lobster critique review

(No longer around)
site: Ricepaper
type: personal site
review: normal
reviewed: 04.23.03
classification: alright
lobsters: none :(

Splash:
None, but none is necessary.

First Impression:
By looking at how tiny the scroll bar is on the side I'm becoming intimidated by the amount of reading there'll be on the site O.O Anyways, everything seems pretty simple so far. My first impression is alright, I'm not wowed, but I'm still here.

Layout:
Even though there isn't too much to it, I actually do like this layout. The simple two colored (and white) table seems to work fine for your site. Considering this is a personal site, the layout really needs nothing more, and therefore I thinks it looks great, so I have no complaints. Except (here it comes), that in an 1024x768 res there's a lot, and I mean a lot, of empty space. It's not as bad in 800x600, but you should probably try and make it a bit bigger next time. Though it really does surprise me anyone still uses a 640x480 res. The other two are by far the most popular, so you should probably focus more on them. Seriously though, 640x480?

Navigation:
Also pretty simple, links at the top and sub links below them. I'd recommend making the links a bit bigger. Right now they're smaller than the font, but they should be more noticeable.

Content:
main page: You should have an intro of some sort. When I visited, I was thrown into your latest blog entry. This doesn't make your site very welcoming. Say something like, 'Hey, my name is chiiyo, and this is my personal site,' but a bit better than that. When I first say the 'current music' heading, I thought that your site had music. Of course, the silence made me realize that this was the music you were listening to. You might want to rename current music to 'currently listening to' or something. It can be a bit misleading. Since you seem to love to type so much (these entries are longer than my reviews!), you might want to only have the newest one on the main page. Even though you fixed it a bit, it still scrolls so much. (It would seem like less if the layout was wider and font was smaller.) Hey look, you're still waiting for my review! Well, I'm doing it now. Your site updates are in middle of your blog, and pretty hard to notice. The italics do make it easier, but it'd be better if you had the updates at the top of the page, short in point form. Then if you wanted to expand on them, you could do that in the blog; they'd be a lot more noticeable then. Since you're the only to post here, I don't think it's necessary for your name to show up at the bottom of each post, though this could just be because of Blogger. Your links to other people's sites should open in new windows. kazoku no blog? tomodachi no blog? I have no idea what these mean. The 'link me' button would be better placed under its own heading; there's space under you affiliates for that.

writings: For the stories, you should write behind the unfinished ones that they aren't completed. That's a lot of poems. I like the song lyrics, you don't see people write these very often. The misc was pretty interesting too. Plays and novel ideas are also something not so common.

design: You should give a bit of a description about each of the photos. When did you take them, why, do you like them, what do they mean to you? You could add a description under them, or even in the alt tags (which now read 'photo 15'). The winamp skins, website designs misc designs should also have a description. For the sites, who were they made for? why? was it commissioned? for a friend? I kind of wish I knew what the animation read, you might want to add that too.

about: I was curious as to how you came up with the name of your site. I don't really know what else to say about this section; everything seems like it's here.

Overall Impression:
Your site is mainly a blog, though there are some other things here. You could always add some articles or something, but you do have a lot of literary pieces, so there are things to read. I somehow don't feel I've learned too much here, but that's more of a personal comment. (I don't keep up with blogs, nor like plays and short stories, but that's just me). I think anyone who enjoys these things would appreciate your site a lot more than I did.

Other Things:
The 'go to top' buttons are good, I'm glad you put them in. And I liked that your links were on the top and bottom of the table.

Classification:
alright - not spectacular, but not bad.

chiiyo's comments :
This was my very first review, and I am really grateful that Tacea did such a good job of reviewing ricepaper, because her suggestions and comments helped a lot in the second design, and kind of opened my eyes to what other people needed and wanted from a good website. In a way, her comments have influenced what I thought was user-friendly. She reminded me that shorter pages was better (and I still try to adhere to that) and that even though it was good to make sure my site looked good in 640x480, I must also make sure it looks good in larger resolutions. Since then, I have been designing in 1024x768 instead of 800x600, and I have understood what she meant about too much white space... Introduction to the site, putting site updates separately from blog entries, making outside links open to new windows, leaving my name out of the end of every blog entry, these are all suggestions I took and kept till now since then. In a way, even though she did say that she didn't really like writing sites, and yet gave me such encouraging comments in both my writing and design sections really spurred me to make them into better, more filled-out sections. I think if her review site was still around, I would try and get her to re-review Ricepaper now and see if she thought it had improved since then...



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