Review: Gillian @ Gvd-Paperplanes

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Site Name: Gvd-Paperplanes
Owner: Gillian
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 3rd August 2009

Site Name

It’s easy to remember; I personally don’t like dashes but the name definitely suits you.

Coding and Validation

This pretty impressive, seeing as you have quite dense code (not saying that is a bad thing) and you were experiencing some problems before.

You have a few pieces of embedded styling in your document. Some of these cannot be fixed as they are part of WordPress plugins, but something as simple as your divs should be assigned an id.

Take this div for instance:

<div style="position: relative;float:left; width: 560px; padding:10px;">

You can specify a div id with CSS:

#content {
position: relative;
float: left;
width: 560px;
padding:10px;
}

And simply call on it with HTML:

<div id="content">

It loads faster when CSS is placed in your stylesheet instead.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

According to Browsershots.org your site looks the same in most browsers.

The navigation is very clear, and the text is easy to read. Your website sometimes takes a while to load, so perhaps look into your coding and clean out the unnecessary bits and pieces.

I notice you’re using a great deal of Javascript in your website. A lot of it seems unnecessary, from WordPress plugins and such, but I’m not sure if you’re actually using these plugins. Keep in mind that not all operating systems account for Javascript, so keeping Javascript to a minimum is important.

The links change to italic on hover – which is a beautiful effect, don’t get me wrong – but the reason I dislike this sort of text-transform property in a link is because the text around the link can be dodged around and move in an extremely annoying fashion. Next time opt for a change of colour or an underline instead.

Layout

The layout is very simple, but I love the elements that appear to be in a handwritten-type font. The header image and the headers in the sidebar are a good example of this.

You have chosen a good selection of colours for this layout. The blues are soft and easy on the eyes. The pink and blue you’re using for link and italicised text doesn’t really match with the blues in the layout, though.

I like your simple layouts though – this one is simple but as I mentioned, I love the touch of the header images.

Content

Owner

Absolutely nothing wrong with this section that I could spot. I have personally read this page when browsing your website before, and nothing has irked me a great deal.

Visitor

I’ve found a lot of interesting content here before, especially when I had a good look for your pixel guy – now to be a bit critical.
great pass time should be great pastime .

A few of the HTML tutorials use deprecated coding, so it’s best to remove them. The changing colours with HTML one is an example. font is deprecated, and you should be teaching this with CSS.

The scrollbars tutorial is useful, but considering that the codes are invalid and only work in Internet Explorer, you should take it down. Especially when you’re encouraging a flashing scrollbar and an option to even remove the scrollbar altogether.

Good to see you’re using strong and em for the basic HTML tutorial. Obviously, going more in depth with HTML would be great.

The centering cheats tutorial is excellent; you have provided multiple ways of centering an object or element, and explained it well.

Capitalise URL in the folding menu tutorial.

The options for navigation are creative, even if they might not be browser compatible (because of Javascript) or as accessible as regular text navigation.

The customising textareas tutorial is a huge no-no. Code should be displayed with code. This tutorial would be better replaced with a tutorial on how to display code correctly.

An example showing the double underline would be a good idea.

The multiple link effects tutorial is good. You have shown how to use classes in a specific way, which is something I rarely see in tutorials.

The miscellaneous tutorials are great – except for the iframes tutorial. Iframes are outdated and not all browsers account for them, not to mention they have disadvantages for both the creator and user.

I’ve only just remembered this, but having your links to the tutorials in alphabetical order would look so much neater.

The WordPress tutorials are all excellent; I have referred to a few of them myself and also found a lot of people using them. The calendar style blog dates tutorial is also very unique.

The Paint Shop Pro symbols tutorial is a good reference, but is otherwise not that useful. The other tutorials are fairly good.

You have one answered question in your FAQ.

On the pixel hunt challenge, him, its should be him; it’s.

The premade layouts are very nice. They’re of different styles too, so you could find one to suit almost anyone’s liking.

The graphics are okay; some of these look a bit old, such as the blank buttons and the affiliate images. The photography looks excellent.

On the “Cheater, Cheater Pumpkin Eater” article:
awhile should be a while
down right should be downright
you’re real should be your real.

On “Don’t Go Godzilla on me”, Its like shit should be It’s like shit, and eachother should be each other.

On “Believe whatever, respect forever”, atleast should be at least.

On “FML” (Clock Watching), everyday should be every day.

On the article about line height, dieing should be dying. This article is exceptionally good for the people in the web world who use such ridiculously small line height.

Website

You don’t have one of your previous layouts on the past layouts page.

Archives

Self explanatory.

V-logs

Nothing much to say here – you have great video tutorials, and have kept this section neat.

Originality & Creativity

You always have original layouts, and this one is no exception. Your content is very useful and you have a great variety. Your tutorials are also very helpful.

Organisation & Errors

There are many tutorials; I thought they deserved their own section. Other than that there weren’t many errors and everything was fairly well organised.

Overall Comment

Apart from a few dodgy (so to speak) tutorials, you had an excellent website with some terrific tutorials, and a small amount of resources. You blog frequently and update frequently as well.

I normally come to your website to read your blogs but you definitely have a lot of quality tutorials that can really help people out. I look forward to seeing any new tutorials you have to add.

There are barely any flaws in your website. You have something very original and well designed so keep up the great work.