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Site Name: Iced Cold Stuff
Owner: Ali
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 25th March 2009
Site Name
Iced Cold Stuff is fairly easy to remember but I often keep thinking it’s ‘ice’ and not ‘iced’.
Coding and Validation
Your coding has 6 errors and 6 warnings.
You don’t have a doctype, or character encoding, or even the right structure. Where are your <html> and </html> tags? And your <head> tags? What about <body> tags? It seems to me that you need to correct your coding altogether.
You need a doctype at the beginning of every page so the browser can process your site as an HTML document. Since you’re using frames, this is the one you need:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">
You need to have the correct structure of an HTML document. You can’t just slap stuff on it in the hope that everything will be good. Some browsers don’t even cope with reading a page when it’s not validated properly.
You don’t have a character encoding. You have to place this in the <head> section:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
You need alt tags on all your images. I suggest you read my tutorial on validating HTML.
Things like your scripts need to have a type – type="text/javascript" as an attribute, not just <script>. Things like ampersands need to be written as & and not just &.
Your tracker is coded in XHTML; therefore you have to remove the trailing backslash before the end bracket.
Your background colour should be modified using CSS, not as HTML:
body {
background-color:#c6ff18;
}
Your CSS has 2 errors and 11 warnings.
Your CSS file itself has no errors, but has warnings because you’re using the same colour for the font and its background in some places.
In your actual document, frameborder is an attribute that doesn’t even exist.
Also, overflow cannot have the value of “none”. It should be either visible, hidden, scroll or auto.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
Looking at your site at Browsershots.org, your layout is looking consistent in most browsers.
Your layout is too wide, however. I wouldn’t feel too great on a laptop screen because your layout would be too wide.
You’re using iframes, which isn’t recommended. Your iframe has a ridiculous height. I know you’re just doing that to prevent auto-scrolling. Having extremely large iframes can cause a browser to actually lock up and freeze.
Iframes have so many disadvantages. What if I wanted to bookmark, say, your brushes page? I couldn’t very well do that because the page is trapped in an iframe.
Search engines don’t even look at your webpages if they’re in iframes. It’s just not a great idea at all. If I have still to convince you that iframes are bad, read this article.
You could achieve the same look with divs. I know you want to make layout changes easier and not go for the divs, and I know Freewebs doesn’t cater for PHP, but have you ever considered server side includes? Freewebs allows those.
I suggest you either switch to divs or to server side includes. Try this TutorialTastic tutorial.
The navigation text would be better if it was bigger. ‘Clear’ should be ‘Home’. A lot of people don’t understand ‘Clear’.
Your default text is easy to read.
Your links should not change to uppercase on hover. A lot of the time it dodges the rest of your text, which is really annoying. Just a colour change would do.
The lime greeny links – since that is what they look like after being visited – are very hard to read. Just keep it red, even if it’s been visited.
Layout
Ouch. The header image is lovely, but the green background is too bright and is hurting my eyes. I feel like just reducing the brightness on my screen. A different background colour like pink would have been better. This limey green for sure matches, but it’s just too bright.
On a closer inspection, your header image is very nice. I don’t like how the girl is so washed out, though. Other than that, a very good, solid image. I like the choice of colours, even though I’m not too keen on the bright green. The pinks and yellows are very nice.
You have some sort of advertisement in the header image – that would be a lot better placed in your sidebar.
Your layout is rather wide. I like how the sidebar sticks out at the side – that’s a unique style I haven’t seen before. However, your header image and content frame are already rather wide, and it would be better to place the sidebar under the header, in this case.
If you had a smaller header image, by all means, try this style – but not here. The content frame is too wide. Too wide means things are a little harder to read. I suggest putting everything under the header.
The CSS is quite nice. I think you should decrease the size of your h1s though. Also, while I like the touch of the background on your navigation, I personally would prefer it as a solid coloured background.
Content
Visitor
I love the brushes! I don’t really like the circle ones though, they’re a bit fuzzy. But these are all very nice. It would be even better if you offered them as .abr files as well.
Awesome fonts! Finally someone who makes their own and doesn’t just redistribute others. Very creative, original, and well-made.
I can’t say much about the scans, but thumbs up for noting that they’re not your images. I don’t see scans so much anymore; people are often so lazy.
