Captious Pedants

First Impressions (Tyler)

With the exception of slightly inconsistent padding, your main layout is organized and clean. I hesitate to say "well designed" for a couple of reasons:

1. I'm viewing your site in a fairly large resolution (1600x1200), and even though fluid layouts have many advantages, a lack of padding makes the content area unnecessarily large and difficult to read without decreasing the size of my browser window. Though I doubt all your visitors use such a large resolution, the content area is still over 900 pixels in a common 1024x768. My suggestion is to increase the "breathing room" of your layout and more specifically, the content area. Simply add more padding between the white content area and the left and right edges of the screen. Why am I so uptight with content that runs long horizontally? While it is largely a matter of personal preference, I find it difficult to read large articles or pieces if the width is above 700 pixels. You could also consider increasing the padding to the main content itself, adding more white space around the text.
2. There is little emphasis in your design. The item that stands out to me the most is the image in the top-left-hand corner. Though the highlighters are bright, the image itself is tucked up on its own, floating above the content without much of a purpose. I think the design would be improved overall if the main image and site title were somehow incorporated into the rest of the site, rather than existing on their own, hovering in a cramped corner. The only way in which this image is currently incorporated to the design is through the small, greenish signature watermark with a marker in the opposite corner. Unfortunately, this says little in the name of "completion," as the watermark blends in with the text, largely because the color is very similar to your page links.
3. The flow and unity of your layout is ruptured by a few key elements. As mentioned before, the header image seems disjointed from the layout and causes an awkward break in the flow of the design—or perhaps I should rephrase—breaks the layout up before a flow can even be established. The block quote also causes a similar issue, though it's more a matter of color dominance than flow. The darker green background within the block quotes holds more contrast to the green surrounding it, thus making it stick out like a sore thumb. The script font that reads "Quote" is also out of place, as it conflicts with the typewriter style found in the header image.

In terms of my overall impression, however, I find your layout to be somewhat quaint and personal, which is both suitable and likeable. These days one of the most commonly missing (and surprisingly crucial) elements of personal sites is that of personality or image. Thanks for providing your visitors a glimpse into your style through your simplistic design. I can already tell that the focus of your site is your writing.

Additional Layout Comments (Tyler)

In regard to your color scheme, I'm finding the colors you've chosen to separate elements (i.e. links, headings, etc.) to be morphing into a nearly monochromatic palette. What do I mean by that? There are a lot of green, a little blue, and not much else. Now, this is not to say any successful design must have more than two colors to look nice. Quite the contrary, truly monochromatic designs, if done correctly and given careful thought to emphasis, can be just as great as a layout featuring the entire spectrum of colors. With your text, however, I see a domination of green floating around (text links, main content headers, footer, comment borders and detail background, navigation) with not a lot to distinguish it from other components.

My suggestion would be, first of all, to include more of the light blue currently used in your navigation headers and background. For instance, I like how the headers on all pages other than Index are blue, instead of green. Try shifting the blue into the hover of your text links. You may also consider experimenting with some other colors available in the image at the top: the design is already personal, fun, and quirky; why not throw some orange or pink in elsewhere? (Refer to the comment earlier about incorporating the image further into the design.)

Other than a lack of color variety, which in this case is only damaging in the sense that your color scheme seems unbalanced, my only complaint lies in the visibility of your links. If you wish to keep them green, I would advise making them stand out in at least another way: an underline, larger font weight, etc. As your links stand, with the exception of the navigation, the green alone makes them difficult to pick out from the surrounding, black text. If you look closely, yes, they're fairly obvious and distinguishable, but should a visitor be scanning a page for links, it would be more convenient for the links to stand out and be readily identifiable, or at the very least, easier to pick out within the very dominant black.

