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Site Name: Insomnia
Owner: Emma
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 19th May 2009
Site Name
Easy to remember and quite unique so no problems here!
Coding and Validation
Your coding has 4 errors.
You’re using a Transitional doctype rather than a frameset one, which is needed for iframes:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">
Iframes do cause a number of errors. If a browser cannot view iframes (which some browsers cannot), you need to account for that with <noframes>. w3schools explains it for you.
Your CSS has 1 error as CSS3 (which is what you validate best to). This one error is because you’re putting bgcolor as transparent – you should be specifying a colour. You’re using this in your counter code.
Your coding is otherwise very nice and orderly! I am impressed.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
Browsershots.org tells me your site is fine in most browsers.
The font size is quite nice. Usually cute pixel sites and such has tiny font but yours is very legible. The links are quite nice and the navigation is pretty cool. Have “x” as “Home” though; it’s less confusing that way.
With your navigation though, consider having it as text or a drop down menu rather than an imagemap. If someone is on a mobile phone or has images turned off, chances are they won’t be able to see your navigation. Try and have an alternate way around.
You’re using iframes when you can achieve the same effect with divs or server side includes (SSI) or PHP includes. Iframes are a disadvantage to both you and your visitors. It’s quite a pain when I want to bookmark a page in your site for example, because it opens in an iframe. Also, search engines don’t look at your page if it opens in an iframe because it’s usually just data held – that’s a disadvantage on your behalf.
The better option would be to convert. Tutorialtastic has a great tutorial on how to convert. It’s for the better and your site will look the same!
Layout
It’s cute and small! I like the subtle background, also how it isn’t too plain.
It’s very original and I like how you used a basic solid font rather than a decorative one. The colours are also a good choice and keep me interested!
The CSS is chosen nicely too. I don’t really have any complaints!
Content
Me
Haha that’s pretty awesome you live in Australia too.
The opinions page is unique and impressive. I don’t see people have anything like this on their sites. I like how you’re not afraid of sharing your opinion either.
The animated bullets are starting to distract me and get on my nerves. They’re nice but don’t have them animated.
The admired sites page is nicely set out, but it would look a lot neater in a table and with spaces between each site and definition. Otherwise it looks quite a mess!
The other pages have no problems.
You
“Helpful stoof” should be “Helpful Stuff“.
Your adoptables are cute! As are the special ones. ‘Speshul’ – well, I’m not terribly sure about that. It just seem a little bit unprofessional that way.
ect should be etc.
The avatars page reads ‘site tips’.
I like the idea of both colour and shading palettes – that’s quite creative even though palettes are quite generic.
Just a little note – I quite like the little blue blob at the top of the page that tell me what the page is about – that’s super creative. The purple blobs telling me to read the rules are a bit repetitive though. Not saying it’s a bad thing but maybe a different colour on each page would add to the colour.
The emoticons are super cute. Even if I don’t really like the bouncing animated ones (bit too much movement and distraction that’s all).
Site names are usually offered on quite a few sites. Not too bad though; some unique ones here like “gigue” (that was a name of a piano piece I played some years ago!) and “teneri”. Others are quite simple.
The tables and boxes are fairly similar but otherwise a nice addition for those who might be a bit lazy with coding.
On the site tips page, the poor blue blob’s speech bubble has a scrollbar. Perhaps shortening it just a tad would make it fit nicely.
I see site tips on a lot of sites. Yours aren’t too bad though – at least you do cover the important points like being original and keeping your site up to date.
‘Naming your site’ – great tips here too. I still feel that you could elaborate on these.
Site
“Affies” isn’t a word – generally it’s much nicer to say Affiliates. It wouldn’t hurt to write the whole word out, especially if you only use it once.
Credits page is all good. Don’t forget Photobucket though, for your adoptable images.
Originality & Creativity
Very creative and original! I must say, I haven’t reviewed many pixel sites, and every time I do, I enjoy it. I used to have a pixel site of my own (I still like pixels) so seeing that there are still some sites out there that continue to be super original is a good thing.
Organisation & Errors
Well organised! I didn’t have any problems with broken images or links.
I didn’t spot typos; just a few words you most likely opted to write differently, so no problem there.
Overall Comment
Emma, you’ve got a great site, very cute and original.
I only have issues with coding; that’s about it. Coding isn’t hugely important but validated coding does help you to make your site work in all browsers. Errors generally mean that something may not work – so that’s an indication.
I know the imagemapping and iframe combination works for a pixel site but to be user friendly to almost everyone – it’s best to convert from iframes. It does take a while but it’s much better; it’s not always great opening things in a frame all the time.
Keep up the great work!