I don’t use scripts, but it would be nice to include instructions on how to install these. I like that you’ve included clear previews, but for the original image you should probably have something less decorated! That way we can see the full extent of the script’s excellence.
The second script image is cut off at the bottom.
The stocks link leads me to a 404. 
The banners aren’t too exciting but they’re fairly well made. I don’t even know what these are supposed to be for, though. Website layouts? Just random banners? And people don’t use welcome banners anymore. Hiatus signs are usually made by people themselves.
The colour palettes are okay. People can usually pick their own, though. Most of these colours are rather bright. Ick, there’s that horrible bright green you’re using for your current background..
Guild layouts. Neopets? People who haven’t heard of Neopets won’t even understand this. The first one is a mess. The graphic isn’t nice – the effects are too much on the original graphic.. Everything’s too wide.
The second one is nicer and neater though.
The icons aren’t bad. I like the icons used on most of them. They all look pale as a bunch but individually – nice effect. I don’t like the one with the pixely text saying ‘love heals’. Having some words on a few of these would be better.
The icon textures are very simple. Though they’d be handy, most people can make these. The first five are really simple.
On your textures page, you might want to write ‘click thumbnail for full image’. These textures are really quite nice. I don’t like the first one; perhaps it’s just not my style.
The ‘Hope’ compilation is nice, but did you write all these poems yourself? If not, obviously credit is required. Ditto for the ‘wow’ compilation. Very nice additions to the site, though if they weren’t written by you I suggest taking them down.
I like your lyrics – definitely something original. I like how you’ve included an explanation of them.
The font competition is very original. I love the idea! Though, “bragging rights”? Please elaborate on that – be clear.
I’m not sure how your simple CSS things are supposed to work. The preview isn’t big enough at all. I can barely see what it looks like. Your instructions make no sense. Where are the colours supposed to be picked from? For starters, make the previews bigger or at least link to the bigger image.
I don’t see the point of the poll being buried in this section. If you really want visitor input, on your homepage would be better.
Very friendly recipes, lacto-vegetarian friendly, I see. Since they aren’t yours though, and just from collection, I can’t say too much about them. They are a nice addition though.
Website
On your advertising page, close down should be closes down. Also, you’re not linking everyone on every page. You’re rotating them. Surely that gives reason for the people you’re advertising to link you back in the same way.
I’m sure you mean “contact” (not “contract”) on your affiliates page.
Good credits page! Don’t forget Freewebs (the actual website) and any hosting sites you’ve used for any pictures, and the font site you used to make your fonts.
I think you mean 88 by 31 on your linking buttons page. Not 81 by 38.
Tutorials
Please don’t put ‘none’ when you have nothing. Just leave it out.
Your tutorials would be better if the steps were spaced out or numbered.
‘Downloading fonts’ doesn’t look like it has anything to do with PSP9. It should be in a different section. Most people know how to download fonts.
For the gradients tutorial, a screenshot of the final result would be nice.
The scrolling marquee tutorial is boring. Marquees are distracting and annoying – not to mention this isn’t really a tutorial, just a copy-and-paste code.
Plugboard
Pretty self explanatory.
Ali
I’m correcting your errors on this page:
one of my hobbies should be my hobbies
futue should be future.
Originality & Creativity
I found your graphics and ideas to be very creative. The fonts were extremely creative. A lot of your content was nice to go through.
You do a good job crediting everything – you’re one of the first people I know who actually credit the DeviantArt users instead of just “DeviantArt”.
Organisation & Errors
Organised very well. A few errors here and there – the dead stocks page, for instance.
Overall Comment
Ali, you’ve got a very lovely site with some good content. I liked looking through your site at what you had. Your graphic skill is quite good.
The things I think you need to improve on are colour schemes and primarily the effects you use. A lot of your icons seem washed out, and the girl in your layout. You have a great layout – but the colours are blinding. It also shouldn’t be too wide.
You could do without the iframes. They’re very annoying and a lot of the time I just opened each page in its own tab/window because I couldn’t stand to look at it in the iframe, and because your layout was so bright. The green is really a turn-off.
Fix up the errors I’ve mentioned. Organise the tutorials into steps. On your next layout, try not to use iframes, improve your coding, and don’t use colours too bright. Don’t make your links change on hover.
With some fixing, your site will be great. Also, clean up your sidebar a bit. Too much stuff.
Good luck with your site.