When considering color changes, however, it's probably most important to realize the significance of value contrast and dominance within the text. As it stands, the most noticeable text is your main content. While this makes it easy to spot and read, it also makes other textual elements, such as links, appear less important and "hidden" in comparison. Shouldn't links be the ones to stand out? What about headers and titles? Play around with color and try to find a more appropriate way of balancing the dark, light, and points of emphasis.

Navigation (Tyler)

Your navigation is excessive in a few ways. I appreciate the "Sub Pages" links on each "section index" (i.e. Webmistress), though it's a little impractical to offer two sets of links to the same place within one page. It might be more appropriate, therefore, to replace the secondary navigation within the content area, and simply place the visitor at the first sub-page of the given index. For example, should a visitor click on "Webmistress," they would be brought to the "Facts" page, greeted, perhaps, by a small introductory paragraph explaining the content of this "Webmistress" section. The navigation to the sub-pages would remain to the left, and depending on the length of the content, some of the sub-pages could be combined, thus transforming your sub-page links to simple anchors.

If you've included the sub-page navigation to the left simply to fill the space below the main navigation, consider filling the area with useful, relevant information pertaining to the given page, similar to the "Upcoming Pages" list on "Webmistress."

Back to the navigation links in the content area, you've included short descriptions below each page link. This is another area I see the color of your links becoming an issue. Why? The green is of a lighter value than the black description beneath, thus shifting my focus from where I'm about to click to the snippet beneath, and overall, creating a very odd mix of lines to be reading through. I have no problem with personalized links, but both the color and the "→ ..." before each link description detract from the organization. Removing the arrow and perhaps increasing the line-height between each link/description would do a great deal to prevent this distraction. It wouldn't be a problem to remove the description snippets altogether, however, as the majority of your sub-page titles are self-explanatory.

Content (Veve, Unless Otherwise Specified)

"Index" (Tyler): Call me old fashioned, but I like to see at least a tiny introduction whenever I enter a Website, especially upon visiting for the first time. Yes, you have plenty of information about the site on Site Related, but I'd appreciate knowing where I am upon entering Index. Since the index page is filled with journal entries, my first impression leads me to believe I may be stuck somewhere in the middle of the site. I'll admit, having no introduction on the index page isn't insurmountably detrimental to your site, though as far as personal convenience goes, it couldn't hurt to add one.

"Webmistress": "Facts" can be collapsed with "Self Description." It doesn't have enough content to warrant its own page. And arguably, a self-description is an expanded version of all the basic facts. For those who are interested, they can go on to read the description and for those who aren't, they can simply skim the bullet-point profile.

"Appearance": Proper thumbnails, anyone? While I admit that I love playing with fancy effects, if I had to choose between accessing my content quickly and fancy effects, the bells and whistles are gone. It's less of an issue when it's a personal site with four photos, but it's nonetheless more straightforward to let the visitor know the full story before he goes opening windows for relatively low-res photos. If I'm not interested in any of the photos as a whole, I wouldn't click on them. Right now, I have no choice but to click on them lest I find something that I like.

Alternatively, you can ditch the thumbnail and full-size view combination altogether. I doubt you expect other people to take your photos and do something to them (the full-size resolution don't make them fit for anything anyhow); they're there to provide the visitor with a visual representation of you. A simple 200 by 300 shot is more than enough to give an idea of what you look like.

"Contact Me": While it's in the works, an e-mail would be nice. I doubt you'll appreciate someone contacting you via blog comments unless it's related to the entry.

Tutorials and Articles

"WPRs and Their Use": Internal anchors are rather useless after the first click without accompanying "Back to Top" link at the end of each section.

"No matter how good you are, there's always something you can improve on; you're not perfect (nobody is, for that matter)." A review doesn't necessarily have to include suggestions for improvements from what you've defined for me in the previous paragraph. It can simply be praise with evidence to back it up. (Although I suppose a good reviewer will find ways that a site can improve.)

