Review for Mallory of malloryray.com

Layout

It’s simple, pleasant to look at, but not necessarily boring. As a matter of fact I quite like the various shapes in the header image. Overall, it gives me a pretty short lasting impression. I think it’s the color choice mainly, which makes everything look faded, as if you had washed the layout too many times. Your previous layout, with the pink flowers was a better choice, as the white and pink made enough contrast to make some sort of lasting impression on me. My memory is primarily a visual one, so when I think of a site, I have a layout in mind, which left some impression on me.

From a usability point of view, your main navigation is well placed and uses good colors, however from an aesthetic one, it looks a bit odd. Especially on the right side, where one of the blue circles is cut off. Consider making some sort of smoother transition between the header image and the plain black background of the navigation. The differently colored backgrounds are a good idea, however their effect is sort of lost, because these only show up on hover. Consider having a highlighted current link as well, perhaps. Or maybe just have it white as the content which starts underneath it. It needs a bit of livening up. Your sidebar is a bit on the thin side, so it looks somewhat cramped. The light gray which acts as background, is slightly noticeable on the right, but on the left it is very difficult to make out. I suggest you use #DDDCDC as a background instead, make the span of the actual content a bit larger. True, 224px is quite enough for a sidebar, but you also have a padding of 5 pixels all around, which technically reduces the width of the actual content by 10 pixels. Add those 10px to the width, and consider justifying the text in there. Since the lines’ width are rather small, the left aligned text is very easily noticeable.

Your footer is a very nice touch, but the copyright notice looks rather odd above it. Try to integrate it within the footer image, so as to give the entire layout a better closure, making it less obvious to distinguish the three sections (header, content+sidebar and footer). Just the same as you did with the site title on the header image. Incidentally, consider enlarging it, to give it more emphasis. I believe that the site title in the header image should have a considerably larger size, compared to the rest of the text.

You have more themes? Great, I can hopefully find something that appeals to me better. Oh yes, the previous comments relate to the default theme, which you state is named Circles. I appreciate that you took the trouble not to have that as link. Most people just put all links there, making it more difficult to remember which on it is that I clicked already.

Geometric Blue has a brilliant header image, however it is not very well integrated, so I get the impression that it is cut off. I suggest you make the header and footer’s background, span along the full length of the browser window. The content are can remain as it is. But these two, seem rather odd, seeing as there seems to be no border on their left and right side. I’m thinking, of something like Serene Green’s current layout, though not necessarily applied to the entirety of yours.

I see there is a box labeled navigation, it there a drop down list if I hover? An anchor to the bottom of the page? NO, this is a very bad move from an accessibility point of view. The main navigation should be readily available in the first screen of the browser window, not at the bottom. I suggest you use a horizontal menu, which you could place on the green part of the stripe (making its height larger of course), so as to be instantly noticeable. I understand that sometimes, one must make sacrifices for aestheticism’s sake, but not THIS kind of sacrifice. The main menu should be somewhere at the top of the layout.

Purple Lily is lovely, but the black space on the right of the flower is unused. You could have easily put the site title there instead of on the flowery background. Not to mention, made it larger. White on black is much easier read than white on purple. The yellow link hover colors are a bit hard to read on white, consider using a darker shade.

Ume Blossoms is the theme I remember last time I visited. I really like how its edges are round and the picture of the flowers is lovely. On the footer though, you should change the link color because it’s impossible to read without highlighting it. Also, the sidebar, seems to start too high, there is a white rectangle inside the header image, which really isn’t helping aesthetically. You should move it lower, or have a top background part of the picture, fade inside the sidebar, so that the transition will go smoothly. Oh, I just notice: the site title. Come on! Aren’t visitors supposed to see it? Why is it so tiny?!

The Wordpress Classic theme is missing the navigation, the link for theme changes and it has a white rectangle on the top right corner. Come to think of it: how do I change the themes back now? I tried typing domain in the URL, which did indeed bring me to the domain page, but no theme changing links were in sight. In the end, I cleared my browser’s cache and the cookies, which restored the default layout.

As far as cross-resolution and cross-browser compatibility goes, Circles is sidescrolling in a resolution of 800×600px, along with Ume Blossoms. It’s just a little, so I’d consider fixing this issue. In Internet Explorer 6, there is a thin white border on the right side of the blue stripes in Geometric Blue . As neither Firefox 2, nor Opera 9 have it, I assume this is a glitch in the coding. Also, the header of Purple Flower, seems to sport an additional black stripe right below the header image, in Internet Explorer 6. It looks as if an underlying black background were “peeking out” from underneath. On the one hand it doesn’t really look bad, and someone who doesn’t know what the layout looks like in Firefox and Opera probably won’t find it odd. Still it’s an error, so look into it. As for Wordpress Default, I’d personally remove it altogether. It’s not as nice as the rest of your layouts, nor was it made by you. Plus, there’s the whole missing navigation issue.

