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Blue Cow

background information

site: Blue Cow
owner: Julia
reviewed: March 13th, 2009

screen shot

click to enlarge, opens in a new window.

first impression

I don't like it when owners send in their applications where the site name field doesn't have a hyphen, but their URL does. This site is Blue-Cow according to the URL. Let's pick one and stick with it.

graphic

This graphic is just a rectangle with curved corners with either light stock or light stock brushes and a site name on it. I like the orange/golden yellow colors, but blue clashes atrociously with them.

Not much time or talent was really put into this graphic.

coding

The code is really boring, too. The only thing I like is the header in the main div, because it's actually designed with a background while everything else is boring. Blue for the main font color on an orange background? No!

content

Visitor content includes tutorials, actions, articles, brushes, fractals, icons, icon textures, and textures.

tutorials;
Tutorials are available for Animation Shop, FanUpdate, iPod/iTunes, Photoshop and Windows.

What version of Photoshop? Elements? CS? Version number? Helloo...?

What version of Windows? Vista? Vista Home Premium? Vista Office? XP? 2000?

actions;
"These actions are for photoshop." Photoshop needs to be capitalized. And, again, what version? I have two versions of "photoshop" and actions only work in one of them.

These actions are okay, but basically only brighten/contrast the image or make it duller.

articles;
Perhaps these should be on their own page, the way "tutorials" have their own page.

Two articles: affiliates and reviews.

An affiliate is not "something that bonds two web owners and their website." Affiliates are not only for web owners and websites, they are also for other people in the world! Believe it or not. Also, that would be affiliation not an affiliate. An affilate is the person that one "shares a bond with" - as in, a person or business or company, et cetera.

Persons should be person's.

How can you affiliate with sites that are "similar in skill to yours or higher" - if one site asks a better site to affiliate, shouldn't the better site say no, because that site isn't similar enough or better than they are? Bad logic.

Okay, I think I'll skim the other article's first two paragraphs or so.

"It is usually and best structured" sounds very awkward.

Oh my god. YES! They mentioned "pointing out useless content" in their review! They will understand if I say something seems useless to me! Wonderful!

Persons should be person's.

"Like if you asked someone..." Like? Like? We do not use "like" that way in articles! The word is not a space filler.

Near the end of the who/what paragraph there's a link that is never closed, thus the rest of the review is one big link. Save for the last line or so.

Your should be you're.

brushes;
Very nice that they're offered for Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, and an image pack. Only one set is here, it looks alright. The preview's font is pixelated and looks bad, and the site's URL is that of a previous URL. Fix that!

fractals;
These are interesting. I'm not sure how often they would be used, but I suppose if planned out, a layout featuring a fractal could look really cool.

icons;
Not the most impressive icons. They just look cropped and very, very mildly edited.

icon textures;
These are not the nicest icon textures I've seen. I only like the last one in the first row.

textures;
More like light stocks. For light stocks tey're really cool.

navigation

This site is wonderfully easy to navigate. The link are across the page, below the image, but above the divs. Links include home, tutorials, resources, Jules, and site.

The site page leads to many other pages and a little "history" blurb. Credits can be found off of this page. There aren't many sites listed on her credits page, but the page is detailed with notes for why resources were used.

overall

Blue Cow (or Blue-Cow) is orderly and a bit too plain for my liking. Everything seems very structured, but lacking in creativity and design. The articles should be read over for typos! The content seems a bit too bland and could definitely be improved.

comments

if you leave a comment... then refer to the name of the site. This review was for Blue Cow

This cbox is for visitors to comment about the sites that have been reviewed. It is not for visitors' complaints, defending of friends, telling me how to review sites, or for juding my site. If you want to do one of those listed above, feel free to e-mail me at skylineillusions@yahoo.com which is the site e-mail that I check frequently; I don't feel as if there is a need for any one to e-mail me over these reviews, though. I check this cbox about once every two weeks, usually only if one of my friends says "Go look at that cbox!"

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