"You'll be able to find proof in the 'Score' section of these types of sites." Not all WPRs grade their reviewee's Websites. But having read the footnote, I believe you meant "Score" as in rubric as opposed to a numeric grading system. You must be careful of the terminology that you use when you're defining terms for someone who knows nothing about WPRs. "Score" and "rubric" mean different things in general, and especially in theWPR-scene.

"...the purpose of this section (Tips and Trick with WPRs)..." yet the title of the section is "Generators of Internet Drama." I do believe the section's heading should reflect the purpose of the content.

"Therefore, complaining about a negative opinion is rather childish." One should be aware that one is more than welcomed to give a critique of the review and that it may be the WPR who responds badly and initiate the drama. The reviewee is not always in the wrong. Just as the reviewee willingly submits his or her site for a review, the reviewer willingly offers to review. It's extremely naive of a person to go into the reviewing business and expect to receive no reviews of his or her own. (I'll continue in the "Feedback for Reviewers" section.)

"Why Make a Site?": I'm iffy on the title; the content of the article leans more towards "So I've decided to start a website. Now what?".

The headings you give for the sections of this page are also misleading; "I Want a Site, Period!" does not lead me to the conclusion that a site should have a focus. Also, "Filling the Site" does not mean "Filling a Personal Site." If the person decided to start a fan site about Christina Aguilera, then her falling down the stairs would be relevant.

You need to take your own advice and stick with something that you know best. If you want to give an opinion of what makes a good personal Website, then you shouldn't try to generalize it only to fall back into the criteria of personal sites; you list one possible site before going into "if all else fails, [make a personal website]".

Your whole article lacks a proper focus. You touched on:

• One should think about the layout last.
• One needs to have a purpose to keep the visitors coming back.
• Cute animations are annoying.
• Be original with one's Website.
• Each and everyone one of us is unique.
• Be general so updates are easy.

Yet none of these points reinforce "Why Make a Site?" which you wrote one vague sentence about. How does this article fall under "WPR decoded," which implies breaking down the inner workings of a WPR? Very loosely, this touches on "make a good site, make a reviewer happy" or something to that effect.

By the way, the point about anchors and "back to top" links apply to all of your pages by the looks of them.

"The First Impression": "Providing previous URIs..." I have never actually seen this. I've seen directions to a new URL via fancy move sign. If someone is on a free server and has no method of redirecting, I don't see how you can get around that.

"Don't litter your splash page with links, rotation images and/or other ads..." If they have a splash page for legitimate reasons, I'd rather they have their cliques all on that page rather than on the index of their main site. Rotations and ads only serves as distractions, they have no place on the actual site really. The only exception I see is "Vote for Me" links, which would be useless on a splash page, before a visitor even sees the site.

"In other words: don't put a half naked celebrity on your blog header... unless of course you ARE said celebrity." I don't know, I'm of the opinion that you can be less hard on yourself when it comes to a personal site. (Note that you're treading back to using personal sites as examples.) Having a half-naked celebrity on my blog header is an indication that I'm a huge fan of said celebrity. I love him/her so much that I need to shove him or her into my visitors' faces.

"Aesthetically Challenged": Again, I don't think this title quite pinpoints the content of the article. The page is not a solution for those who are aesthetically challenged but a message that there is more to a Website than its aesthetic components: "Aesthetically Challenged? That's okay! Make up for it with a functional website!"

The section under "Splash Pages" may be more appropriate under "First Impressions".

Upon analyzing it, yes, there is more code to write, but at least you can customize them more freely than tables. Unfortunately, since not every host has PHP or SSI support, many webmasters are forced to use...[i-frames]

What? How is PHP or SSI even relevant to CSS layouts? But if anything, CSS is in a way like PHP or SSI includes in that it can affect multiple pages by changing one file, the style sheet. The inability to change the HTML skeleton of a site from page to page holds true for table layouts as well. That's not a disadvantage for CSS layouts. So what is it doing under CSS layouts and leading up to i-frames?