Your layouts are all nice, some more than the others, however there are a few very serious usability issues which need fixing, most important from these being the main navigation for Geometric Blue and the lack of any kind of navigation in Wordpress Default. That being said, I’ll continue my browsing with Purple Flower. I like Geometric Blue more, from an aesthetic point of view, however the navigation at the bottom is annoying. I don’t feel like scrolling way down every time I want to move elsewhere.

Content

=Home=

This is your online diary (or journal as you call it), nothing to comment here. I generally like your writing style, and will probably return on and off. It’s um… just typical stuff. Nothing bad with it, but nothing extraordinarily amazing either. Yeah, that’s me rambling about nothing.

=About Me=

You have a sub-navigation here, very nice. I like the way you inserted it as a sort of tree (reminiscent of Windows Explorer). I especially like the dotted lines. It’s probably the best looking from all your themes, as far as I looked. On your autobiography page, the first list confused me a bit. Consider making it a bit clearer. I mean, I got that the first two are meanings of your name (or at least I think that’s what they are), but 3rd… is that your job? Or another name meaning? I got the meaning of the fourth by reading the following sentence, but on its own (i.e. as part of the list) it really doesn’t make sense. I suggest you don’t include it in the list and just have a separate sentence where you humorously admonish people who may have a tendency to call you any of those names. Hehe: Mal Roy indeed. Maybe he/she was in a rush? I know I distort words in a really odd way, when I’m rushing through a sentence.

Your autobiography was unique and especially interesting. It’s part funny how your rush through things, making it clear that you truly don’t like this, however it is also rather bleak. Content-wise you could retain this, but try and interconnect the sentences a bit more, so that they don’t seem like odd fragments from something longer. The following paragraph about Rob is much more pleasant to read, as the sentences have a connection to each other.

Your Likes and Dislike page, along with your wishlist could very well be incorporated into your autobiography page. There really is no need to have separate pages for them, unless you plan on elaborating on them (i.e. why do you like x, y, z and why do you want v, w, u …). Your Pets page looks wonky in my resolution (1280 x 1024 px), due to the picture which you floated (aligned) to the left. A sort of very odd, stair effect if created. I suggest you put each description and picture of animal inside a paragraph, and you specify clear: left inside your CSS, for each such paragraph. This way, the unwanted “stairs” will be avoided. This page reminds me of my cousin: he has all these animals, every time I ask they’re something different. Though, I have to admit he didn’t have this many at once.

=Kimono=

Oh very nice. Though I love anime and am happy to read about Japanese culture, I never much researched this. The kimono you own are very nice, maybe also post pictures of you wearing them. It seems as if they look different when worn. By the way, how come you translate higaki but not sakura? Sure I didn’t know the former’s meaning and do know the latter’s, but still not everyone stumbling here is familiar with these terms. All these different names for a kimono, a brief explanation wouldn’t hurt. Or do you have another page for that? If so, maybe have a link to that particular explanation. Oh found the page, and I must say it’s very interesting. Though it can also be slightly confusing. You might want to include short explanations for additional terms related to the kimono (eg geisha is a courtesan, and maiko is an apprentice geisha). Some people are probably not that familiar with this terminology. Speaking of which, I don’t know what a mon is, and you seem to mention it more than once.

In the page for Types of Obi, it would be nice if you started it by saying what an Obi is. I assume it’s the “belt” with which one ties the kimono into place. The Kimono accessories are truly interesting: I never knew you had to wear so many things with a kimono, granted those geisha did seem as if they had a ton of clothes on them. You don’t exactly explain what Uzen is, just jump head first into explaining how it is done. I’m assuming it is a type of pattern used on Kimono? Seeing as the next one is. Please revise these description as not everyone is so familiar as you and it’s a pity. They are truly interesting.
Now that I read all pages, my questions have eventually been answered. In hindsight, they are fine, just make sure to include a very brief description in parenthesis when the term is not explained on the same page. For example for mon put crest in parenthesis, and maybe a link to where you explain more about it.

=Domain=

Why does this link precede the one for visitor content? Shouldn’t the latter be more important as this one? You do pay per post and other advertising? I was really surprised as I’ve never seen any of it on your site. Then again, I suppose that’s a sign of how professionally you can do it.

=Visitor=

Not much, but they are good taste and relevant to you (with the kimono themes). I really like the bonsai at the bottom. It’s very well done: good job. The fish in the bowl are also cute, though of course less detailed compared to the bonsai.

Coding

Valid and semantic. Great job, no objections.

Rating

I’m truly surprised how fast I managed to finish this review, only a few hours. Normally, I tend to drag these things for months or at the very least days on end. Though yeah, I guess you could say I’ve been making you wait since August (cringes), I hope the review was at least a little helpful though. Your site was truly a pleasure to review. Keep up the good work and fix the issues I’ve pointed out. I definitely see myself returning.
By the way, I love the favicon.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 1:06 pm and is filed under Reviews Vera. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.