Review: Bridget @ StarDust
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Site Name: StarDust
Owner: Bridget
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 25th December 2009
Site Name
I’ve actually heard of at least one other site named StarDust so it’s not really that original.
The use of an “enter page” or “splash page” is pretty old. It’s much nicer to see your website’s layout in all its glory rather than having to click a link simply to enter! Additionally while you have mentioned what browser and resolution your site looks best in, visitors will not change their browser or resolution just to view your site.
Coding and Validation
I suggest you check your coding in the HTML validator and CSS validator. Your coding structure is alright but you are forgetting a doctype and a character encoding. The doctype needs to be placed at the top of every page, and seeing as you have iframes you need this doctype:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">
Your character encoding needs to go into the <head> section too. The common one to use is UTF-8.
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
These elements are essential to an HTML page because they identify the document as being in HTML, and it specifies the character set of your page.
Your styling here is incorrect:
<style text="text/css">
<!--A:link{color:FF80C0;text-decoration:none; cursor:arrow;}
A:visited{color:FF80C0;text-decoration:none; cursor:arrow;}
A:active{color:FF80C0;text-decoration:none; cursor:arrow;}
A:hover{color:D0A46D;text-decoration:underline; letter-spacing: 0pt; cursor:arrow;-->
</style>
<style text="text/css">
body, tr, td {
font-family: arial;
color:996633;
font-size:8pt;
cursor: default;
letter-spacing: 0pt;}
h1{
font-family:tahoma;
color:996633;
background-color:FFCCDD;
text-decoration:none;
font-size:8pt;
}
</style>
Not only should you use an external stylesheet but you have incorrect values here. You have not provided a hash (#) in front of your hex colour codes, and you can merge these styles together into the one command. The <!--- and ---> are also not needed.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
Your site is navigable and functions in Firefox, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer.
In Internet Explorer however, the iframe is a little off, and it covers a little bit of the layout image. Speaking of iframes, this is an outdated form of HTML and they have quite a few disadvantages, including problems with compatibility and appearance.
You can also achieve the same look with divs and use server side includes or PHP includes to make layout changes easier.
The small font is quite hard to read. At 8pt, it’s really quite tiny and something like 10pt would be a lot easier to read.
Similarly, the navigation is exceptionally small and hard to click on. The navigation should be a lot bigger and take up the entire height of the layout, or you could have labelled the apples and used those as navigation. “Me” and “You” would be better named as “Owner” and “Visitor”; it’s a lot easier to understand in that sense.
Layout
It’s a very cute layout; as naturally, all “pixel” website layouts are. I think you can add a bit of padding to the top of the layout though, so the top of it isn’t touching the very top of the page. If possible you should also center the layout – placing it in a container-type div and setting the iframe div off from the side of the container would make the layout a lot neater. Especially on larger resolutions (like mine) where I see a rather large empty space to the right of my screen.
It’s a very cute layout and I like the theme. I think that overall it could be made bigger. The content section could be made bigger, height-wise, as well as the navigation and the text.
Content
Me
On the page about you:
We been should be We’ve been
I been should be I’ve been.
Also, Breif History should be Brief History.
On the “this or that” on the favourites page, it’s hard to tell what is bold and what is not. Making the text a slightly different colour would be clearer.
The yummies on the yummies/yuckies page are pretty similar to the favourites so maybe you could make a favourites/hates page?
The second last image in the toybox doesn’t load.
You
On this page Recipies should be Recipes.
The adoptions are very nice. I like how you have made an effort to create different colours. The emoticons are very nice; perhaps you could make some emoticon sets?
On the special adoptions page, instead of writing “please remove the words and put the correct letters on the email” (which some people might not understand) write something like “replace [AT] and [DOT] with the appropriate symbols” – which is more specific.
The backgrounds are pretty simple, especially the stripe ones, but they are still useful.
With the cute icons, make sure you credit the source of these images if they are not your own.
The bullets and dividers under the web material page are very cute and well made. Dividers aren’t really used too often though, since people like to dress up their headers using CSS.
On the “read” titled “What was it?”, there is an image at the foot of the page that doesn’t load.
I think you could include some of your own articles and recipes because according to your credits page you just obtained these from other websites.
Site
You have on the “about” page, an unfinished sentence:
StarDust was created on .
Including your host or any image hosts on the credits page would be good. The link to Quotelicious doesn’t work because colon is missing in the URL.
Your past layouts page needs to be updated because the last layout still says “present”. It would be nice if you had larger views of them too.
I don’t think it’s necessary to include a Wall of Shame when no one is there yet. I don’t think you will come across many people that deserve to be here though; most visitors will be at your site to admire your work and really, by naming and shaming a stealer, you’re giving them attention they probably shouldn’t deserve. The whole scope is quite outdated as well.
Exit
Under “admired sites”, Sugar-Machine.org doesn’t seem to exist.
I didn’t see anything else wrong with this section.
Originality & Creativity
You’ve got some original and creative content here but I think you can really improve. You can try offering layouts – I’m sure people would appreciate you creating layouts when they are unable to.
The “reads” and recipes aren’t that original since most of them are from the internet. Including more written content, but content that is by you, would be more original.
Organisation & Errors
Very well organised! I didn’t spot too many errors either.
Overall Comment
You’ve got a very original website and a good eye for design. It’s nice to see a pixel site that isn’t totally overdone and that is really simple. A few tweaks in your coding and layout will keep things looking fresh.
Some more content would be great – whether it be graphics or written content, but try to add more original written content. Keep up the great work.
Georgie replied:
December 28th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
You’re very welcome!
I’m glad I could help. 
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