Reviewed on 02/10/09

Webmistresses - Juniper and Virginia
EOC

Splash pages are pointless if you don't offer your site in different languages.

On entering the site I thought, "Aw, cute otters." I've never seen an otter layout before! However, I also thought, "What boring coding."

The site's navigation is the first section of the sidebar. It is very easy to find your way around this site.

I like the originality of it; otters are precious. It's also good to have the site's name easily read on the header. That being said, however, it is also poorly made. The brushes behind the image are pixely and don't go with the images at all. Splatters + otters? I think there is a texture used over the image but it's really hard to tell. I can't really tell if the otter images are blended well or not. The image really doesn't match the layout, mostly because it's white on a medium grey background.

I hate to be so mean about it, but one word sums it up: Boring. The only colors used in the CSS are a brown and black, but the image has many more colors that that. Only one font is used, and while there are differing text sizes and font effects, the lack of colors variety and text variety still make it boring.

I think the main reason the CSS is so boring is because of the background color. Medium grey. The background should have been made white, like the background of the images of the otters 9which would have made the header blend much better witht he rest of the layout). That way, most of the colors present in the header could have been used and seen. Different fonts should have been used, too.

Note They have their content split up by who created it. I'm going to do Virgina's content first and then Juniper's.

Virginia

• Graphics
  • Icons There are five here and they are not well made at all. The images are either fuzzy or pixely, the fonts applied to them are pixelly, they use no coloring effects, brushes or textures. I can't imagine anyone uses these icons.
  • Banners Pretty much the same comments as above. Bad choice of images, badly applied text (and in one case, brushes). I think she might use MS Paint to edit her images...
  • Guild Layouts For Neopets guilds? These aren't made well in the least, either. Very boring coding (Times new Roman is the main font in all of them), and badly made headers (with pixely/grainy/blurry images and brushes that are also grainy or blurry). To not sound like a bitch, I will say that I like that the layouts open in a new window and that they are of animals. It's nice to see something different.
• Resources
  • Button Bases There is one. I don't even know what it is. It's blurry and pixelly and no one in their right mind would use it.

Juniper

• Graphics
  • Icons These are definitely a step up from the last batch of icons. There is use of color effects, textures, and better use of text. However, they are still mediocre. The coloring tends to be oversaturated and contrasted, they still tend to be pixelly, and these don't stand out much as "wow."
  • Banners These too are definitely a step up from Virginia's banners. They used interesting editing, like textures, better text, and better coloring, but they are still too saturated and contrasted. Also, the links on all of them are not correct; they lead to the old site.
  • Site layouts These layouts are not well-made. They have the same shortcomings as the site layout. Boring CSS that doesn't match and some of these headers are poorly made (over-contrasted, grainy). These definitely need re-aligning of the tables, and the headers should be sized down; it's kind of odd when the header takes up the whole window.
  • Guild Layouts Same comments as above. (These should also have Live Previews.)
  • Lookups I really hate dragging things to my address bar to see a full view. Just make the previews open in a new window. These aren't that bad, I guess. I don't know what most lookups look like, though (not familiar with Neopets). I don't like the weird fuzzy greay border around every animal, but at least these aren't pixelly.
  • Wallpapers There's only one, and quite frankly, I think it's stupid. It's just a quote about nature in white text on a black background. She doesn't say what size it is and I have to drage it to my address bar to look at it. I really think this should be removed.
• Resources
  • Button bases The images used for these are nice, but it would be hard to read any text placed on them, which is the point of butten bases.
  • Icon textures The two light textures and the one that kind of looks like paper are nice, but the others are not. Not much of a selection here, either.
  • Textures The first texture is really not bad, I like it. The second one is just a blurred photo of the ocean, though, and it's really small.
  • PSDs These are pretty nice PSDs of animals.
• Tutorials I'm not going to individualy describe each one, but alas I know why the graphics are so saturated! Abuse of Overlay. I sujects learning how to use all of the other layer properties (there are quite a few!). Highly contrasted/saturated graphics aren't very appealing.

I wasn't very pleased with the content on this site. With practice and a lot of tutorial reading, these girls might have a very nice site with animal content, but until then, it's not worth it to visit.

Learn to use textures, brushes, and text well on your graphics by reading tutorials.

Don't use such grainy/pixely images, and be sure to save your images at teh highest quality.

Make your CSS more interesting. Browse sites and see how they make their coding interesting, or read tutorials.

I noticed your animal facts are just copy-pasted from other websites. You do credit, but it's illegal to just copy-paste that information verbatim. Paraphrase it in your own words.

disjecta-membra.net

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