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Site Name: Imajenation
Owner: Jenny
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 26th January 2010

Site Name

When I first heard the name I didn’t notice the connection between it and your name, Jenny, but now I do. Very creative stuff!

Coding and Validation

Your coding is valid and your CSS is valid.

A few pages aren’t valid because of some scripts but that’s not a major problem at all. Your coding is clean and I don’t spot any major flaws.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

Your site is navigable and functions in Firefox, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer.

The navigation is clear and easy to see. I would prefer the main text be bigger, but because of the small scale of the layout, it looks natural and it looks fine. I have no doubt that your site would look great in most screen sizes!

Layout

The layout is really soft on the eyes. I love the soft colours you’ve used. It’s a narrow layout, which is pretty hard to pull off, but I think you’ve done it fairly well, and it works very well because your site isn’t that large, content wise and, layout wise.

I really like the simplicity in this layout. The two photographs you’ve chosen and edited are a little bit random and unrelated but I like how they add to the scrapbook feel. The navigation in the header image is rather creative and also adds to the style of the layout.

I like how you have coloured in “jen” in your site name with different colours. Not only does this make the layout more interesting but it highlights the meaning of your site name a little more.

On a closer look the grey edge looks a bit out of place but that’s probably just me being picky.

Content

On the homepage, the navigation for the blogs should be placed at the bottom of the blog; they look a little strange and unorganised above it.

Owner

I looked through this section previously and noticed that you had some of the links wrong in this section, but you’ve fixed it now. Well done!

On that note though, I think the colour of the sub-navigation links should be a bit darker. They seem to sort of blend in with other grey things on the page and sometimes don’t look noticeable!

On the owner page “tap” could probably be expressed as “tap dance” – perhaps most people would not be familiar with the term “tap” itself. You could also link to your portfolio page where you mention your portfolio.

Your 100 in 1 is very interesting. Personally, I envy my younger brother for being able to solve a Rubik’s cube. He learned in about a week… I’m too lazy to try it out!

Portfolio

As you warned the viewer, this section is image-heavy. To prevent it from being this way, perhaps you should take the original image, crop it and save it as a new image for the thumbnail, so that the viewing of simply the thumbnails doesn’t take too long. I also notice that the image-viewing script you’re using does slow down the page a lot, and it loads much faster if I simply open images in a new tab.

Also, I have to refresh the page a few times because some of the images time out when loading, and they appear cut off until I refresh them again. You might want to think about other possibilities here.

I love the graphic sets, especially the butterfly realm ones. I understand this is just your portfolio but the celebrity blends don’t look as appealing.

I love this piece on your miscellaneous graphics page.

I love the visual media as well. You’re an amazing artist and there’s no reason for these graphics not to be in your portfolio! I also like the captions/descriptions. They are short but sum up your works well.

All your layouts are absolutely gorgeous. I haven’t seen a lot of these either. I notice that you don’t have premade layouts on your website but I think your skills are wonderful and you could definitely offer some on your website.

Your photography is amazing as well; I don’t have much more to say here.

Visitor

I guess such is the nature of these icons to be animated, but as lovely as these are, some inanimate ones would be great too.

The avatars look alright. They’re all very colourful, bright and interesting, but some of them look a bit funny because of the placement of text. I adore the set of fruit ones, but the diagonal text is not my favourite. The text on the Ernie avatar also looks a little messy and a bit too much.

I love the wallpapers! I notice you’ve included the one that won you your domain, haha. I think it’s very considerate, and amazing, that you went out of your way to create all these wallpapers in different sizes. Not many people bother at all, and not many people even make the correct size. I’m impressed. Regarding the sailing one, though, the edges of the text of the quote look a bit fuzzy. It might be the dropshadow; dropshadow doesn’t look too great on such decorative fonts, and look better on bolder fonts.

The stylesheet sets are very cute and come in wonderful colour schemes. I think you could expand on this and create some layouts as well, as I mentioned above.

The textures look great; much better than what I can put together (or bother to). The scratch textures are pretty common, but good stuff.

Not much to say on the ironic quotes since you didn’t really think them up yourself.

I love your article on “Domaining”. I especially like the metaphor of the domain being a piece of land without buildings. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend GoDaddy, though. I’ve heard one too many stories about their terrible service and their horrible interface of a website.
You can also mention domains that are not top level, and which are free – .co.cc and .uni.cc for example.
You might also want to mention that subdomains can be in the form of site.com/you. Freeservers offer this sort of hosting but it’s obviously not seen as “extravagant” because it’s free.
Despite these things you could add to improve the article, it’s a great article. I like how it’s split up into parts and are so simply explained without any unnecessary waffle.

Though the article on procrastination is short, it has some good tips. And I like the way you have set out this article in parts as well. You could definitely expand on this article too.

On the article about valid coding, how to should be how do.

As Sarah has commented on this article – I must say the same. Validating has its benefits but it does not mean everything. You can have errors in your coding but your website works fine. Fundamental things like including a doctype and having basic structure are important, but other errors don’t cause a great deal of damage to the appearance of your site. As for the screen readers, it is primarily alt or alternative text that benefits them, as well as using <strong>, <em> and <ins> in place of <b>, <i> and <u>.

Having said that though, it might be better to explore cross-browser compatibility, knowing that some elements might work in some browsers and not others, and the use of scripts like Javascript or Flash that might not work on all operating systems and browsers.

Website

“How Museful” leads to your Tumblr, so maybe you should make a note with an asterisk or symbol that this is an external link.

You have a wonderful credits page linking almost everyone possible. Terrific job.

Originality & Creativity

You might use a few resources from other websites but I think you have an amazing way of putting it all together in your own style. You don’t have a lot on your website but it’s very unique and has your own personal style.

Organisation & Errors

Well organised; barely any errors spotted.

Overall Comment

Your site is pretty amazing, Jenny. I don’t really have any complaints about it at all. It’s a small site, but I can see it moving onto bigger things and expanding. Your portfolio is very impressive.

I’m very eager to see what you could put together with premade layouts. It’s your choice but I’m sure a lot of visitors would love to be able to use a few of your designs. I can see that your website is mostly personal but even a few small layouts would be a wonderful addition. More wallpapers would be great as well.

Keep up the great work!

Rating

(out of 5)