Review #41: iPinky Promise
Reviewing Amy’s site, iPinky Promise, in Firefox on Mac OS X Panther
First Impressions
Oh, yeah. There it is: one of the dead-giveaways of Teen Bopperitis. The article provided doesn’t outline names, but let me tell you, it’s a fairly normal occurrence in the world of teenyboppers to name their site iThis or iThat. Is your website an Apple product? I didn’t think so.
Honestly, I’m becoming more and more scared about the fate of the world as we know it. Why must you teenyboppers insist on submitting your website to be reviewed here, thinking you’ll get a good score (as most of you do think), but fail to read past reviews or the so aptly-titled about page, all of which would be good indicators of what types of sites get bad scores and what types get good scores?
My first impression is “Oh ick, not another teemybopper site with a tiny iframe and a grossly cute header image! Oh, no, and HaloScan, when they could easily be using FanUpdate!” That’s about it, really. It’s all I can think; I’m so deeply shocked. (Although I guess I shouldn’t be; it’s not exactly out of the norm for teenybopper sites to be cropping up by the dozen.)
Layout
I’m not sure where to start, really. I guess I should follow my usual pattern, which would mean discussing your colour choice. It isn’t bad; I’m personally not a fan of pastels (I like to have at least one bright colour), but it doesn’t hurt my eyes, clash immensely, etc. I do notice, after staring for a bit, that you’ve got one yellow that you use in the center and then another on either side. There’s barely any contrast between the two; if you want the center strip to stand out, more contrast is in order.
Okay, so. Your header. I’m not sure if that’s some kind of anime bunny (in which case it would be copyrighted and therefore illegal to use—looking closely, I think I can see a copyright notice on it), but either way it’s very… overly cute. I mean, if you can do cute properly (BubblesSOC is a great example), it’s great, but as it is it seems like you’ve basically just slapped a random cute image next to an iframe and called it a day.
The navigation is pretty cute; it’s a bit small, but I’m a fan of rainbow navigation. You’re not using a block navigation, though, are you? When I hover over the coloured part, it’s not a link. It would be easier if the whole thing was a link; I generally refer people to Tutorialtastic’s articles on block navigation, and since yours is vertical, try reading Semantic (Vertical) CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) Block Navigation. Why is there an animated pixelly thing underneath it, though? It just crowds your layout and looks amateur. There’s no need for it.
The most gaping problem with your layout right now is the “sidebar”. It doesn’t even look like a sidebar; it’s more of a column of links and things that’s been pushed off to the side. If your layout followed a more conventional format (why not use these Basic CSS Templates?), the sidebar would be fine, although a little crowded. (You could easily get rid of… well, everything on it. All of those things could go onto a links page.)
You shouldn’t be using iframes; I can’t believe I almost forgot to explain it to you. I would strongly suggest reading Exactly WHY Are Frames So Bad and Why Frames Are Bad. These articles explain each point more eloquently than I possibly could. If you’re unsure of how to make a good layout using DIV layers, you can use those CSS templates that I provided you with; it would also do you well to read Converting From Iframes. Oh, okay, you ARE using DIVs. Why on earth would you want it to look like you’re using frames? That’s just terrible. See, if they looked like proper DIVs, all the confusion would have been averted in the first place; I wouldn’t have had to spend time looking up articles; and I certainly wouldn’t have had to type it all up.
The title at the top of your iframe lacks sufficient contrast; white against pale yellow doesn’t show up very well. Georgia is a serif font, which means that as a body font (small size), the serifs get in the way and make it hard to read. Finally, there’s no need for your JavaScript forward and back buttons. Every browser has them built in; including them is just redundant, and useless for those who have JavaScript disabled.
Content
I’m not expecting much, to be perfectly honest. It would be nice if you could prove me wrong and break the teenybopper mold, but if not, what can you do? This is all part of my duty.
Owner
Oh, okay, a zillion subpages. How perfectly teenybopper. I peronsally hate it when the first page in a section is just full of links; it’s best to have an introduction then the links. That way I can decide if I want to read on.
Quick Facts—Oh. Great. Quick facts. Yum. Completely pointless; I don’t care about your hair colour or pets at all, really. Oh, lord! I did find something intersting here, actually. You’re 20? Now, age shouldn’t be an excuse, but at age 20 you should know better! I suppose you started “webdesigning” back when iframes were popular and never managed to get out of the past. Still, though—it’s quite horrifying; I would have pegged you as 12 or 13.
Biography—Grammar time.
I also spent a lot of time across the road, at my childhood best friend, Michaels.
Change that to
I also spent a lot of time across the road at my childhood best friend Michael’s house.
(I have a bad memory lol)
For the love of god, just take out the lol.
the times I do remember; are the funny ones.
Semi-colon is unnecessary.
Here’s a few quick ones… I fell off Michaels front wall,
Change that to
Here are a few quick ones: I fell off Michael’s front wall,
Anyways, when I was 10; we moved to Kingsbury, Staffordshire (5-10 minutes away). I didn’t really like the primary school there, but I made a friend; that turned out to be a real geek by the time we went to high school.
Change to
Anyway, when I was 10 we moved to Kingsbury, Staffordshire (5-10 minutes away). I didn’t really like the primary school there, but I made a friend who turned out to be a real geek by the time we went to high school.
What’s up with your love of random semi-colons?
High school was pretty standard… crap lol I hung around with Kirsty and Emma from Hurley school.
Change to
High school was pretty standard: crap. I hung around with Kirsty and Emma from Hurley school.
But after high school ended; she moved to Canada with her parents; and we’ve lost contact.
