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Solipsus has 6 Reviews

Below are the reviews left by other members on Solipsus. Jump to review form?

1. 

   Mimi gave it on 20th Nov 2008 and said:

   Reviewed with:
   Mozilla Firefox 3.0.4 | 1440 x 900 Resolution| Windows Vista
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   Ok, I am super excited to go through your page because you appear to have my absolute favorite type of personality and I bet I will just giggle with joy!

   First Impression:

   The style looks so good, it's warm and pleasant. I see an adorable little frog and I squeal with excitement. Oh, I should probably remain consistent with my writing styles. XD Your small photo makes you look simply darling and your site slogan is beyond adorable. "The Blog With a Frog". Classic, I really wish I had a slogan now. :)

   Coding:

   With the HTML that shows up when I open the source code of a document there were a few little errors. One was that the DIV id 'recent' is being used twice. I am sure you are well aware that a Div id is to only be used once, so I thought I would point it out to you.

   Also, the image links that are from 'solipsus.com/wp-content/themes/Summer 2008/images/' should be changed to 'solipsus.com/wp-content/themes/Summer%202008/images/' because of the space in Summer 2008. Oh this also goes for the link to your external style sheet. :)

   Another thing it mentioned was that there are 10 empty span, label and legend tags. There are four "<span></span>", one <legend></legend> and the rest are label errors. Of course, these don't make your site invalid for XHTML but if you were wanting an all-around valid site, those are the only things that need to be addressed concerning the HTML part.

   Your site has 5 errors when checked for XHTML validation, one of the errors was that you are using the Div id twice (as I mentioned above) and the rest are just missing alt tags. Not a huge deal.

   For some reason I can't even check your CSS with the validator... I checked out 3 other sites to see if the validator was just acting up but it loaded the results for them just fine. That's odd! Hmm.. okay when I enter the actual URL to the style sheet itself, it works. WTH validator?! Haha. Anyway, it passes validation but if you are concerned about warnings, there are a total of 86 of them. Most of them if not all of them are concerning colors.

   The actual CSS itself makes me squeal like a happy little school girl, it's very clean and tidy. :) I love tidy CSS! Hooray!

   So apparently you are a very good coder and that makes me adore you some more!

   Design:

   The design is superb so the only things I have to say are really just minor and nit-picky, but that's how I roll I guess. *insert cool kid sunglasses here*

   One thing (well, two technically) that I think doesn't fit into the layout so much are how you have 'About Me' and 'Contact Me' partially hidden under other things. Making the 'About Me' only visible from the bottom half down and vice versa with the 'Contact Me'.

   Also in your little 'About Me' section at the top, some of the text in there is almost touching the right side, I think it would look better if there were some more space between the words and the brown edge there. Two words specifically that are almost touching are "nature," and "the" (as in: please visit the).

   Your meta information box seems a little unstructured as well. I'm not sure if it's because the post that is up right now has three categories and that makes it an extra line long or if it's because it flares out on the bottom. It reminds me of a post-it, which is cool but something just doesn't sit well with me about it.

   I think the fact that the copyright notice-area at the bottom is in all caps looks a little weird. Why not use normal capitalization but make the text bold? I think that would look nice.

   Finally, the 'Recent Posts', 'Recent Comments' and 'Favorite Websites' looks very nice, but I think the fact that the background (well, before hovering over them) is the same color as the rest of the content background doesn't make it stand out as much as I think it should. I had a thought that maybe if you switched the hover color with the un-hovered color that it would look better? That way the background initially is a different color than the rest of the content area but once you hover over it, it becomes the same colro as the background.

   This design.. literally makes me squee with joy. I love it so much. It's definitely a good source of inspiration on my down days!

   Content:

   Aww.. I was majorly disappointed because your blog posts seem SO full of wit. Your 'About Me' page is all too short. Then that is really the only other page isn't it? I would love to read more about you, honestly. You seem to be fun and someone I would get along with no problemo.

   I absolutely love your use of the frog, since it is something you hold dear to your heart. It's wonderful to see someone implement something that is important to them.

   Final Thoughts:

   I am going to officially stalk you via RSS feeds, just so you know. Expect frequent harassment of the comments nature. Bwuahaha! Anyway, your design is simply fantastic, I could just go on and on about how much I love it but I'm sure you are probably bored by now so I guessss I will spare you.

   You seem to also be friends with a lot of my friends so I am actually really surprised that I didn't find you before now! What's up with that?

   Makes me super sad that there isn't more content other than the blog. :( You know what I would really love to see? Some art. Since you made this uber amazing layout, I KNOW you are a talented artist. I want more, MORE I TELL YOU! ;)

   I am going to give your site a 4/5. I would make it lower for lack of content normally but my god the design is so wonderful I couldn't possibly put 3/5 on talent like this.

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2. Lexxi gave it on 19th Nov 2008 and said:

   Hello Ben!

   First Impression- "The Blog with a frog." Love it. It has a very nice ring to it. Even though you used a lot of contrasting colors, they somehow blend together very nicely. For example, the blue and orange work surprisingly well together. Props to you for a very good color scheme!

   Layout- I think the layout is gorgeous. The frog vector is adorable and the layout is very organized. I like how you made the contact form into a postcard. It's creative and I haven't seen anything like it. One thing that bothers me a little is that some of the text in your description at the top is cutting close to the edge of the brown blog background. Sorry if that sounds confusing, this is a little hard to explain. What I mean is that words like "nature" and "visit the" is getting a little too close to the brownish background. It's a little distracting towards your otherwise beautiful layout.

