By Jennifer Kyrnin

Personal Pages
Personal Pages are often more difficult to review for several reasons. The are usually done by an individual with no specific goal in mind. If there is a goal, it might be so esoteric that only a small portion of the populace would be truely interested in it. However, I like seeing personal pages because often the creators don't feel as constrained by traditional design rules and are willing to take risks that a company site could not take.

Melody's Page on the Net
This is a great example of a typical home page on the Web. It has the list of her interests, as well as where to go to find similar interests. I like how she's kept it all center aligned, so we don't get distracted with text or images all over the page in varying alignments. I'm also glad that she went with a non-grey background color.

Some things to look at:

• Broken images. There are two at the bottom, and while you have to scroll to see them, they are distracting.
• Grammar and Spelling. There are a few spelling and typographical errors ("THank You!!!", etc.), that it would be a good idea to fix. A good site to use is the WebSter's spell checker.
• Linking graphics. I noticed that many of the image links have a little underscore mark after them, when viewed in Netscape Navigator. This can be avoided by always keeping the </a> on the same line as the image. e.g. <img src="smile.gif"></a>.

Craig's Homework
Unfortunately, I couldn't get to this site when I tried to review it, so I'll inlcude some of my comments to the author when it was submitted. I like the way the images connect together to make one coherent whole. It is also nice how the javascript changes the image on the side.

Some things to look at:

• Anchor links. It was hard for me to determine what I was supposed to do when I got to the site. The image being hot wasn't immediately apparent to me.

Bill and Joyce Ramsdale's Homepage
Well, the page has changed since I last saw it, and that is great! The Web is so easy to change and manipulate that it is silly not to take advantage of it. I also like that they are using a Valentine image (today is February 7th) which keeps the page up-to-date and current.

Some things to look at:

• Javascript. It may be because I'm using Netscape, but I get a js error when I load the page. It's a good idea to not build pages that are browser specific, or if they must be, make them viewable in the other browsers so you don't lose readers.
• Jump pages. The first page of this site is somewhat confusing. I like that it's topical, but it tells me nothing of the actual site.
• Images. A lot of the images inside the site are broken. It's a good idea to review pages after you've posted them to be sure that they look correct.

The Orin Tribe
This page is very well done. I like the colors that contrast well with the black background. The images are all small and so it loads fast. The page fits well on a 640x480 screen. I like the pictures a lot, as they give a great feel for who this site is for and about.

Some things to look at:

• Blinking Images. While I like the images, they blink into the next images and names very quickly. This makes them distracting and hard to look at.
• Consistency. The internal pages of this site seem very different from each other and the front page.

Touchdown Claymores
Here's another page that has changed a lot from the last time I viewed it. It is great to see how much work people are putting into their Web pages. This one is a great example of that. This site has an amazing amount of information, but none of it is really hard to find or read. I like the layout and the graphical elements to bring attention to key sections.

Some things to look at:

• Alignment. The navigation bar is right justified which makes the text seem strange and hard to read. It also makes the "Feedback Page" stand out more than other links that might be more important.
• Page display. This page is long and thin. When I view it in 640x480 mode, none of the navigation elements show up. They are "below the fold" and so some viewers might not find them.
• Link text. While the Web is still new, most people know that underlined text in a different color denotes a link that you should click on. Highlight the text that is the information, not "click" or "click here".

Stepping Stones
This site is visually very interesting. It has a great theme to take you through the page, and the site. I like that even how the stones are on the page makes it appear that the stones are placed randomly like in a river. The hardest part of this page is getting used to the idea of clicking on images of rocks, but that is clearly defined at the top of the page.

Some things to look at:

• Links. As I said above, it was hard to get used to clicking on rocks, but once I did, it annoyed me when I couldn't click on all the rocks. (I know, picky picky! <grin>)
• Consistency. I was also disappointed that the stepping stones theme was not continued throughout the site.
• Counters. The counter at the bottom of this page was superfluous and jarring. I know that there are some counters where you can put them on a separate page with the page you want counted as the link. That way the author gets to know how many hits there are on the site, but the counter doesn't mar the look of the page.
• Alt text. Some of the rocks had alt text detailing where they would go, and some didn't. Also, for purely accessibility issues, it would be nice to have all the images labled, even if all it says is "stone".

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