Mental Fiction has 3 Reviews
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![[img: avatar]](/avatars/teachertim.jpg)
teachertim gave it
on 25th Apr 2009 and said:NOTE: You can see an explanation of my rating system here.
LAYOUT - half a star.
Your color scheme is really pretty. It's soothing, actually. I like it. However, your layout is a bunch of rectangles. No one's ever done that before! Oh, wait. It's just like every other site.
CONTENT - half a star.
As a Brit in Texas, you have a really interesting point-of-view. Your more recent entry about tanning is great! It's entertaining, and it reveals information about yourself.
But then you go off with the ellipses. And excessive punctuation. I only need one question mark to know that you're asking a question. If you want to add emphasis, use bold or italics.
And you tell us that we shouldn't be interested about you. If that's no an invitation to leave, I don't know what is! Everyone's interesting. You're definitely interesting. Tell us why we should stay, not why we shouldn't.
EXCERPTS - 1 star
So, I’m thinking, WTF? Are these things super-powered, mini-nuclear-reactors or something? Am I going to survive this? Should I don a full radiation suit, complete with protective headgear??? And if so, can I have a purple one, please?
This is great! I'm tempted to take off half a star because of the ridiculous punctuation, but I'm feeling generous.
UNIQUENESS - bupkus
Your site isn't boring by any means, but I didn't open it and think, "Wow! I've never seen anything like this before!" Sorry.
BONUS! - star!
Unlike most people, you actually have something to say. Please keep writing. (But leave out the excessive punctuation and emoticons.)
GRAND TOTAL - 3 stars
When you aren't annoying me by butchering English syntax, your writing is usually amusing. A flashy layout gets attention, but content is what keeps readers coming back. A tiny bit of editing, a little pizazz on the page, and something unique at your site would make it a hit!
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![[img: avatar]](/avatars/superawr.png)
superawr gave it
on 24th Apr 2009 and said:Hi, Sarah! My name is Desiree and I'll be reviewing your site while viewing in Firefox 3.0.9 with a resolution of 1440x900.
When I first get to your site, the layout somewhat relaxes me. I think it's all the light colors (which are really pretty, by the way). I like the slightly textured background. The text on your image is easy to read and I love the simplicity. The brushes used are placed perfectly. The one thing I'd like to suggest here is making your layout a bit wider because the blog section is quite skinny.
Your sidebar is well organized and free of clutter.
I read your most recent blog, and although it really has nothing to do with this review, I've got to say that I found it so fun to read! It was humorous but without you trying to hard. And I've got to agree on the pale leg thing - mine are pretty blinding right now ;)
Since your blog is skinny, it gives the illusion of them being longer so I suggest having only one or two on the page at a time. Having three there makes for a lot of scrolling.
Your about page is very well-written. I like that you explained the name of your site; I would never have known that because I don't listen to that band. It's nice to know where site owners get their inspiration. The part about you is also nice. I didn't know it snowed in Texas, either!
Congratulations on being able to run so many sites at once! I have a hard time just balancing two. The page is set up well with the screen shots and descriptions.
I like your Photoshop brushes because they are unique and original, although the second set (Cross Brush Set) could use some work. The crosses are pretty plain. It's nice that you added the size of each download.
The contact and links pages are pretty standard among most sites. Yours are fine.
Overall I did enjoy reviewing your website. The layout is very easy on the eyes and you don't have a lot of useless clutter. Good luck in the future!
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![[img: avatar]](/avatars/Tea.png)
Tea gave it
on 21st Apr 2009 and said:Hello, I will mainly be reviewing your site on a Mac with a resolution of 1680x1050 and using Firefox 3.0.8.
LAYOUT DESIGN & AESTHETICS:
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Quick first thoughts: Very light colors. Text stands out and looks easy to read. Overall, everything looks clean and easy on the eyes.I like that the background tile you used has a faint texture to it. It's subtle without overpowering the light colors of your layout, and at the same time, the textured background also prevents the gray from looking flat.
Delving in a bit more: Your layout as a whole is very soothing, mainly because of the color scheme you've chosen. I like soothing. :) I do, however, also feel that it's falling a bit short of being more than basic or plain. Currently, there isn't enough personality in the layout which results in the whole site looking a bit generic.
By plain or generic, I don't mean you should start adding a whole bunch of brushes or make your layout all complicated. Rather, it's the little touches and details that often makes a site design cross over from "basic" to "beautifully simple"... things like styling your comments a bit more, doing something a little different with your titles, navigation links, or sidebar... stuff like that.
In terms of the header design- I like the subtle colors, for one. I think the way you've used the colors really made me like the header more than I usually would with this kind of design. But looking at the overall header itself, it's a bit lacking. The flower brush is nice... but the swirly brush you added on the left looks really random- like it's placed there simply because you needed to fill up the white space and wasn't sure what else you could do with it. And because the swirly brush is giving off that filler impression, it ends up also making the nice flower brush look like it might have been slapped on for the sake of having something on the header too. Either way, it's not the impression you want to be giving off for the main part of your layout design.
As for the text on the header- the font and also the placement isn't doing much for me. It adds on to the generic feel of your layout. I also noticed that your subtitle text is overlapping on top of the site title. I'm not sure if that's intentional, but it seems more fitting that a subtitle should go on the bottom layer with your site title being the first and foremost word. As a side note, I'm also finding myself wondering what the "follow me" subtitle is about. I'm not feeling the connection of that phrase in relation to your site name, you as a person, what your site offers, nor the actual design of your layout. Not a big deal or anything as we all have our own personal meanings in things... but it would've been nice to know how that relates to your site.
