03/20/2003
This is a review of fireflea.diaryland.com.
Content - 73/75pts.
[-]Execution - 45/45pts. I'm certain that the individual who owns this diary is a lovely, pleasant woman, and I'm positive that she knows that she keeps an enjoyable, entertaining, well-written diary. Ta-da. I'll give it away. She's getting a "good" rating.
I'm certain, however, that in her mind there was no doubt of it. People who keep good diaries know quite certainly that it is good. There is never any doubt of does anyone even care. No. None of that! Just pure, delicious, Canadian goodness.
On diaries that I like, I find it much more interesting and amusing to quote them than I do to blabber on myself. And this girl is quotable. For example, her take on Shakespearean literature? "Hamlet...sounds like Piglet just got thrown in the microwave. Maybe Shakespeare was just hungry."
The diary seems to revolve around references to dead pigs, as she describes a little kid who at snack time "had a slab of ham. A HUGE slab of ham. No crackers, no bread...Just ham. So here that poor kid is, gnawing on this side of ham like a little trooper..."
You think that Texans are bad drivers? How about a gander at the Canadian road rage: "I noticed that while flipping the bird to other drivers made me feel better, the offending driver would scornfully return the gesture every time. However, try shaking your fist at people who cut you off. They stare. They stare dumbfoundedly. They stare like a person who doesn't know what a fist is, nevermind how to shake one." [By the way dumbfoundedly isn't a word. Har, har.]
The idea for a diary doesn't just have to be to record the adventures of an exciting life (to make the rest of us envious) but it can also be to discover life again, complaining about studying and biological clocks, but providing insight (Okay, fine. The sexual orientation of your furniture jokes got me. Insight, humor, same thing!).
Oh, the relief of clicking on any random entry and finding them ALL enjoyable.
Small confession: The girl doesn't know who I am, and I don't know her except through her diary, but I've been reading her diary since I stumbled across it a few months ago. It's grand to share a treasure with everyone else. It's excellent. Perfect. (Well, almost perfect. It's now time to discuss grammar.)
[-]Grammar/Mechanics - 8/10pts. Want to know how to spell reminiscing? Go to the dictionary! Or get a review from me!
Oh, oh, typo! From here: "I've had a fevor for three days straight now"
I didn't see any other mistakes. I mean, really. I didn't. This means there aren't any.
[-]Readability - 10/10pts. There is absolutely no problem here.
[-]Style - 10/10pts. It's the style that makes your diary so enjoyable. Right? Yep.
Layout - 5/10pts.
[-]Aesthetics - 3/5pts. Here's the thing. I always adjust the monitor and the window to best suit the layout, and when I do that for yours, it looks lovely. Very aesthetically pleasing.
Unfortunately, if I make the window full-screen or even just a little bigger, the text box becomes half in the dark blue box where it's supposed to be and half outside of it. I thought that it'd be fairly simple to fix, just give the text box and the image the same absolute points, and that'd be that.
So much for my HTML skills. I can't offer you a one-line solution for your layout. The way the entire thing is set up is messed up. I've read your HTML woes, so I won't bore you with the details, but I think it's high time you found someone who can fix your entire code and rewrite the page from the bottom up. Or, you could just try your hand at learning HTML again... I know that you hate HTML, but it really isn't that hard to learn. Why don't you try this page for rather easy-to-follow HTML lessons?
If you ever get around to it and learn the HTML, what I'd do is make the image the background to a table and make cells for each of the links and then one large cell for the entry. That way, the entry stays firmly inside the image like it's supposed to do.
[-]Navigability/Legibility - 2/5pts. The links on your archive page are too big while the dates themselves are too small.
Also, I disliked how on my computer, links would sometimes jump to the next line. Fix this by going to your archive page template. At the very top, you'll find "a:hover." This line tells the computer what to do if someone hovers over a link on your page. Get rid of the "font-weight:bold" part.
You might also want to change it from "text-decoration:none" to "text-decoration:underline," to get the effect of underlining when you hover, like on this site.
Additionally, consider adding "a:visited{text-decoration:none;}" under a:hover. This will prevent your already read entries from being underlined, which looks silly.
And, I think that you should change the color of your visited links to something other than that blue, like maybe white. Find your body tag, find the part that says vlink="#33FFFF" and change that code to #FFFFFF (that's the code for white). Or some other color. Whatever you want.
I went to a lot of trouble to write this part! Make the corrections. Come on. Make them. MAKE THEM.
Oh, and the mantra. Your font is too small, your font is TOO small. (What is it with diarists and SMALL font?)
Contact - 5/5pts.
Updates - 5/5pts. I have a loose rule of 10 to 15 entries a month. You dropped down to seven in January. Seven! But, you know, don't update more with crappy entries. That's not the point. So don't do it. And to encourage you to not do it, I didn't count off any points.
Errors - 3/5pts. On this page has a link to your designer's now deceased diary. I can't bear dead links. They're depressing, stay-in-bed unhappiness.
And then there is the text box meandering off of the image problem. This is actually a rather large error. You ought to fix it. (Everyone complains about it!)
Total - 91/100pts. Above ninety... it's an interesting read. It's a fun read. It's GOOD.
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