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Site Name: xo
Owner: Katherine
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 27th July 2009
Site Name
It’s easy to remember – not really any problems here.
Coding and Validation
Your HTML has 42 errors and 3 warnings.
You need to have type specified for Javascript – so add type="text/Javascript" to the tags with Javascript.
You are missing the opening <ul> tag for your navigation.
Since you’re using XHTML you must have all tags in lowercase. Some of them are not.
You have <li2> and <v> in your footer – these are tags that don’t even exist. I am assuming they are typing errors.
Another key rule with validating coding – fill in the alt attribute (alternative text) for all images. You have left some blank, but putting some text in for semantics is necessary. Screen readers such as those for the blind will be able to read these more effectively and give a better description if you put some alternative text on your images.
You are missing alt on the icons in the footer (Facebook and Flickr).
Your CSS has 7 errors and 18 warnings.
float: center; is incorrect. Floats must be either to the left or right.
font-weight: heavy; is also incorrect. I think you are looking for bold.
Also, when you use float, you must specify width too. The other errors are from Lightbox – these aren’t huge errors and don’t affect the performance of your website.
You have some embedded styling such as the following:
<div style="width:805px; margin-bottom:30px;">
You should use a class or id to specify it, and use CSS:
Use HTML:
<div id="content">Specify with CSS:
#content width: 805px; margin-bottom: 30px; }
For more information on classes and ids, you can visit my tutorial.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
According to Browsershots.org your site looks the same in most browsers.
The navigation is clear. I suggest using a different colour for the text on hover. The choice of font is fine; it’s a great size, it’s easy to read.
The layout is rather wide – consider making it a bit narrower so that people on smaller screens can view your site a bit better. One of the smallest resolutions is 800 by 600 pixels, so keeping your layout at a width less than that would make it more compatible across different resolutions.
Layout
I like the style of the header image, but it’s also quite large in height. Consider making it a bit smaller. It’s not good when I have to scroll to see most of your content.
I’m not sure if the person in the image has been touched up with effects, but parts of the face look a bit crusty – near the nose and mouth. The skin would look better smoothed out.
I like the effects and textured used, and the words are placed on the image nicely. I think that to focus more on the words though, you could remove the person’s face altogether and crop the image. The layout already looks great with the brushes and textures and words/text.
The content part of the layout is a bit shorter than the header, as you can see in this image.
Content
In the footer, you have a few errors:
Im 15 should be I’m 15
I’m a grade 11 should be I’m a grade 11 student or I’m in grade 11
your’s should be yours.
Adding border="0" in the image tag would remove the black border around the Facebook and Flickr icons.
About Me
I didn’t expect this to open in a pop-up window with a different layout. I browsed your website before you had this layout, so I really wasn’t expecting it.
Having the layout change is a bit inconsistent. Some web designers do it for creativity, but the layouts don’t usually open in a popup window, and each layout usually follows the same theme. Yours doesn’t really do so.
Also, because your main layout is so uniform, things would look better if they just had the same layout.
This is a creative way of displaying this page though, I’ll give you a thumbs up for that. Unfortunately not everyone can view images – it depends on their device and operating system, so you should have made a “small layout” and displayed the text as actual text on the page, against the decorated background.
Graphics
Nice to see you are using Lightbox to display your graphics. Looks very professional – but be mindful that people don’t always have Javascript enabled. Your graphics are of high quality and very creative. Avoid using celebrity images though. They’re not very original – and you’re better off sticking with resources that you have been given permission to use.
Personally I always enjoy looking at other people’s photographs. Some of your photographs are blurry but they are nevertheless beautiful.
Quotes
You have links at the top of the page to points down the page. These links would look neater in a list.
The quotes aren’t really useful – they’re okay to browse and have, but they’re not really as interesting as your graphics.
Site
On this page, OOR should be OR. And capitalise MSN.
Try and list the credits down the page; it would look neater. You don’t need the commas at the end.
Originality & Creativity
You’ve got a fairly creative website. I don’t really have anything to complain about. What you have on your website at the moment isn’t very interesting, so adding more content of more variety would be better.
Organisation & Errors
I’m still not entirely happy with the “About Me” section being in a popup window on its own. Other than that, there weren’t many huge errors or problems.
Overall Comment
Katherine, you’ve done a fairly good job on your layout and on your website, but I feel that you can still improve. The coding is alright, and your layout is done reasonably well.
From what I see, your website is more of a personal site. You have some good graphics, but the quotes aren’t as useful.
You’ve done a great job but I found your website a bit bland and lacking something interesting. You should add more graphics and resources like premade layouts, because your graphics are quite good. Your coding can be improved, but I suggest you validate to the best of your ability so that you can offer layouts that have valid coding too.