   Content- One thing that really bothered me was the content links were at the bottom of the page. Maybe you should make a more prominent navigation section.
   About: Your about page is well written with little errors. I really liked reading about how you came up with your "Blog with a Frog" idea since I can relate to obsessing over something (my obsession are octopuses :D). My only suggestion in this section is to add some pictures. I really like reading "about" pages with some kind of visual so I can get an even better understanding of the website owner.
   Blog: Wow, I'm really impressed. You write really well and I find it hard to find grammatical errors in your blog entries. My only suggestion is to have more personal entries, since most of it seemed to be about web design or coding.

   Conclusion- So this has probably been my shortest review thus far, considering that your site is wonderful. Your site is cute, professional, organized, and overall very well put together. My only big gripe is the navigation. 5/5!

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3. 

   Hannah gave it on 10th Nov 2008 and said:

   I love just about everything about this layout: the color scheme, the dropshadows and gradients, the cure frog... I do have a few suggestions, though.

   The about me text at the top seems to be a little long for that little section that you give it; I'd start the bit with the curvy brown and the frog just a tad further down to give the text more breathing room.

   Next: the... brown section, the main section- whatever you call it.
   I'll start with the text. Curly fonts like Lucida Grande and Trebuchet MS don't look very good without a good amount of line height. You're using 1.5 here and I would set it to 1.6 at least.

   And now for the little date, category and comments post-it note thingy: it seems that there is more space given below this than to the right of it. I would shove the text a few more pixels to the right.

   And now, to the bottom of the page. Your footer looks funky. You must have closed a div tag too early because the background cuts off and there's almost white text on an almost white background and I can't read it.

   Other than that, your site is fine! I love the little slogan you have, "the blog with a frog"; it helps your blog stand out from the millions of others on the internet.

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4. 

   nonsensical gave it on 8th Nov 2008 and said:

   I adore your site, truly. I wish I had a lovely little mascot like you! Now I know of 2 sites with animals as mascots and I might just have to be a follower and get one as well. White tigers have always been a favorite of mine.

   Firstly, I was drawn to your color scheme. It works very well together and it gives the site a nice clean and shiny look. Your coding also really just pulls the design together and makes it beautiful, I especially like where you put your comments and all that on the little sticky note type thing.

   Your content is very nice. I feel as if you write very well and I am interested in reading what you have to say because you can say it so eloquently and it seems very well thought out. I am definitely favorite-ing your site and I may even put you on my blogroll so I remember to read it!!

   Your contact form is fantastic and I love the idea. I have seen it on one other blog, but of course yours is vastly different and I really like how you used the orange again from the top to bring some of that down and break up the brown in the footer.

   I must say that being a ginger cannot be so bad! I was born with this disgusting dirty blond hair and I also have very pale skin and I cannot tan, but I do not have very many freckles, except for when I do get some sun and they break out all along the bridge of my nose. But, I have been dying my hair red as of late because it matches my skin tone! I think red is a fantastic color of hair and I does not get the appreciation it deserves. I will say, red dye fades out faster than any other color I have ever had in my hair, and that is a sad story.

   I love your site, I won't talk about coding because the other two reviews covered it! Very nicely done!

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5. 

   Aisling gave it on 7th Nov 2008 and said:

   I really enjoy your site, Ben! As far as first impressions go, it makes an excellent one. It is clean, and colourful, and the frog is oh-so cute! I like the use of unconventional shapes, as with the wave that contains your "about me," paragraph. The only thing is that the text is *a bit* too close to the edge. It's not a big deal, I just like space, ha ha. Unconventional shapes also work well in box which contains the post date, categories and comments. I love it. The page navigation (i.e. back to previous post) is original and stands out, and the other links, etc are well organized. I love how you manage to fit so much information onto one page without making it seem at all cluttered. I love the idea of having the contact form on the front page!

   Your about page is very informative. Especially for someone who didn't even write their own intro paragraph. :P The rest worked quite nicely!

   Your coding only has a few errors, mainly with pesky alt attributes (I always forget them too, until my site comes up with a big bad error), and a recycled div id. Divs can only be named a certain thing once, as I'm sure you know. :)

   Overall, your site gives off a very pleasant feel, and your blog entries are usually very interesting and seem well thought out. I'm really sorry there's not really anything constructive to say! Just, keep things going the way they are, really! The unique touches in your website are what really makes it!

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6. 

   Anna_Kirstin gave it on 7th Nov 2008 and said:

   First Impression: I have been here before and so it is hard to recall my absolute first impression of your site. I will say that it was enough to get me to come back a second time. The colors are very autumn and almost very seventies, but it works.

   Text: Your font is large and easy to read. The color is easily seen against the background everywhere except above your footer – where your recent posts and comments are located. The headings here blend into the background color or rather, are too close to the background color. I can see it but it might cause eye strain or be hard to read for someone who has problems with vision problems. I like the interactive feel of the hover effect.

   About: I'm not sure what a ginger personality is either. :) I think it's really cool that your blog has a mascot. Did you draw him yourself?

   Contact Form: This is really unique. It pulls the orange from the header down to the footer nicely.

   Coding: Your coding doesn't validate, but they are easy fixes. You have 5 errors on your main page and one on your about page. You forgot to specify and alt tag for your images and you have a div id (recent) defined twice. Maybe you should consider specifying it as a class instead of an id.

   Overall: Your layout is well thought out. The colors work well together. I would just suggest fixing those few errors in your XHTML coding and possibly readjusting the color on the headers for your recent posts and comments section.

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