review 013

Layout
A rather ambiguous and generic layout to what your site is based on. Perhaps you could use one of the images of the manga covers or game menu screenshots as the basis for a layout picture to make it not so bland and generic, so that visitors will know exactly what the topic of your site is. The rollover on the menu is a nice interactive addition, but the images are rather low quality and the fonts are mismatched. Having mismatched fonts and low quality images really brings down the quality of a site in general when a visitor visits. An issue that affects your navigation is the lack of distinction between your word links and bolded words. Yes, there is a distinction when you rollover the link, but when a visitor is browsing your site, it becomes really ambiguous which are just bolded words and which are actual links. You asked that I give suggestions on best ways to present your content: currently you use frames, which is an older technique. I would suggest you use PHP in combination with DIVs or Tables to showcase all the content you have to offer instead of having to rely on set frames (examples courtesy of Aethereality.net: here and here). If your visitor uses a resolution smaller than 800x600 they won't be able to navigate your site properly because your navigation frame will be overlapped by your content frame.

Main
The first title is in Japanese. What if your visitor doesn't speak Japanese? Since this site is English based translation, you might want to start with an English greeting. If you prefer to start with a Japanese greeting try using katakana instead of the actual symbols so that if a visitor first enters your site and doesn't have the Japanese Character Encoding that they'll still understand your first greeting and/or first impression of your site. A good introduction paragraph on what your site is based on. To showcase what you're currently working on, completed (completed/translating) can be organized on a separate page so that your main page doesn't look so cluttered. A separate page or an actual link in your navigation column on things you need help on translating with and donations can also clean up your introduction page. By having the Help and Donate on your navigation column you will have the links on every single page that your visitor goes on, which makes your visitor more aware of those two important category links.

Silver Chaos Entering this section, I honestly felt that your sections were named incorrectly, misleading and/or ambiguous. A small summary of what each link was would be very helpful to a visitor i.e. Summary - an introduction to Silver Chaos the game; Menus - interactive screen-caps images of the game menu; Translations - entire translated storyline of the game Silver Chaos; etc. It would also be helpful if there was a small introduction on what Silver Chaos was about as in what you did for the other series pages.
Summary- This is really an interesting way to present the summary to the game. But is it an introduction rather than a summary of the game? I enjoyed how you used the actual images of the character that is talking. Are these actual and accurate translations? i.e. Adonis - fugnuggets

Menus- What exactly is the point of this section? Is it just to show the visitor what the main menu of the game looks like?

Translations- I liked how there was a layout transition for this section.

Silver Chaos: Eternal Fantasia- On the mini quiz page, to better organize each stage so that your visitors won't have to scroll so much, try putting them on different pages or you can also use an alink menu technique (how to use alinks/page anchors).

Silver Chaos Novel- A good section that shows the cover of the novel and tells us a little bit about the authors.

Game Options- Instead of using ?? to create circle bullets that will only appear if someone is using Japanese encoding use <ul type="circle"><li>link</li></ul> which will show up universally.

Kyou Kara Maou
Because this section is linked differently than Silver Chaos, having your introduction of the different named series of Kyou Kara Maou would be helpful to the visitor if it was on the top of the page instead of at the bottom. Again I enjoyed how for your translation pages that the layout changes.

Patalliro!
Again move your introduction to the top of the page, so that visitors have a bit of an insight on what you actually translated, or just a plain introduction to the page in general.

Shinesman
Same as above.

Other Manga
To make this section more organized you can again use the alink/anchor page menu so that visitors can easily navigate around to the different manga you have translated, without scrolling so much. I enjoyed how you did include the covers to the manga as well as your own summary and thoughts about the manga.

Extras
This is a really great section for aspiring translators. Great job. Again as I mentioned in the layout section the problem with your links looking exactly the same as your bolded words is somewhat a problem since a visitor won't know that it's a link until they roll over the actual words. The "Download IME for Japanese fonts" leads to an unavailable link. "Beautiful Soup" leads to a broken link.

Staff
By typing out your full email is a potential SPAM hazard. Instead you can just put Email instead of typing your full email. This is a good section if your visitors want to know about the person behind all the translation.

Overall
It's obvious that you put quite a lot of effort in translating all of these games, along with the exuberant amount of pages it takes up to post each part of the game. I thoroughly enjoyed not having found any grammar or spelling mistakes as well as finding links to all your credited sources/help. There are quite a few ways that you can organize the site better as I noted before with a better navigational layout, higher quality images, and simplified navigation with explanations. Good luck with your translations and I hope that this review was able to give some insights on how to make your site more functional and organized as you requested.

Onadoru Euphoria's Reply to this Review
I think you give a lot of good suggestions in that there are things I'm going to follow and others that I'm considering. I think the only real problem was jumping to the assumption of what the layout would do in 800 x 600 resolution. As a capable webauthor myself, I hope I was able to provide thorough explanations of things that I disagreed with, or simply my reasoning for why I valued a different solution. As anyone knows, webdesign is a balance of things like functionality, creativity and fundamentals like loading time, and some people may just prefer one over another and not necessarily be right or wrong. Not following a suggestion doesn't necessarily mean it was bad or wrong, but rather that I prefered something else. Right now I have the challenge of designing a page that will look acceptable in 800 x 600 and still have a grace to it. When I see the size of 800 x 600 compared to my normal resolution, it's hard to believe people still use something so small! I can fit this window on my screen almost 16x over!

I suggest you actually read the review before saying I assumed anything. I said if your visitor uses a resolution smaller than 800x600.

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