Author: admin

Wondergirl is Sarah, an 18 year old interested, amongst other things, in web design and photography. This is her weblog.



From a visual standpoint, the site is well organised and laid out, with DHTML drop-down menus as the main form of navigation. The overall effect is a good looking site with a lot to offer.



However, for someone with a professed interest in photography, the design could have been so much more imaginative, like the numerous photography-based blogs around the web.



Content-wise, there is a lot on offer at Wondergirl. The blog is extensive and offers a peek inside the personal life of the author, and there are enough off-blog sections to keep the reader interested and entertained.



All in all, a pretty decent blog, worthy of a visit, just with nothing truly original to add to the genre.Wondergirl

Another interesting read from the growing numbers of teenage bloggers. Fortunately it doesn’t carry quite as ascetic a tongue as many of it’s peers, but there is a degree of teen bitchiness on the site. Not too much, though, just enough to keep the posts entertaining and amusing.



The design is good, and the colour scheme solid and attractive. The text could certainly do with being larger (the author likes it small), but otherwise the site is pleasant enough to behold.



The navigation doesn’t hold any particular structure, which is fine since the majority of the content is tied up in the blog.



The constant ascii smiles might grow tiresome for older readers, but since the site is aimed at a teenage audience, it is well suited.



Overall a good blog, with enough to keep even the most casual surfer satisfied.Grateful Days

Another group blog, only this time with one peculiar difference: the contributors aren’t all teenagers. They appear to be between 21 and 26 years old, although that’s all I could glean from the “about” section.



The posts offer insight into the lives of the writers, and the choice of perspective and narrative style differs dramatically from the blogs of the younger generation.



Not everything here will find an audience, but there is enough content to satisfy just about every conceivable visitor.



The navigation isn’t without its idiosyncracies. For example, of the four links at the top of the page, two of them go to the same document. That aside, the content is organised well, with an archive as well as a best-of section.



The layout and colour scheme are good, but more of a love-hate feel than most pages. Many readers might find that the atypical colours used don’t look right, although it is more a matter of taste than a traditional blue-based colour scheme.



If you want a new perspective on the group blog, this is the site to visit.Bad Samaritan

The LA Examiner, an online newspaper of sorts for the Los Angeles area, suffers from two important problems.



Firstly, the design is too bland. Black and white is only a legitimate choice if it works (obviously enough) and here it doesn’t. This site needs an injection of colour to make it a little more readable.



Secondly, and this isn’t helped at all by the design, is the problem of information overload. There’s simply far too much on the front page. The blog, though fascinating and full of great articles, is too long for the front page alone to hold. There are also simply too many links running down either side of the content that distract attention away from the content.



This is a shame. The excellent news coverage offered by the site is let down by some ineffective design. If the links had been moved elsewhere, the posts trimmed down, and a more imaginative colour scheme used, this site would be fantastic for anyone interested in events around LA. After all, no-one thinks of LA as monochromatic. Or at least a smog-colour scheme should be used instead.LA Examiner

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. First impressions of a website count for a lot, especially when you’re reviewing them. So what impression did I get of this site when I first arrived?



1. It takes forever to download, and even when it does you’re left wondering what it was that took so long to come down.



2. The design is simple and, in web terms, old fashioned. Simple can be good, but it isn’t here.



3. The filename (though I could be wrong here) does not fill me with confidence as to this site’s longevity: blogexperiment.html. So how long before an experiment has run it’s course?



The colour scheme is almost interesting. The logo and navigation links, all plain text, seem to carry a colour gradient across them. This effect is done subtly and looks quite good, though I don’t know how practical it is. A stronger, site-level colour scheme would have been more effective.



It took about three attempts at loading the page before I actually saw any content (it seems that a small gif file didn’t want to leave home). The posts, though filled with enthusiasm, left me dry and didn’t particularly make me want to read on.



This site isn’t without its problems, but it might be worth a visit if you’re particularly curious.cloudblog