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Review
Page: I'd Rather Be Dead Than Cool
Reviewer: Robert
Brooks
Date: Feb. 15, 1999
IntroductionOver a period of time, things change. That does not mean it grows, because some things do the opposite over time. People have their own views of change. There are different types of changes. Web pages change...most of them at least. I'd Rather Be Dead Than Cool has changed too.
Graphics
The graphics on this page is very simple. There is no fancy Java or anything like that. There is a lower frame at the bottom of the page that contains some links to particular places and also a counter. The background is a rainbow color. The main thing in the page is an image map that takes a considerable amount of time to download. The page seems to work best in 800x600 resolution. In both browsers -- IE or Netscape -- the page seems to look fine.
Information
This page seems to focus a lot more on Multimedia than anything else. However I could be wrong. We'll get to the Multimedia in just a moment.
In the Propaganda Inc. section, you will find some links to places that offers news about Nirvana-related things. Which is pretty interesting and good, because a lot of pages tend to forget what is happening in the world.
The Information section contains mostly informative articles. For example, the Nevermind tour and recordin sessions, bands they played with, and the possiblity of a second Sub Pop album, and more.
Of course the Links is information. It provides a gateway to other sites. The links are in a table. On the left column is the page title, on the left are the description for the sites. As far as I can tell, these are fairly new and updated sites. Which is an advantage.
If you want to see some of the Genology of Kurt and Courtney, this page offers some of that. When you click on a name, you are shown a chart or tree that contains other names. The names just keep on going and going. This is perhaps the most original thing this page or any other page has.
It seems that this page does indeed offer some worthwhile information. I am fairly pleased with the amount of information and content this page offers.
Multimedia
The Information section seemed to be impressive. The Multimedia sections seems to offer a lot from what I am seeing right now.
The first section that is related to multimedia would would the Song of the Week. There you can download a song file. Simple enough?
As for the Song Clips, there are 30 to 60 second sound files from various shows. This is a good thing because if you want to have a taste of bootleg material, you can.
In the Photo Gallery you will find descriptions of the picture in two sections. The first section is the Band gallery and the second is the Kurt gallery. The page does not seem to be too optimistic about the gallery.
The Multimedia section does offer the regular stuff. It is not the strong point of the page.
Other
There are a few "other" sections I would like to go through. The only thing you will see are links to online stores. Finally, in the More, More, More section, you will find several sections: Downloads, Webrings, Awards Won, and About the author of the page. You can download a lot of the regular things you see around the internet. One thing I found that was pretty original was the icons the author of the page made.
Connection
About the test:
Both browsers were closed before the test.
Internet Explorer was opened and tested, Netscape was tested after.
Address for the main page, or page that consists of contents, or the page that was viewed in the screenshot was pasted in the testing browser.
Time was ended when the icon in the top right hand corner stopped.
Internet Explorer: 3 min+
Netscape Navigator: 53.5 sec.As you can tell, Internet Explorer did a horrible job downloading the page. As for Netscape Navigator, the first time around it did about the same as for peformance like IE, but the second time it got a more decent score. Each time you visit the page, the time should decrease. The cause for this problem is probably the background and especially the image map. There are ways to solve this problem. You can use tables or frames. The background in the photo gallery looks real good, so I would prefer to have that as a default.
The connection test was done on a 56k Winmodem connected at 44,000 bps. Remember download times will vary depending on your modem speed, browser, server of the page, telephone line activity, and your internet service provide (ISP). This will not guarantee that the page will download at the same rate on your computer as it does mine, this is just an estimate.
Conclusion
All in all, a decent page. I am highly impressed with the information in this page. I am not saying everything in the information section is original, but it does offer some things that other pages seemed to have forgotten. The Multimedia is pretty standard. If the page wants to change some of its dislikes, it can. I hope it improves because it definitely has a lot of potential in its basket.
I'd Rather Be Dead Than Cool is authored by Tyler Oaks and is hosted by CICI.
Nirvana In Nirvana © 1998-1999
