Review for 8/1/99: Lunar Brat's Lil' Sailor Moon Page
Author: Lunar Brat
Review by: Usagi-star
Lunar Brat's Lil' Sailor Moon Page
Content: ***.5
Originality: **.5
Design/layout: ***.5
Technicality: ****
Overall statement: A general SM page with plenty of effort and average content/graphics.
(The maximum amount of stars is five.)
Main Page
   I found it sort of strange that the bgcolor for this page was black when the background image is mainly white. The background image is nice, although somewhat large; you might find it convenient to use an image splicer like Fireworks to splice it and put it into a table. I like the little Usagi cursor (although it seems to have something of a quirk when you do a right-click), and the image map is a nice idea, with the titles flashing as you run the mouse over them, however I'd suggest changing the image used for it into something much more colorful. Please don't put the midi on autostart -_-;; , I'm sure most people don't appreciate that. However, there aren't any big problems with the main page (and I do like it that there's not too much clutter), so we'll move on.

Sub-pages
     First up: Images. I can't really read the text because its' too dark, and I can't really tell what text is links because they're the same color as the normal text and they're nonunderlined. However, the scans gallery has thumbnails, which is always nice. The web gallery looks like it's supposed to be an image map, but there are no links on it. O_o; 

     TSSG- The Sailor Senshi Club is next. Pretty nondescript name, but the page is cute and again, no technical errors that I can see. The graphics are sort of splotchy, and again we're missing a title ^^;, but the mouseovers work and they're quite cute. ^_^

     Lunrabrat's Adoption Center is next. Looks cute, but...where are the links? Oh! They're the same color as the background. ^_^;; Oops! You're lucky I have a habit of highlighting everything with my mouse, or I wouldn't have seen them at all! ^_^ For some reason, Netscape won't let me see the senshi pictures in this section. -_-;; Might want to take a look at that.

      Now for fun! What could the "Sailor Moon Super Scroll" possibly be? Hmm...I guess I've never seen this before! It's cute, although I don't understand why the little animated twirly senshi are there, but it's cute.  ^_^ We also have a long list of paper dolls - might want to explain how to use them. ^_^ For some reason, I can't get to the Iron Mouse, Sailor Moon and ChibiChibi doll. O.o; Some of these look like they were scanned, and not drawn digitally - if that's the case, you might want to say where they were scanned from. I can't use the puzzle page because I don't have AOL 4.0 ^_^; Also, the text is not visible on this page. Oh dear, same with the colorforms page. Plus, the images are broken. ^_^;; Then we have a silly sort of Sailor Moon Test that works, but... Anyway, the polls page works quite nicely, and so does the emulator page, and luckily all of the links work.

      Uh-oh...the Free Graphics page doesn't show in Netscape. -_-;; *pulls out MSIE*  This page is pretty cute, actually! Although the text could be green to match the background, I like the setup and the clever use of table borders. It's too bad the pages inside don't follow the same format. The graphics in here are cute, actually, although they tend to get a bit splotchy at times. ^_^; But it's the thought that counts, right? ^_^ Just one suggestion...some of them, especially on the "server logos" page, are really big, you might want to resize them.

       The multimedia page has a bunch of stuff in it...It's all functional, but devoid of any images, layout technique, etc. Nothing wrong with that, actually. There are two separate pages for the mp2s and mp3s, but neither of them has a lot on it...why not just combine the two?

       Animated gifs? Sounds good, but....ack! They're all smushed on one page, therefore making it take forever to load! Solution: split them into separate pages, separated by character. This is too much for one page and I can hardly tell where some of them start/end. *_*;;

Positives

  • Loading time isn't too bad
  • Not many technical errors
  • Fairly large
  • Few broken links
Things to Fix
  • Change the thumbnails themselves; instead of making each entire image smaller and therefore making a thumbnail, crop them all to be the same size and then resize them, so that they don't look distorted. ^_^
  • The "image11" link in the scans gallery is broken.
  • The "web" gallery looks like an image map, but doesn't contain any links.
  • The galleries could use titles. ^_^;
  • The first fanart in the TSSG fanart gallery is a broken link.
  • On the adoption center page, the links are the same color as the background. 
  • In the adoption center, the senshi pictures don't really show up.
  • Please, don't say "your" when you mean to say "you're". ^_^;
  • The text on the puzzle page and colorforms page is not visible.
  • The images on the colorforms page are broken.
  • The Free Graphics page doesn't show up in Netscape.
  • Some of the graphics, especially on the "server logos" page, are really big, you might want to resize them.
  • In the Free Graphics navigation system, some of the pages that are linked from the main graphics page are not linked on each individual page. You might want to change that, just for consistency's sake.
  • The thumbnails for the last two corner layouts are broken images, and the images in them are broken.
  • Please split the animated gifs into separate pages. ^_^;;


Suggestions for the Author

  • Find a quality image editor such as Paint Shop Pro or search for one at Tucows.com to make smoother, less blotchy graphics.
  • Make sure that when you're making a title image and type text onto the image, you put the anti-alias option on (it usually looks like a little raindrop).
  • Look at all your pages. If you can't read the text because the background is too dark/busy, change the backgound! ^_^;
  • Maybe try a font change? ^^
  • Try using border backgrounds (ones on the left and right) rather than busy ones that make it hard to read text. (You could probably find some at Team Venus.)
  • Why don't you try thinking up a good layout that you like to use on each of the sections (fun, images, etc), so they'll match? This makes the page look much more organized.
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