Other miscellaneous things about the layout aesthetics:
- I'm generally not very fond of main content areas shrinking to little boxes when there isn't much content and as a result, revealing a large chunk of the background tile- especially when the sidebar remains long. It ends up making the whole layout look a bit disjointed... but this is probably a personal thing.
- The sidebar is white, as opposed to the gray tones of the overall layout (including the main content and the header). Nothing wrong with that at all of course. I only noticed because the sidebar stands/pops out the most right now and thought I'd mention it in case that's not your intention.
SITE & CONTENT PRESENTATION:
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My first thought is I would prefer the layout to be wider so that there would be more room for content and for your sidebar. I realize that my resolution is kind of larger than most people's... but even then, the majority is going at 1024x768 with a few still using 800x600... meaning you can afford to stretch it a bit wider. ;)As mentioned in the beginning, I like how soothing the colors are and how easy it is to read your text. There's enough contrast in your colors but not too much so that it hurts my eyes. Yay for that. The light pink of your intro paragraph on the sidebar could maybe do with a little toning down and darkening up for easier reading, but perhaps that's more of a personal preference.
Paragraphs with line skips is something I would highly recommend though. I noticed you have that for your most recent entry, but the paragraph styling in all your other entries are mostly just lumped together. There are no line breaks and it makes your blog entries quite hard to read.
Your navigation is simple and to the point- always a good thing. You offer your content in a straightforward and clear manner- again, a good thing. Not sure I'm fond of the way you've listed your site info as "M-F(dot)net" but that's personal preference again, I guess.
What's "Version History - Old shit" all about? It's not linked, hence it makes me wonder why it's there at all.
I would suggest the general content area links to be styled differently. Right now, it's in a different font and also smaller in size, which makes it harder to read and also not very appealing. As a side note, I viewed your site quickly on Windows and the link size seems the same. On my Mac, it's not though. At the very least, I would suggest a different color (or more obviously different if it already is, I can't tell) so that visitors can tell right away that it's a link and not just an underlined text.
Projects- I like how you've screenshots of your sites and a brief description accompanying it. It'd be nice, though, if the separation between each site is made more obvious. Scrolling down, it quickly becomes confusing which site name and description goes with which screenshot. Perhaps a divider of some sort would help.
USER FRIENDLINESS:
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In general, I think your site is pretty user friendly. It's easy to browse around and everything is pretty straightforward (as I've already mentioned). Some issues with the content presentation that I've mentioned up top would help tighten it up in terms of making your site friendlier for visitors.Other than that, I was hoping for an "About" page of some sort. I know you've got an intro paragraph on the sidebar, but a bit more info would've been nice- whether about yourself, what your site is about, or whatever else. I'm not one to grade content or harp on someone about whether they have "About" pages or not so I'll leave it at that. A lot of other visitors seem to care about that though, so it's something you might want to consider.
By the way, I like that avatar of yourself (yes?) on the sidebar. It helps add that personal touch to your site, especially since you have very minimal info on yourself otherwise.
Quick notes about having contact forms, which is great to have... but might I suggest also making your email address available. There are people who really dislike using contact forms and would prefer to have an alternate method of contacting a site owner. In my experience, there's always a person or two out there who has issues or problems with getting contact forms to work right- in which case they would have no other means of reaching you privately. Believe me, I can totally understand the hesitation in putting up an email address (whether due to spam, privacy, or whatever else)... so the choice really comes down to this: is it more important to you that visitors are able to easily reach you, or your privacy in exchange for the chance that some might not be able to? On personal sites, it's probably not as big of an issue, but I thought it's something you can consider.
Finally, I also noticed that you don't have a link to an RSS feed (or at least I don't see one). It might be nice to include one for visitors who want to follow and subscribe to your updates.
MISCELLANEOUS FINAL NOTES:
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Validating your CSS via the W3C validation service brings up 5 errors that you might want to look into. Other than that, I don't normally look into the coding unless I see a need to, so I don't have much more to add in terms of the code (otherwise my review could become endless...) Plenty of other reviewers here really get into the coding though, so I'm sure you'll receive more and better feedback in this area than I'm giving.Overall, I think your site is fairly user friendly and nice to browse. As with every site, there's always something that could be done to improve it... but the main thing about yours, I felt, was the need for a bit more personality- whether it's more attention to details in your layout design, a little more background information on yourself and the site, or just styling things a bit more so that everything doesn't seem quite so two-dimensional. It would go a long way in making a visit to your site more memorable and also more YOU.
In any case, I hope that my review has been at least helpful in some way. Please don't misunderstand and think my 2.5 stars meant I thought your site is bad. It just means that it's currently hanging in the middle for me. In truth, I had a hard time deciding between 2.5 and 3. It's not bad by any means, but at the moment, it's also not standing out enough to tip the scale the other way after considering everything as a whole.
UPDATED 21 Apr 09:
Ah, I forgot to mention something else in the content presentation. I was wondering why you had used quotation marks in place of an apostrophe on a lot of your entries? I'm not sure if it's a typo, but you might want to look into editing those.Using Firefox on Mac | Report This?
vision_burn's Response:
Hi! Thanks for all the feedback. You've given me a lot to think about!
Reading through, I think I agree with most of what you've said.
I'll definitely be making some changes. :)
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