In any case, you're going way off topic. What is most convenient for the maker of the Website to implement has nothing to do with how good or bad a Website is. If you're saying that implementation may affect the user experience (e.g. frames are annoying), then I can sort of see where you're coming from, but that's not what you're getting at. In the long run, the backend doesn't compensate the aesthetic component of a Website for the average user. Pretty coding does not equal pretty interface.

You're getting too technical when you mention Web Servers and say how "filename.html, is still a regular HTML page, and thus needs to have an html, head and a body tag." (It's filename.htm in your coding snippet, by the way.) Why are you even diving into what a proper HTML document is?

Disregarding what you're trying to get across with this article, you didn't cover the disadvantage and advantage of each design type. Setting up a chart will keep you focused and make it easier for the reader to compare and contrast. Categories that you can consider are difficulty of coding, ease of maintenance, accessibility of content, search-engine optimization, user experience (e.g. i-frames with DHTML collapsible menus). Right now you're comparing table's bulky HTML skeleton to i-frame's easy maintenance; CSS layouts are in the left field when you explain what float and clear do.

"Reviewers will generally not make a fuss about what you choose, as long as they can see things properly in the browser(s) of their choice." Why are you mentioning reviewers out of the blue?

"Least amount of scrolling." I hate clicking and jumping from page to page more than I hate scrolling. One does need a fair amount of content on each page.

"Good: use a tool tip to explain that (i.e. <a href="s.htm" title="About this site">Text</a>)." Better: <a href=">About this site</a>. In other words, use the main point as the link text. Secondary information should go into the title attribute.

This is another article where I feel that you're inconsistent in what you're trying to get across. You start off saying that there's more to a layout than its visual components and you conclude with loading time and font-size, but in between those two statements, you jumped from "get rid of stupid site requirements" to Web Servers to nitpicky reviewers. I'd take out "Splash Pages" and "Design Types" and refine "Design Types" in and of itself.

"Coding": "Then why DO reviewers insist on it?" Some reviewers themselves don't know why they "need" to do it.

Why is the example in a block quote? Block quotes should be used only when you are quoting something. And it's more of analogy than an example. It's ironic that this is done on the "Coding" page, no? This leads me to the point that validation is not the only aspect of coding. While you touched up on semantics in "Aesthetically Challenged," you don't mention anything about it here. While a site may validate, it may not necessarily be "correct" in its usage. You can again use your spell-checker analogy. All words may be spelled correctly, and they may even be grammatically correct; however, if a word is not used in the right context, the meaning of the sentence may be changed dramatically.

Aside from that, this is most well-written and focused article that I've read so far on your site. You don't overlap with other topics; you clearly connect it with WPRs, and you clearly express your idea using an analogy that the average Joe can relate to.

"Feedback for Reviewers": "In the end, if you're out for revenge, one intelligently criticised review, can hurt self-centered reviewers where it counts the most: loss of customers." Generally, no, unless the reviewee commands everyone on the Internet so that no one applies for a review again. If the reviewee and his friends stop applying for a review, most people couldn't care less.

"First and foremost: don't sink to the reviewers' level. Don't start flaming them, don't spam their tagboard with insulting messages... " implies that a reviewer flamed/spammed/personally insulted them.

"Taking up reviewing": "For easier exemplification, I've sorted sites into 4 main categories." Does "sites" refer to the sites being reviewed or WPRs? This is out of the blue. An introductory sentence like "Depending on what website you have, the length of the review may be justified. For easier..." Or perhaps it was just me who got thrown off.

Again, the example you use on "Beautiful layout with bad quality content" is that of a blog/personal website. "Such reviews, don't take longer than one screen." I can rant quite a bit on bad content. We're long-winded perfectionists here at Captious.

