When I first thought on the name of Barbed Wire Love I wasn’t quiet sure what to expect. Part of me thought it might be a blog about a person growing up, but that didn’t seem right. I played with the idea that Barbed Wire could just be replacing the word tough, but that didn’t seem right either. So without a clue as to what was going to be read I went in.
The first thing I noticed was the design of the blog. A nice simple graphic on the left of a person falling with wings. The graphic also housed some links at the bottom and then the text was to the right of this. I was thinking this layout was very clean when I noticed that my mouse had been changed to crosshairs. I am not sure why this is done, but it doesn’t add anything and just makes it harder for me to find my mouse when I need it. Clicking on the links reveals that each section is hidden and is using javascript to hide/show the content. This is a bad use of this script. There is no reason to force it all onto one page load, especially when the blog itself gets longer. Additionally where the text is longer than image, we get scroll bars in a div tag and I have to use my mouse and click on the down arrow as all the other methods of scrolling are disabled with this. I hate it when the author takes navigation away from me.
The blog itself is not quiet a blog. The site is designed to help the author actually finish his book. He is posting one chapter at a time to focus on just that chapter and will use the comments left to make improvements. Not a bad idea, except he doesn’t say if he changes things or not. Additionally I expect the author to at least respond to comments left, but nope we don’t get that. As of writing this review there is only one chapter and the preblog (nice pun on words there). The story itself is engaging, but is not quiet a blog.
Overall I think the author is not reaching his full potential with this idea he has. The design hinders my ability to actually read the story, which is not good from a design point of view. Imagine if a publisher was given the print out of the book and it was printed on 2inch by 3 inch paper for the entire thing? I think with a little bit of design tweaking and acknowledging the readers input (which is something the author wants) the goals of the site will be met. If the author decides to only listen to one thing I have said, I hope he fixes the design so that readers can just sit back and relax while reading the story.barbedwirelove