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Site Name: Kookie-xo
Owner: Kathryn
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 7th July 2009

Site Name

I don’t see the point in including the trendy “xo” at the end of your website name. “Kookie”, or at least another word added onto the end of it, would have been fine.

Coding and Validation

Your coding outside of the general iframe page has 1 error and 3 warnings.

Judging from the look of your other pages, you don’t even have a basic grasp of the fundamentals of HTML. Incorrect structure – no html, head or body tags? No doctype; no character encoding. You need to cover these issues before even beginning to code.

It is difficult to judge your CSS, but I recognise that you are using a stylesheet for your pages. The main page has 4 errors as you have not placed units, px, after your div widths.

You should not be using coloured scrollbars. There is no point in providing invalid coding and adding colour to scrollbars that is only guaranteed to work in one browser (Internet Explorer). There is no need to inflict a coloured scrollbar on a user, when there is nothing wrong with the default scrollbar.

The coding needs to be looked over and properly adjusted to the framesets; even if they are not recommended, changes must be made to account for browser compatibility.

Browser Compatibility & Usability

Looking at your site at Browsershots.org, your layout is looking consistent in most browsers. It looks best in Internet Explorer where the scrollbars line up and the layout isn’t wedged in the corner – in other browsers it is squished and the scrollbars are out of place.

As mentioned above, frames are not recommended for a multitude of reasons. 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. Iframes can be a hassle for visitors because they won’t be able to bookmark a single page and linking to a single page wouldn’t be very efficient because they would be linking to a page without a layout. They are also a disadvantage to you, because pages opening in iframes don’t get looked at by search engines as it’s usually just data held. Some browsers don’t even account for the use of iframes. It is in your best interests to make some changes in this sense.

The text size is very small and should be increased. Personally, I have perfect vision and if I have trouble reading your text then there is no doubt that people with eye problems also will.

You’re linking to your blog (hosted at Blogspot.com) within an iframe, which causes problems when a comment is made on the blog and the entire page breaks out of the iframe, leaving only your blog – yet another problem with the iframes; some websites automatically break out of the frames.

The width of the layout is also a little problem; it’s quite wide so it would not look very neat in smaller resolutions.

Layout

The stylesheet is definitely an interesting element of the layout. A nice variety of fonts and effects are used. The change of links on hover is a bit distracting.

The setup of the layout is neat and simple. The subtle patterned background does add some interest. I like how the navigation is used to fill up the space under the image, which is rarely done as many websites have a rather large amount of pages or prefer to use subpages.

I’m assuming, after browsing your website, that the image on the layout is of you. This is quite original and it’s nice that you’ve used a simple picture of yourself without being too egotistical. The layout is well structured with a single image, edited to match the theme.

The colour scheme consists of only a number of colours, which is fine. You’ve used black to break up the body of blue and the white text.

It’s a very simple layout but obviously, it could benefit by being converted to a divider layout. The iframe could be made smaller so that text is not squished to the edges of the box part of the layout.

Content

Site

On this page, you could link to websites like Habbo, Bravenet and Piczo (and capitalise them) so people have an idea of what they are about.
friends house should be friend’s house
it’s not broke should be it hasn’t broke
kindalazy should be kinda lazy.

On the affiliate application, simples should be simple.

On the credits page, your not should be you’re not.

On the link buttons page, you should use <code> instead of <textarea> to display code – textarea is intended for user input (notice how you can edit the text within?) and not for displaying code. In doing so you have to replace < with < and > with >.

The past layouts look great. Very cute, quirky and original.

About Me

On the ‘about me’ page, there are some errors:
names should be name’s
aslong should be as long
heres a video should be here’s a video
Scotlands great should be Scotland’s great.

There isn’t much on the adoptables page; I’m sure you can add more to make this page stand out a bit more.

On the “contact me” page, you might want to add a form so that people don’t have to open their email to email you if they want to contact you privately.

Honestly, and this is more of a personal note… I didn’t think anyone else knew of Maximum The Hormone until I read it on your music page. I think you should place these bands/artists in a list down the page; it would make it easier to read. Great job for putting them in alphabetical order though.

On the random facts page, alot should be a lot.

On the quiz results page, I’ve took should be I’ve taken.

Eye Candy

The blends can be improved; less photographs in each would provide a greater focus on the subject. The quality can be improved and effects can be reduced a bit to again provide focus on the subject.

The drawings are excellent; your drawings are original and you draw well. Some of these would look great on your layout as well.

The icons are not bad. It’s good that you acknowledge you are not the owner/creator of some of these characters/photographs. The icons can be improved as some of them are a bit pixelated and low quality. Many of these appear like they’ve just been cropped, so try adding more effects to them to make them more interesting.

The pixels aren’t bad; the people are well pixelled. The shading on the balloons can be improved though.

There isn’t much photography but the few photos you have here are interesting and unique.

The scribbles are cute; nothing much to say.

The signs should be taken down; signs like these are rarely used and also look quite tacky.

Fun stuff/reads

You have “annoying students” at the foot of the “annoying teachers” page, so perhaps they could go on their own page.

Originality & Creativity

You have quite an original website with a lot of original and personal content. Some of the graphics can be improved but judging from your past layouts as well, you have sound graphic skill and a good sense of creativity.

Organisation & Errors

Well organised, no problems. You should fix up the errors in your writing.

Overall Comment

You have a good creative site with some very original content. You came across as a nice person and you had some interesting information about yourself on your website.

Your website was interesting but you can really improve on your coding and working to create a layout that doesn’t use iframes. Also, you should increase the text size and work on optimising graphics and making them more interesting. You definitely have potential so keep up the great work.

Rating

(out of 5)