More strangely-placed semi-colons! Change to
But after high school ended, she moved to Canada with her parents, and we’ve lost contact.
so did Kirsty and Mikaela; who coincidently were both in my class.
Change to
so did Kirsty and Mikaela, who coincidently were both in my class.
We had an all girl class of around Fourteen; of which half were stuck up snobs. Me, Mikaela and quite often Kirsty would always go to ‘Mr. Bs’ for lunch and skip Irenes lessons hehe. Anyway….
Change to
We had an all girl class of around fourteen, of which half were stuck up snobs. Me, Mikaela, and quite often Kirsty would always go to ‘Mr. B’s’ for lunch and skip Irene’s lessons.
After Kirsty and Nathan went home; I went back to Darrens with him
Change to
After Kirsty and Nathan went home, I went back to Darren’s with him
That night… well early morning; me and Darren started going out. From then on we were hardly ever apart; only when he was at work or I was at college. After about a month of going out; Darren went on holiday for a week.
Change to
Early the enext morning, Darren and I started going out. From then on we were hardly ever apart; only when he was at work or I was at college. After about a month of going out, Darren went on holiday for a week.
And a week or two after; Darren proposed to me. We also got our first pet in October; a kitten who was about 3 months old. We called her Kiari, after a ‘Kingdom Hearts’ character. On December 21st ‘06; we got married, and I became Mrs. Johnson. It was the best day of my life so far; and all that was left to do was find our own place.
Change to
And a week or two after, Darren proposed to me. We also got our first pet in October: a kitten who was about 3 months old. We called her Kiari, after a ‘Kingdom Hearts’ character. On December 21st ‘06, we got married, and I became Mrs. Johnson. It was the best day of my life so far; all that was left to do was find our own place.
Now were still as happy as ever; with our mischievous little kitties
Change to
Now we’re still as happy as ever with our mischievous little kitties
You quite obviously need to go into extensive semi-colon therapy. You can’t replace a comma with a semi-colon; the mere thought makes my skin crawl in horror!
Now that I’ve gone through all those heinous grammatical crimes, I’d like to say that this page is quite boring. I’m not very into reading biographies on pesonal websites (or autobiographies, as they generally are); your life hasn’t exactly been thrilling, and you’d be lucky if three people read all the way through this. It’s so much more interesting to read through a paragraph or two about the very important events in somebody’s life and a few more paragraphs about their personality, interests, etc.
Top 10s—Under construction, and nobody really cares about your top 10s anyway.
Hobbies—Okay. Adding onto what I said earlier: make one general about page, put some of this onto it, put the important events in your life onto it, describe your personality in another paragraph. No need for so many pages!
Music and Movies and TV are filler content: completely pointless and boring.
Photos—Very grainy, not good quality. If you’re going to post pictures, make sure they’re nice: you know, good quality, nicely-lit, all that good stuff.
Pets—Yeah, okay.
Gallery—To be quite honest, these are mainly quite childish; I see no point in posting generic ten-year-old girl art. I have no problem with posting art, but make it amazing art, like Lene’s.
Fanlistings—Mhm… nothing wrong here.
Contact Me—Wow, that is one tiny textarea! How are people supposed to write anything in it?
Domain
Terms of Use—Would fit better under Visitors.
History—Blah blah blah, totally boring. You don’t need such a long page. A paragraph or two will do quite nicely, and even two is pushing it.
Past Layouts—Yeah, okay, whatever. Nicely organised, I guess, but that’s about it.
Affiliates—Affiliates, lulz. Okay, though, you’ve organised this page decently enough, although… affiliates? Really?
Site Awards and Gifts—It just gets more and more teenybopper. The funniest part? Well, let’s see… oh yeah! You’re not a teen! I thought (or wishfully thought, I guess) that these things had finally disappeared.
Link Me—I found Mr. Turtle and I get a special award to show on my website. Um. No. I am totally not doing that.
…
Oh what the heck. I can’t see what I’m highlighting in your tiny textarea, and I’m validating the coding, but here goes nothing:
OMGZ I FUOND MR. TRUTLE!!!!111111oneone11`!“~
Credits—Mhm, mhm, mhm. Try to make use of unordered lists.
Visitors
Graphics—Generic, boring, teenybopper. Gah.
Downloads—See above.
Stock Photos—Not great quality. I mean, they’re not terrible, but they could be better. I can’t see anyone using these on their own layout, because that would make their layout look medium-quality.
Tutorials—Yep, all the basic “I don’t know what I’m talking about” indicators. Why are your CSS and PHP tutorials lumped together? Surely if you’re qualified to be teaching us about them you’d know that they’re completely different? No? Okay. Not learning from you.
Birthday Book—Right. I submitted my birthday to one of these, back in the day. Now, though? Yeah right.
Articles—There was only one here. It wasn’t bad; it was a bit of a generic and overdone topic, but you handled it decently. Your semi-colons bugged the crap out of me, though, just to let you know. There’s nothing I hate more than… well, bad grammar in general.
HTMLs—I actually laughed out loud at the terminology. “A variety of HTMLs”, hmm? So… a very of hypertext markup languages? Yeah, okay, we can go with that if it makes you feel better. Okay, all basic, boring, crappy tutorials. Can we move on?
Can You Find Mr. Turtle?—I already did, and it was a pointless waste of my time.
Plugboard—Sigh. More generic and horrible content. Never again.
Summary
All of your content was generic, boring, not fun to go through, etc. Anything written was also lacking: boring and full of grammatical errors. I remember thinking these sites were so cool back in the day, but there is nothing original or interesting about yours. It’s a bit sad that you’re twenty, too, because this is what I’d expect from an eleven-year-old.
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