Archived Review
- Reviewer: Jem
- Review date: 11th Nov 2008
I'm going to break from the crowd here - I quite like the text size. I found it more comfortable zoomed out by one in firefox (not sure what the equivalent size would be in em/px/%) but otherwise it makes a change from screwing up my face reading some genius' attempt at looking good with 6pt Arial. The only downside to it is that every colleague walking behind me knows exactly what I'm reading... not that you'd catch me browsing at work of course.
Although the "design" (I'll be shot for calling it that, I'm sure) is image free and very simple, the colours compliment each other well and the set up of each page works. There are a few small tweaks I'd make though...
A) Increase the size of your comment textarea - it's almost identical in size to the other input fields and given the size of the text, is grossly out of proportion. You could get away with making it full width and it wouldn't be out of place.
B) Keep the "Tagged with.." in a consistant place - either at the bottom or top of the entry but not both.
C) Bring your titles and navigation left slightly to line up properly with the rest of the page.
D) Split the Older Entries and Newer Entries links up at the bottom (when browsing backwards with Older Entries)
E) It's not immediately obvious what the numbers mean after entry titles. I initially thought that your latest entry was your second rant on the subject matter because you have 2 comments.
Your About page is quite short and I'm left feeling a little short-changed. You're 18 so you're probably in.. I don't know, end of high school or college? It'd be your job to fill in this gap. What are you studying, and does this apply to what you want to do later in life? Do you even know what your plans for a career are? It probably sounds dull but this kind of information helps your visitor get a deeper understanding of what you're about.
Your article on Personal Blogs is spot on, and I couldn't agree more. However, it does bring up the question on whether or not people have personal blogs anymore? I certainly wouldn't class my blog as overly "personal", but I daresay others would slap it with that label. Sites that I consider personal have been categorised as Other under this very website. Are we expanding because we enjoy it, and thus these pages are still an expansion or ourselves, or because we deem it necessary to bring in traffic? I digress... I'd like to see more articles like this, and perhaps dated so I know when they were published (opinions change, we need to know if this is recent or not).
Fiction isn't really my thing, no point in me trying to grade it.
Your Archives page is useful, but you're underutilising it. When I click it I expect to see lists of titles. I don't want to have to drill down too far. Furthermore, when I click on November 2008, again.. I want to see a list. I don't want to see exactly the same thing that I could see just by viewing your front page.
Site page is standard, nothing to say about it.
You need more links... e.g. http://www.jemjabella.co.uk ;)
Given your blog platform of choice, there is little point in me reviewing your mark-up, and there were no obvious errors or bad habits (coloured scrollbars etc) evident in the stylesheet.
Ref: something said in one of your other reviews:
H1 tags are not supposed to be smaller than the H3 tags that you use for your entry titles.
Size of titles is irrelevant, CSS is there for styling them how you wish. Order is more important, with <h1> containing the main title, <h2> containing the subtitle and so on. Your titles are fine.
I enjoyed your blog entries. The simple style of writing supports the succinct entries you seem to favour. I definitely think there are more blogs who could benefit from following in your footsteps (i.e. me... I ramble far too much) and that the way you update is more in tune with what blogging used to be. I can recall - eee, back in the day - when I used to update several times a day with similar, short but to the point statements. Maybe this is all a part of the evolution of the Personal Blog?
I guess your site leaves me with nothing overly to complain about. Aside from a few nitpicks on your overall layout I didn't find myself flinching (a rarity these days). On the other hand, I didn't feel wowed by anything either, probably because there was little to keep my attention for long. I don't propose you start adding free shit, etc, it'd spoil your site, but I would like to see some more of your opinion pieces. :)