I don't see how a site with a bad layout and bad content would receive a shorter review than a site with a good layout and good content. And a bad layout with good content would take an even longer review? I would think a reviewer would concentrate on the bad rather than nitpick on the good. I'd imagine that if a site were bad, there would be many things for the owner to correct. But that depends on the reviewer's priorities and/or style. It's bad practice to encourage reviewers to be more alert with "good sites" (sites with good content) than bad sites. Bad sites deserve just as much attention as good sites. While it's hard to get in depth with new Website owners (most reviewers end up just briefing the priorities), I strongly believe that a good reviewer should be as thorough as possible regardless of the owner's experience. Said new Website owner should be able to look back when their hair is wet and still find the review useful (now that they can further dissect the reviewer's implications). Furthermore, other people may be able to read the review and find something relevant to their site.

"An Essay in Three Steps": Elysa, who is a bit obsessive compulsive about all matters of essay writing, has this to say:

As a Writing Consultant, I object to all attempts to manufacture any piece of writing through a process, let it be two-step, three-step, five-step, or 101-step. I don't see the point of its being posted on the site. If your teacher forced you to use it religiously, other teachers might have also drilled it onto their students often enough.

"Tip: try starting your essay with a rhetorical question that would catch the audience's interest." Of course... we all love rhetorical questions, don't we? (I just used a rhetorical question. Have I caught your interest yet?) If I read another essay that starts out with a rhetorical question, I'm going to take someone's eye out.

I think that you need a disclaimer on this page if you are going to keep it. Something on the line of, "If you are already familiar with the 5-paragraph essay structure, this page won't be helpful to you. If you're trying to write an essay that doesn't sound like other essays written by other students in the class, this page won't be helpful to you." I, for once, have heard enough about the three-step process, the 5-paragraph essay, the three-main-point model, etc., to last me a lifetime. You're not telling me what I haven't been told already in all those years in high-school English classes.

General comments:

• Your pages often have misleading section/page titles. If a bag is labeled salt, I shouldn't find sugar.
• A lot of the articles bring in examples of personal sites. I understand that "It all comes down to..." is a personal Website whose audience are probably people who own personal Websites, but it might be worthwhile to make a disclaimer somewhere because some of the advice that you give are biased towards such sites. Something along the lines of "Although these articles are directed more towards people looking to start a personal Website, one could generalize it to all sites" would suffice. If I had been directed to your site from a friend, and I didn't know the in-and-outs of Website development/reviewing, I won't be able to pick out those personal implications. I'd be pushed in a direction rather than be allowed to arrive at a conclusion of my own.
• Focus, focus, focus. Once you pick a topic to write, make sure your introduction, arguments, and conclusion reinforce this. (Just like how you'd pick a focus for a Website or an essay!) After each paragraph ask yourself if it connects with your topic as well as the paragraphs above and below it, (e.g. comparing design types).

"Why Won't It Work?": Why doesn't the page title correspond to the link on the side as with other pages?

"The http protocol (that you use to navigate on the internet)..." You reprimand someone who poorly defines PHP and yet HTTP is defined just as loosely. The thing that I use to navigate on the Internet? My browser? My cursor? Portals that bring me from site to site? Wires? A protocol is a set of rules used to represent data which enables communication. HTTP sets the standards for communication on the World Wide Web. It's more than something used to navigate the Internet, in the same manner that PHP is more than an easy way for me to change layouts. (By the way, HTTP already means Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, so calling it HTTP protocol is somewhat redundant.)

"That cleared, a server-side scripting language is a programming language used by the webserver..." If you're going to use the term webserver in the same section you plan to define it, then "webserver" should be defined before "Server-side scripting." You can't run before you can walk.

"Installing and Configuring Apache"/"Installing and Configuring PHP": I suggest making the images into thumbnails and displaying them beside the instructions. It is easier for the reader to follow if the visual aid is right beside the instruction. When you teach someone to read with a picture book, you have the picture above the text so that the person can make the connection between the picture and text. You don't have the pictures in a separate book altogether.

