Review of Imajenation

• Site name: Imajenation
• Site owner: Jenny
• Date reviewed: December 28, 2009

Site Name

Your website’s name is very creative and original. I love how you have integrated your own name into your site’s name. The one thing that irks me about it is that I keep putting the emphasis on the “jen” instead of pronouncing it normally like “imagination”, but that’s probably just me, since I tend to pronounce words differently when I see them spelled differently. Overall, I like it.

Layout

When I first saw this layout, I was unsure about the fact that it is so small and only has one column. However, after thinking about it, I realized that it is perfectly fine for you to have only one column in your layout, and that that even made it more unique. Good job. I also love the colors you have used; they seem to have sort of a refreshing feel about them.

Your navigation is nicely located, large enough, and easy to find, which is great for usability. I also think it’s cool how you have surrounded the content section of your layout with a Polaroid border effect. Did you create this yourself?

Your text is a little small, which, when accompanied by your small line-height, is pretty hard on my eyes. It’s readable, but annoying. My only other concern is how you have moved the layout so far down the page. I don’t really understand why you have created such a large gap between the top of the screen and the beginning of your layout. I find myself scrolling down to position the layout farther up the screen.

Cross-Browser Compatibility

Your layout looks generally the same in Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera. The only discrepancy is that in Internet Explorer (8) and Firefox, there is a border around the buttons you advertise in your footer. However, this border does not appear in Google Chrome, Safari, or Opera. Additionally, the opacity change when you hover over these buttons does not work in Internet Explorer; it is at full opacity the entire time. Although I think that these are small errors that you don’t really need to worry about, you might want to look into them.

Coding

Your coding is valid in both XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS level 3. Congratulations!

Content

Owner:

About me: You call your website “crummy”. When you introduce something as being bad, crummy, etc., it makes people less interested in seeing what else it contains. Even though many people will not read your “about me” page first, I don’t think it’s a good idea to use this adjective. It definitely affected my impression of your site (just a bit).

Overall, I like this page. I found myself nodding along to a lot of it, like how I am also quite the detail-oriented perfectionist. Oh and I bet your surname is Zhang!

When I click the link to “About Me” in the smaller links across the top of the page, it leads to a “this page cannot be found” error.

Favorites: I love Google Chrome! *High five*.

City of Embers should be City of Ember. – I love that book.

There really isn’t much to say about this page. It’s a nice page to have.

100 in 1: I love this concept! It would probably be really annoying to change on this page, but for future numbered lists, I would suggest using an ordered list (<ol>) instead of manually typing each number. This will make it look neater overall, since the text on the next line will not appear under the number. If you don’t know how to use an ordered list, this is how:

<ol>
<li>List item 1</li>
<li>List item 2</li>
<li>List item 3</li>
</ol>

The above code will be rendered as follows:

1. List item 1
2. List item 2
3. List item 3

Contact: On this page you have neglected to place the links across the top to other pages in your “owner” section.

Portfolio: “abiding to” should be “abiding by”

I was confused about what I would find under “Graphic Albums”, and after clicking the link I still did not understand the category under which these graphics were categorized. I think you should either think of a new name for this category or offer a description of what will be found there.

I will not review the actual content of your portfolio, for obvious reasons.

Visitor:

Fun

Your analogy contest is very original. You should host it again!

Graphics and Resources

100×100 Avatars: “mouses” should be “mice”

I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but the use of celebrity images if often illegal, depending on the source. I’m not saying that you should remove them, but you should be sure to check the copyright permissions on such images before adapting them. While some levels of copyright allow for derivatives of the work (with credit) to be published on websites such as yours, others (such as MTV) are very strict and do not even allow people to email their photos. This is often something you can find in a website’s terms of use.

Besides that, all of your avatars look great.

Desktop Wallpapers: “on left handed mouse” should be “on a left-handed mouse”

“browers’” should be “browser’s”

I think it’s really nice that you offer to adapt these to the visitor’s specific resolution if they contact you. These all look great; I would love to see more. My favorite is the “green with envy” wallpaper.

48×48 Icons: “the likes” should be “the like”

“mouses” should be “mice”

“browsers’” should be “browser’s”

Your icons are all amazing.

Textures: This page took ages to load with my slow internet connection, and when it stopped loading many of the thumbnails had not even loaded yet. I see that you have simply scaled the 800 by 800 pixel images down to 100 by 100 pixels through your code. I suggest actually resizing your textures to 100 by 100 pixels in whatever image editing program you use, saving those as thumbnails, and using THOSE as the preview images. That way they will all load much more quickly, as the file size of what needs to load will be smaller. To get an idea of the extent of this problem, please see the screenshot below of what loaded for me after about one minute (click to view full size). The page stopped loading on its own.

If you have scaled images through code on any other pages, I suggest changing them as well.

From what I can see (slightly more textures loaded when I refreshed), your textures are of an excellent quality. I can see how they would be extremely useful.

Style Sets: I love the preview images for these. I think it would be better if these were named “stylesheet sets” or something similar that makes it more clear what they actually are before clicking. I had no clue what I should expect when I first clicked the link.

Web Layouts: “redistrubiting” should be “redistributing”

These all look great. The one issue I take with this page is that I don’t like how half the previews are floated to the left and half to the right. I think you should instead just list them in one centered, left-aligned, OR right-aligned column all the way down the page. I just find their current positions on the page extremely “awkward” to look at, if you know what I mean.

Reads

Ironic Quotes: “dicitonary” should be “dictionary”

“at loss” should be “at a loss”

Domaining Explained: “locate her site to” should be “locate her site”

“connects a domain name” should be “connect a domain name”

Procrastination: Can You Beat It?: “Positivity is a big impact” should be “Positivity has a big impact”

“Think positive” should be “Think positively”

Don’t Wait to Validate: “Such a something” should be “One such thing”

“your better off” should be “you’re better off”

Winning Isn’t Everything: “Refrain yourself” should be “Refraining yourself”

That’s it for your visitor section. It is small but everything you do have is of high quality, especially your avatars, icons, and textures. All you need to do is add more and expand your visitor section for this to be an excellent section. It has potential!

Website:

History: “Soon enough, learned” should be “Soon enough, I learned”

Credits: “photo/image editing” should be “photo/image-editing”

Contact: Oh NOW I understand why there are not links across the top of this page in your “owner” section. They’re the same page! In that case, I suggest that you only link to your contact page under either your owner or your website section, but not both. That way you can have links across the top of the page for easier navigation. It really threw me off when I tried to click “about me” on your contact page before and couldn’t find it, because of course it wasn’t there.

Overall Impression

After reviewing your site, my initial impression of it has changed, and I’m sorry to say that it has been for the worse. I do still think that your content is of a very high quality and that you have an excellent website. I can’t exactly put my finger on the feeling I have after going through your website. I think my feeling is that it brings back a lot of memories of things I saw on the web in the community I used to be involved in about three years ago. For that reason, I get the feeling that it is kind of generic in a way. This is probably not an opinion that is widely held, however, so if I were you I wouldn’t worry about it too much. It’s just a strange impression I have.

In regard to originality, I find that your website is very similar to things I saw about three years ago, like I previously stated, but it is relatively original in the website community of which you and I are now members. Not many people have icons of as high quality as yours; you are incredibly skilled in this area!

Your website is organized well; I had no trouble navigating except for that one instance with your contact page.

I have chosen to award your website a rating of four out of five doughnuts. I was going to give you a rating of 3.5 out of five, but I realized that the 3.5 was only due to the strange, almost nostalgic impression I got of your site and would not be fair to you. You deserve a four! You can improve simply by adding lots more content; the potential is there.