Blue Review

Page Title:	Sailormercury's Eternal Power of Ice and Water
Page Url:	http://members.tripod.com/~Pakman2/index-2.html
Nominated by:	_____

Sailormercury's Eternal Power of Ice and Water

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First Impressions

A Sailormercury shrine, some orginal things. Unfortunatly has a mediocre layout.

Main Page

Not the worlds most stunning layout, but certainly not the worst. The text links are a relief. Text links are always nice compared to huge images that link to sections. The pic of Mercury on the right is broken on Netscape, but for some reason shows up fine on MSIE. Loading time on the main page wasn't that bad.

Mizuno Ami / Sailormercury Profile

For this section the author uses a 'spacey' background and light blue text. You CAN read it, it would just be better to use a a different background. There are a ton of broken pics, but broken pics can be easily fixed. Loading time on this page is pretty bad. My computer is trying to load a bunch of huge pictures. I didn't even see what was loading until I scrolled down to the bottom to see the "Navigation Bar" which are just the header images, lazy thumbnail style (mentioned in my last review, adjusting height and width instead of actually shrinking down images). Taking a peek at the source there is ONE direct linked picture (from http://snowwhite.simplenet.com/sailormoon/inner/merc19.gif). To fix this, all they need to do is upload the one picture.

Mizuno Ami
In this section of the profile the author says, "Ami appears to look sad in each picture of her and I believe the cause of this sadness is due to the divorce of her Parents. So Therefore Ami lives with her Mother in a Big Mansion. Some Say Her Father was a Artist." Ami doesn't live in a big mansion and her father is infact an artist. In a SuperS episode (not quite sure which one) Ami-chan talks about how her father sends her paintings and sketches that he has done all over the world.

Facts
These facts aren't really that necessary, close to everything that is written under the 'facts' section have already been stated in the paragraphs above. A lot of the sources of these facts can be questioned also, for example, "Ami is the most popular Female Anime Character in Japan!" I remember reading that Ami was the most popular senshi at one time, but most popular female anime character is quite a strech.

Sailormercury Images

Ugh, when this page loads it shows up as a blue background with lighter blue-colored text. Not to mention, the text is bold and italisized. Now for the pictures. All of them, of course, in lazy thumbnail style. Only one picture loaded in Netscape, in MSIE they all show, but when you make a page you should be sure to test it in as many browsers as possilbe. Evidently people have complained about the page not loading quickly and the author told them there was nothing he could do about it. That is not necessarily true. Plain text links with descriptions of the pictures never hurt anyone, or real thumbnails for that matter.

Mizuno Ami Images
Exact same problems here. This time only 2 images loaded in Netscape. The author should double check his HTML, there is somthing funky going on with it.

Sailormercury Animated GIFs
Okay... this section I knew was going to be a disaster. Animated GIFs are never my favorite thing to deal with. The author puts the first frame of the GIF on the page with a link to the actual file. This is a bit better but the page still took 5 minutes to load. In this situation, he can either seperate the GIFs into different catagories (and put them in different HTML files), or he can go with simple text links. Only two of the GIFs loaded in Netscape, and once again, all of them loaded fine in MSIE.

Sailormercury Debates

Clicking on this link I was kind of interested in what debates there are about Ami-chan. The author warns you that this is based souly on opnion, and to not take offense. This is actually kind of different. He talks about how the outer senshi are "too good to be true" and sizes up Michiru vs. Ami and Makoto vs. Haruka. I think that the author should change the name of this section from "debates" to perhaps "opnions." since all of the "articles" are all based on opinon. The page in general took forever to load, it would be easier to sepreate each of the 3 articles and place them in different HTML files. The background is also kind of a pain. Try and stay away from flashy backgrounds, no one likes them. Tons of broken pics in Netscape, fine in MSIE.

Banners

Nothing really new, linkable banners.

Webrings and Awards

Ah, "awards." There is nothing good to say about this section. The background IS one of the better ones, but this page is just kinda useless. My computer spent an eternity trying to load 2 images one 368k and another that was 214k.

Other Cool Things

I actually like this background. It's cute. They are snaps of Ami-chan's henshin. The only problem is that the text needs to be indented to the right a little more. That can easily be done with a couple UL tags or by adjusting the left margin space.

Snaps of a Mercury Henshin
Actually some pretty cool snaps of a mercury henshin. If this guy went with text links instead, this section would (once again) be much, much better.

Why do I like Sailor Mercury?
Justs lists the author's top ten reasons. This should probably go on another page. It would make this page's loading time a bit better.

About Pakman2
A couple of things about the author, as well as a picture of him. This could also be put on a different page.

Free Graphics
Here are some free graphics, some of the BG's are kind of cute. Once again, seperating this would make the page a lot more enjoyable.

Final Thoughts

I really think this page has potential. If the author sat down and focused on loading time, making the page visable in all browsers, and fixed some of the spelling and grammar it would be a lot better. The Navigation Bar is a pain in the butt, so I would get rid of that. Either stick with plain text links (for getting around) or make a 'Back' link to the main page. Get rid of all the lazy thumbnails, and stay away from BG's that are hard to read on. It's got promise, there are not nearly enough Sailor Mercury shrines, so this one could easily become a good one.

"the more you eat, the more you toot...."