"Site Related"

"A Deeper Look": Again the link and page titles don't match up. The "subtitles" that you give under each link title is beginning to piss me off. They're supposed to function as quick links for me to skip to contents that interest me, and yet I'm playing the guessing game with things like "...and SPLASH!"

"The sub-domain name, on the other hand..." Er, the sub-domain name is "Vera" which I thought was straight forward enough, yet the paragraph explaining it completely throws me off. I think you meant to explain how you arrived at your alias "Vera" as opposed to your sub-domain name "Vera"?

"Past Layouts": Heh, only those who have heard of mathematicians at Verizon would understand "0.2c". For other visitors, it might throw them off. Consider a footnote, or a link to the story behind it. On the same note, why is it that page numbers are increasing whereas version numbers are decreasing?

"Reviews": "In exchange, I'm allowed to tear apart your review, any way I see fit." I don't have a problem understanding your logic but rather with the way it comes out. While you explicitly know your site is going to be torn apart when you submit for a review, it's not clear-cut that when the reviewer publishes a review, it may be torn apart in return. It's more precise to say, the reviewer agrees to have his review torn apart by reviewing, not because you submit your site for a review. Same effect, different causes.

It'll make more sense to link the version number for each review with its respective layout version in "Past Layouts".

Why do you have an extra column for the URI when you can simply link to the site via its name? W3C does not recommend "here" for links; good links should describe the page it links to. If it's closed, you simply don't link to it.

You'll forgive me if I don't read every review that you've received. I'll just read a random review from each quality category and comment as I see fit. But before I do that, I should take a look at "Review Quality" first, as some of the comments below will pertain to how you define quality reviews.

"Review Quality": You have this filtering system for WPRs as though one will fall from one hole into a finer hole until it reaches the quality level it's supposed to be at. One of the glaring filters that I see is how much of your site the reviewer covers. If I mention 75% of the things on your site, by your rubric, my review would be of "decent" quality; however, I can simply list the most trivial of things. These numeric measures are poor filters. My review can span up to 3 screens long (depending on resolution) but I could be saying things that aren't relevant or important.

Under "Average Reviews," you state that a review must mention something about accessibility. Not all sites have the same need for accessibility. A visual portfolio cannot possibly cater to those who are visually impaired, for example. But again, I understand that your opinion may be skewed towards personal sites. But... you also has a large section of her site dedicated to those who are WPR-inclined.

"...they tend to neglect some aspects in favour of others." They may be a good reason for this, i.e. priority. I am not going to nitpick about spelling/grammar if you have the worst navigation in the world.

Rather than a rating system based on concrete levels of numbers (parallel to the scoring system of WPR), differentiate good and bad WPRs by using big concepts/principles (parallel to the quality of the content rather than the score the site gets according to a WPR's rubric). For example, I expect a good reviewer to acknowledge my site in its own right. He or she needs to take into consideration who my audience is, consider what my purpose is, and tailor his or her advice to suit my needs. I expect the person to offer insights from different perspectives and refute (but address) certain solutions based on what my site needs.

Back to the reviews that you've received:

• Average Review from Ash Hole Reviews: You mention that the reviewer mentions one good point about the layout, but that doesn't satisfy all the defined criteria of an average review. Consider personalizing the review of the review. If you get a personal review for your site, then it's fair to offer a personal review of their review (i.e. what is it about the review from this site that makes it average?) instead of relying on the prewritten and flawed rubric in "Review Quality".
• Decent Review from Daybreak You gave comments like "Didn't you get the hints? GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE! What's so hard in it? Copy and paste??" (which, by the way, goes against your advice in "Feedback for Reviewers") gives me the impression that this was a bad review. You took one suggestion and complained about the lack of examples for the other criticisms, yet it turned out to be a decent review. Your verdict contradicts the definition set in "Review Quality" that a "decent review" should offer a lot of good advice.
• In general, your reviews of reviews are more responses to what the reviewers have said as opposed to critiques of what were said. It's okay to simply clarify things to the reviewer about your site, but honestly, the reviewer isn't going to care. More beneficial comments to both the reviewers and visitors of your sites who are looking for a review would be on to how the reviewers can improve their profession as you put it, such as how the reviewer seems to have priority issues because she values spelling more than she does the content. Of course, you can do both: respond to the review to clarify points about your site and give a general overview about the quality of the review at the top.
• On a side note, why is your comments in block quotes whereas the reviewer's comments are displayed as normal text. I suspect it's because of the ratio between the amount of comments you have to the review. Take an extra 10 minutes to create a separate class to fix such things.

