Student: Anett Michael (09002155)
Chosen blog: Pixel Publishing Ireland

I have chosen to review the blog Pixel Publishing Ireland (also headlined SabrinaDent.Com: Sunshine and Lollipops since 1996) by Sabrina Dent. On the cover page of her blog Sabrina Dent labels herself as a freelance web designer, internet marketer and sometime journalist. Further information about her and her work can be found on the subpages of the weblog titled About, Portfolio, CV, Disclosures and Contact.

The categories used on the blog are Activism, Advertising, Boot Camp, Cork, Crankypants, Design, Domesticities, Events, Interpipes, Ireland, Marketing, Politics, Portfolio, Second Life, Social Networks, Sunday Style and Technology. For almost every entry there are more specific tags listed underneath the particular posts. Sabrina Dent mainly blogs about web design and other internet related topics. During my three weeks of following the blog she especially wrote about site launches she did (filed under the category Portfolio). She also wrote about an event she visited and about personal experiences she gained in connection with it.

When Sabrina Dent writes about her work she does not get bogged down in details about what she changed on the websites using too difficult specialist terms etc., but just tells about the highlights. The entries about site launches are usually not longer than two or three paragraphs. Blog entries about her personal experiences or opinions and advices about internet and web design related topics are often longer and more detailed. Interesting anecdotes and her often ironic, sometimes even cynical writing style make the posts quite amusing to read. Her journalistic writing skills might help her to make her ideas understandable and attractive to a broad public. However, the main target audience might contain people with interests in web design and internet issues. I think the blog shall also address possible future employers and clients as it contains a portfolio of her previous work, a considerable CV and contact information on its subpages.

In recent times, the author is blogging once or twice a week, mostly in the end of the week. Some months ago Sabrina Dent’s blogging behaviour was less regular. In August this year, for example, she only published one entry, whereas from the 24th till 28th May 2009 she blogged at least once a day.

The embedded artifacts Sabrina Dent uses most of all are pictures. She almost always starts her entries with an eye-catching, grey framed graphic or photograph (size: 415 pixels × 175 pixels) that is related to the topic she writes about. Sometimes she uses further pictures (such as screenshots or photographs), YouTube videos or slideshows to illustrate her ideas and give vivid examples. I like the banner-like, well designed and consistently formatted graphics Sabrina Dent uses for her blog posts. However I find it a bit confusing that they are provided with a mouse over effect (the grey frame changes its colour into a lighter grey), but nothing happens when you click on them. They look like they are containing links but they are not. Another design aspect that took me getting used to was that it is not so easy to get back to the main page. Therefore, I normally click on a website’s banner, but Sabrina Dent’s blog does not have one to click on. So one has to use the pretty small Home button on the navigation bar. Other than that I like the design of the blog very much. The bright grey, white and bright coloured text Sabrina Dent uses on a dark grey and black background as well as the sanserif font used for the main text are very eye- and reader-friendly. The more cheerful font the blogger uses for special matters like the headings of the different link lists on the right-hand side of the blog matches the also cheerful and decently girly background image and bullet point design very well.

I also like the commenting system of the blog. Only the first comment posted by a user must be confirmed by Sabrina Dent, but is already shown to the commenter. So your comments do not disappear like on Gizmodo where you never know whether and when your comments get approved and where also nobody seems to answer the questions you sent to the extra e-mail address for comment and account questions they have. After Sabrina Dent confirmed your first comment any further comments can be made without additional approval. The list of commentators is shown on the right-hand side of the blog being headlines gossip mongers. Sabrina Dent also interacts with her readers by often answering some of the first comments left on her articles.


Chosen post: Dyslexia, Dyscalculia and Design

Dyslexia, Dyscalculia and Design is my favourite entry because Sabrina shows very well how websites with a bad design can become very hard to handle even for just slightly handicapped people. She herself suffers from Dyslexia and Dyscalculia. As she says in the entry her particular instances are pretty mild. Anyway, she lists lots of examples of everyday life situations (especially those connected with numbers) that become problematic for her. Then she shows examples of complicated logins, long and bad structured telephone numbers and confusing booking calendars from different web pages that make her struggle when using them. As the user comments on this entry show, other people have similar problems with these things, too, and agree in the entry’s conclusion that a good design makes a website easier to handle for everyone. A simple and user-friendly design is better than trying to provide a special user interface (that confuses people more than helping them). Probably, her mild Dyslexia and Dyscalculia make Sabrina Dent a better web designer because she knows from her own experiences very well how a website has to be structured to be easy to handle for nearly everybody and what might cause problems.


My comments on blogs:
(I commented under the pseudonym GirlFromM4rs.)

Pixel Publishing Ireland:
comment on Site Launch: FarmVille Village
comment on Dyslexia, Dyscalculia and Design

Pixelsumo:
comment on The fun theory
comment on The Marshmallow Test

Gixmodo:
As I mentioned above, Gizmodo is not very commenter-friendly. I tried to comment on Mozilla Whines About Apple Being First in Microsoft's Web Browser Ballot Screen and iREV, the Bumper Boat With a Built-In Grill, but Gizmodo did not approve my comments and did not answer my questions about when they will confirm my comments and if not at all, why not. In my opinion a website that does not allow user comments or censors them in an inappropriate and unjustified extent cannot be classified as a real blog.