that the book and email should be offered throughout most of the site. exemption would include her resume page and her design section (which had the email and that's all that's necessary).

navigation: 2/3
personally i find having to keep going back to a certain page to explore a website interrupts the flow of my surfing, so, while she has the link back to the splash in almost every section, i think it would be better to incorporate the navigation on every page to make surfing easier, and the same can be said for the expressions section where you have to keep returning to the archive - although, in this case, links between the entries would serve just as well. also, it would be nice if the viewed links were offset a little (although, i am aware i did the same color all the way through myself for awhile).

i did like the pop-up for the rings/cliques (like this should be a surprise?), but she needs to check her links as a few didn't open in a new window. ;)

layout & design: 2/3
my problems here were mostly nit picky little things: on the resume page, the white should be limited to the resume table itself but actually goes all the way to the bottom of the browser (in all browsers!); the artist of her splash image needs to be given credit; and, as mentioned above, the navigation.

but she has a unique layout, i like that table above and to the side of another table thing, that loads quickly. pages are clean, uncluttered, and attractive. and while amy's images are used all over the net, she has used them in unique ways, almost as accents on her pages, allowing the content to take precedence.

writing/content: 3/3
her site is more than just a pretty face. she has fiction and poetry to read, shares herself as a person and he life, and has places for visitors to play. she has very few outside links, but the ones she does have are personal and important, with a few that are informational. her reviews are thoughtful and tactful. she obviously knows html, java, css, so my only suggestion for an addition to the site in this area would be a tutorial section for us copy and paste types who have no clue, perhaps even offer some 'script fixes' to those scripts she's used in the past and had to tweak to get to work correctly.

moments: 3/3
"My Cats do listen to me."
great! now, can you come and help train mine? helping her stay off the roof would be wonderful.

"I wish I had some artistic talent."
and your site doesn't prove that you do?

"If eyes are the windows to the soul
Why can you never truly know
What things dwell in a person's mind?

If eyes allow you to see the world
Why do things easily blend
into surroundings, and then disappear?

If eyes give us sight, the greatest sense
Why do so many clear messages
Go unnoticed, and get tossed aside?

I invite you to look into my eyes..."

i just love this poem! ;)

"As my friend calls it, "Browser Snobbery" will not be tolerated."
and which friend would that be? lol

interaction: 3/3
she has a webring with a message board, a clique, and, if you're brave, you can even get your site reviewed. she does need to be a little more active at her own message board (message boards take a bit of effort on the part of the owner to get active), but this board is also restricted to ring members. the things she offers are nice and understated like her site and i don't think there's much more she could offer that would be in character.

verdict: 3/3
i always enjoy meghann's site and often visit 'in style'. my only suggestion for the overall site would be some kind of updates or news log so return visitors don't have to go hunting for new stuff, especially since your navigation requires returning to the splash or the main page/archive of a particular section.

i didn't include shaydlynn's pages in this review because they are not on the domain itself.

annoyances: 4/4
none, she has a nice, clean, fast loading site, easy to read, and easy on the eyes. and i can listen to my own music while browsing. :)

netscape: 3/4
netscape tends to do funny things to her tables and layers: long narrow tables in the m clique pages, the meghann's reviews table is in the upper left corner instead of centered, the images overlap her text in expressions, and text and images overlap her main journal text. some suggested fixes:

the m clique uses small tables that will be easily viewed in any browser so, rather than using the percentages for table width, i recommend going to a set width. from what i see in her source, 310 might be a good width to go with for the table with the content text in it.

one of the ways i get "perfectly" centered tables is to put everything in a single table that is 100% wide and 90-100% tall, then center everything inside that on the page. try something similar for meghann's reviews.

personally, i never really liked layers because of the funny things ns does with them, perhaps switch your layers that are giving ns a problem to tables.

msn/i.e.: 4/4
since she's an i.e. user, i fully expected this score! :)

opera: 3/4
opera did some strange things on the tables in the splash, 'follow me', and perceived: the top half of the table was one color and the bottom half was the same color as the page background. i honestly have no fix for this and would love it if someone would contact me and let me know what's up! lol

it also did some funny things to your image spacing on your family pics.


site of the moment:
finalheaven.org