"Site Map": While all those short little descriptions on section indexes were useless because it's self-evident what section you were on, the site map seems to be the right place to have them. (Of course, it wouldn't be so necessary had you given your pages names that are more meaningful.)

"Copyright Notice" brings me back to the index.

"Links": Time to update the links. Appassionato as you know it is gone. Oddimentary is dead.

The fonts on your buttons are pixel fonts. As the name suggests, they're meant to be used in small units so that that they appear clean-cut. Using them on a large scale distorts them and leave them extremely unattractive.

"Linkware Layouts" (Tyler)

"Purple Flower": This is probably the best of your linkware layouts, though there isn't much to be said in the name of originality. I don't like the fact that the flower images are partially transparent, revealing the edge of the content area as the green is filtered through. It gives the flower images an opposite kind of emphasis from what I would expect as the main thematic element of the layout, simply because they appear washed out and unimportant on top of the white content area. Regarding colors, while pink and purple are nice, I find the green a bit too vibrant and distracting. Also, while I actually consider green to be tied in with the flowers, simply regarding the theme of "nature" presented, it couldn't hurt to add a little more to the layout itself: perhaps the headings, or links. Tuning down the saturation of the green background may also be beneficial, as it will lead the visitors' focus back where it belongs: the content.

"Berries": I've never been a fan of pixel stretches, nor of images that appear to have badly "erased" square edges. The picture of the berries in this layout has the same problem as that of the cup of highlighters on your main layout: the image is not incorporated into the design but rather pasted on top. The pixel stretch behind the "Site Title Here" text does not help incorporate the image.

Also, I find the size of the text on this layout in comparison to the size of the content area to be impractical. Yes, the layout is flexible, but when my browser window is maximized, the lines of text are simply running too long horizontally. I'll offer the same suggestions I did for the layout of your site: increase padding, margins, and perhaps most appropriately, font size and line height.

"Autumn": There is no logic to the composition of this layout. As with "Berries," the image is far from being incorporated, and once again, it is slapped up there in the upper left-hand corner. Is this some odd "design" obsession of yours? It's hardly successful. The navigation text starting at the left side of the page with the image instead of aligning with the content also makes no sense to me. Perhaps you simply couldn't live without the fancy partial-transparency behind the first two "Link Here" buttons? You'd be better off taking out the image altogether and giving your layout some kind of progression and alignment.

And, of course, I thought the size of the text in "Berries" was impractical.

Conclusion

Tyler: I can tell you have user accessibility and convenience in mind, and your content is well written and interesting. Writing this review was somewhat refreshing, as it reminded me that there are Web developers out there with their focuses in the right place. Be careful, however, with the organization and presentation of your content. Being too obsessive with your navigation has as good a chance of losing visitors as helping them. And you need to consider more than what image you'd like to glue up in our browser corners when designing layouts.

Veve: Reread your articles, focus, and refine them. There are times when I question whether you know what you're talking about. I would consider personal sites your comfort zone, but do consider things from other perspectives where holes in your articles can be seen. You try to cover everything in your "WPR decoded" section, but somewhere along the line, the articles became half-assed, and the information within each article became scattered and irrelevant. Despite all the problems, though, I've enjoyed my stay overall.