A site claiming to offer "all an Elvis fans wants" caught our attention of course. We asked ourselves the question "Does it really?" ... Our review team went along and here's what they concluded. This means, basically, because we had to adjust the review the night of publishing, since somehow the webmasters must have felt they were on target. Their "last minute" changes forced us to make some changes too.
Design
First thing that we noticed is the remark "This site is best viewed with 1024x768 screen resolution". Well, let's change that in "must be viewed in at least...", because in the most common resolution (800x600) the site is hardly visible. One has to scroll both vertically and horizontally through the menu, and even in the main part of the frame-set a horizontal scrollbar does appear, and "Who IS "Elvi"???". We guess it must be Elvis, but in this most used resolution the complete name is not visible. Also the use of the same picture six times in a row in the top frame is a bit too much.
This was the first thing we noticed because it took some time to load all pictures. When you open the page, go to the bathroom and return, (and maybe the page is loaded completely) the first impression would be completely different. You turn crazy, because everything on this site is full of animated gifs. One animated gif can be useful to attract attention to a certain point, two can be fun ... but more is really too much.
Overall this site gives the impression that a lot of gadgets are gathered here, but they don't form a whole. The flashing "King Creole", "ELVIS", the animated "TCB-logo" and scrolling message are all animated. Besides, most of them are all "borrowed" from other sites, where they do fit (into the environment).
Talking about the use of images, the vote button (also animated) is placed in the middle of the menu. If the webmasters didn't place it there all the items of the menu would fit the screen and the horizontal scrollbar would disappear in the (by them) advised resolution.
This site uses layers, this is something which must be checked thoroughly because different browsers (versions) react differently to it. Some browsers can't handle layers at all. Looking at this site we see all kinds of effect on the fonts in Internet Explorer, opening the page in Netscape all the effects to the fonts and the "roll over" in the menu are gone.
To say something positive on the design front, navigation on the site is easy, the site only has two levels. But the webmasters mixed things up. There are separate sections for audio and for images, and there's an "miscellaneous" section with both audio and images. What's the function of this last menu item?
Same goes for the download section. Here you find the third section of wallpapers (among other pictures), besides some winamp-skins which you might want to download. But you have to sign the guest book first to get the wallpapers. Are the webmasters dying for some attention, or afraid nobody will send them a message ??? This is almost as irritating as the continuous background music, which can't be switched off (except for turning off the speakers). If it wasn't for this review, we would immediately disappear from such a site. Another problem with the sound is that it is in MP3-format. This causes running download-managers to download it instead of playing it.
Rating: 3/10
Content
A site mentioning the term "high quality" so often should have something to offer. What we did find:
* Pictures of Elvis (taken from other sites)
* Pictures of guitars (their own)
* Animated gifs (from other sites)
* Wallpapers (their own, often in poor quality)
* Audio (?)
* WinAmp skins (their own)
And no information at all. Especially the "guitar part" of the site could really add something to Elvis on the Internet. Maybe combined with chords? But at least there should be background information about those instruments? What type? When did Elvis use them, and so on. Perhaps it's an idea to look for images on which Elvis is actually seen with a specific instrument.
There's really noting else we can say about the content. Mainly images (wallpapers, pictures of Elvis and guitars) and some downloads.
Rating: 4/10
Advise
The webmasters are probably new to building websites and were very enthusiastic to get a lot of "things" online is a really flashy style. That's why we focused on the design part in our review. They do have some original items (guitars) and idea's (wallpapers aren't seen on too many websites) but they might want to pick up some of our hints above. Because like it is now we wonder if anyone stays until the 10th "King Creole" audio sample comes along. We understand not everybody can be a wizard on the web, but at least one might be expected to be familiar with the word "modesty" then. To finish this review with a song title we can only say "Once Is Enough", no, make it "Too Much".
Well it must be clear that "King Creole" in its present lay-out doesn't come close to an award, but looking how enthusiastic these two webmasters started this site we hope this critical review will give them a little push in the right direction so their site (and some of the original content) can add something new to Elvis on the web.
King Creole
February 27, 2000 | Other