The site I chose to review is maintained by a Douglas Adams fan whose web design skills I was very impressed with. This site is all about the Hithchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Adams’ most famous work. The book is a Sci-Fi novel about alie ns blowing up the Earth. I think there's four books in the series and most of those who have read them form some sort of cult about the events in this book. It's quite amazing an author could reach his audience so much. I only read part of the first bo ok, but I guess Adams has a pretty vivid imagination. There are literally several hundred sites dedicated to this book, and this site is by far the best one I found.
What I truly enjoyed was the designer’s broad use and knowledge of "atomic tools". These really added spice to his page. I especially enjoyed the mouse over command that prompted a brief description to pop up at the bottom, describing each of the links on the page. The site had many other little tricks too. For example, upon first loading the page, an onload command brings up a window prompting you to link this site to yours. That’s a neat trick to know, but it would certainly get annoying after a whil e. Also, the author used some javascript to put a constantly running clock on the site.
For layout, the author used some very complicated frames that took me a while to track down and understand. Sometimes, the left frame would change, sometimes the right one would. I thought this was well done and I search through the code very hard unti l I got a good understanding of it. Most of the links on the pages were in sight without the use of a scroll bar, which is always a bonus.
As far as programming was concerned, I found it very interesting that this guy did not follow any conventional rules. He didn’t even use any <html></html> or <head></head> tags, which I though was a good shortcut to know. I kno w, I know, I should use them any way, right? I shouldn't develop bad habits so early. But isn't that the whole point of looking at someone else's web site?
For content, I thought it was pretty good. I’m not a Douglas Adams fan, so the reason the site attracted me was mostly because of the programming expertise the site’s author demonstrated. It did seem like something a fan would visit and enjoy, but unle ss the site was changed regularly, I wouldn’t imagine many repeat visits, although a person could spend quite a bit of time looking at all the information provided on it. It provided all of the information one would expect about a literary site: characte r and author information, other books, links to sci-fi chat rooms. It even had a game, but I didn't bother downloading it since you need the book to play. It also had some bizarre pages with references to towels and 42, something anyone would expect fro m a Douglas Adams site.