Since joining the The Cowboy Code Marshals, I thought I’d review a couple of the members. To get the ball rolling, I’ll start with the Conservative Cowboy.

Style
I’m not sure what I’d call the style of this site. I have the same problem defining my own site’s style. The idea of cowboys and web design doesn’t lend itself towards any name that doesn’t sound like the punchline of a joke. Cowboy Geek? Techno Cowboy? Those both sound like bad movies from the 70s or 80s. “Classic Western Web Design” might work, I’ll give that some thought. Regardless of the naming problem, the site’s style is distinct. A web site designed for, and probably by, a cowboy.

Christopher uses a fairly simple white on black color palette for the site, and I think that works. This sort of simple color palette can really catch the eye if done carefully. I would consider changing the link style however. Small fonts with red on black can be hard to read, as at the bottom of each post. I’d also consider working more white into the design to break it up visually a little more.

Some key text in this site is highlighted by being made red. Nice impact, but I found it distracting that it was the same color as the link text. Made it look like a link, when it wasn’t. I’d consider clarifying that in some way, so that highlighted text and links can more intuitively be told apart.

This site has a fixed width layout. Nothing wrong with that, though I personally prefer fluid width. Despite being fixed width though, it could still use space a little better. The header for instance could fill the space a little better. The header image has a lot of potential and modifying the layout slightly would use it to better advantage. The twin revolver image at the bottom of each post could also be used to define that space better. By putting an outline around that image, it limits its impact. While these are small changes, they’d make a noticeable difference. That outline is likely an unintentional artifact added by the CSS, but it could be removed the same way.

I like the fact that negative space is considered in this layout. I would adjust that here and there for more impact. A little more space between posts, and a little less between paragraphs for instance, would help the flow.

Content formatting needs to be a little more standardized. For instance most of the content is left aligned, but some posts are mostly centered. This is distracting. I’d also suggest not centering blocks of text, it makes it more difficult to read. As this seems to be most often used with quotations, I’d suggest changing those to blockquotes, and editing the blockquote CSS to an easier to read, but also more distinct, style.

There are two other style factors in this site that I don’t usually discuss. One is music. This site plays country music when it’s loaded. Nothing against country music, I listen to it daily, but I like to choose my own. I’d either remove that option, or make it optional in some way.

The second style feature I don’t often mention is animation. Animation, or any moving objects on a page, are a distraction. While they can be an interesting graphical addition to a page, they should be used with care. A number of objects on the Conservative Cowboy’s navbar move. I’d limit the use of these elements, or eliminate them entirely. Pick one maybe, like the flame’s at the top, and get rid of the rest. I’d also consider limiting the movement of that one item. For instance, instead of an infinite loop, make it cycle for 10-15 seconds, then stop. Another option is to do what is done at the Day by Day Cartoon by Chris Muir site. Go take a look at that site, then hover your mouse over the Day by Day logo above the cartoon. Notice how it pulses? It didn’t do it for me today, but in the past it’s played music when the animation turns on as well. An interesting alternative to having the animation turned on when the site loads.

My final thoughts on style are that this site has a good start on a great style. It needs some refinement, and it needs to push the style a little more too. Both the simplicity of the color palette, and the cowboy theme elements can be accentuated more, with good effect.

Structure
This site as you can tell is a blogger.com site, and is largely based on one of their themes. Nothing wrong with that. It is a safe and reliable blogging platform. I personally like WordPress better, but that’s more a matter of personal preference than anything else.

I tested the site using WebSiteOptimization.com as I normally do for this sort of post, and I found some interesting things. The first thing that caught my attention when I read the report was load time, which seemed unnecessarily long (289.27 seconds on 56K modem, 103.99 seconds on 128K ISDN). This was explained when I read further. 75 images and 27 scripts. 75 images is a lot for a non-photo blog, but it isn’t unrealistically high. 27 scripts however, is I believe, a new record for me. That’s going to significantly impact load time, especially since they all appear to be pulling content from remote sites.

Images are not without fault here though. While the images placed here are not very large in physical dimension, their file size is unnecessarily big. Optimizing them would go a long way towards decreasing file size and improving load time.

I see a number of validation errors which I’d fix, though none of them are serious. Most everything I’m seeing seems to be a Doctype discrepancy. The document is one Doctype, but the code is written for another. Changing either to match the other should fix the problem.

Font and Center tags are used in at least a couple of locations for highlighting sections of text. A better solution would be to create a few new CSS classes to use in place of these tags. That’s much easier to maintain over time. If the site style changes, the highlight classes can simply be changed to match, while Font and Center tags would have to be updated manually on an individual basis.

Content
The content is exactly what you would think it was from the title. The writing of a conservative cowboy.

What would I change
The first thing I would change would be standardizing the code. Fix the Doctype issue, then replace the Font and Center tags with CSS. From a viewers point of view, this might have little or no effect, but it would allow my next style changes to reliably have global effect.

I’d next adjust the negative space to improve flow. I can eleborate if anyone is interested, but for now I’ll just say that some small changes to the use of spacing will make significant improvements in the flow and readability.

I’d add some white to the overall style, probably n the form of graphic elements of some kind. With a little more white to balance the black, the already strong effect of the simple color palette would be accentuated.

Change the link style to a more readable solution. While the red works good in the main content, in smaller links and bigger blocks of text it doesn’t work so well. The option I’d try first would be to change the link color in the post footer and the navbar. For instance there’s no reason those couldn’t be white with or without an underline. They could be considered of secondary importance to the blog posts themselves, and this color change would reinforce that.

I really like the header image, but it’s not being used as well as it could. I’d change it to better use the space, removing the outline would be a start. I’d also consider changing it’s shape and positioning slightly as well.

I’d change the use of the twin revolver images to better use the space at the bottom of each post. Here again I’d remove the outline, and probably add another graphic element to balance that small image with the wider text blocks above and below. I’d start with adding a CSS line above or below the image, the full width of the text column, to see if that alone wouldn’t balance it. I think that would be enough.

I’d limit or eliminate the flash and animation, as well as making the music optional, preferably with the default as off.

I’d strongly consider using some of the space outside of the fixed width portion of the site. Currently the site floats in the middle of a black page. Depending on the viewers monitor resolution, up to several inches down either side of the screen is empty. This space could be made more graphically interesting using a subtle repeating image of some kind. As you can see, I’m currently using a leather texture on my site to do that sort of thing. On the Conservative Cowboy site I’d do something much more subtle, and more in line with the simple color palette already in use. I would use an image like mine however, in that I’d repeat it either across, or down, but not both. The key here is subtle. It’s very easy to overdo this sort of image and really make a site look cluttered. With this sort of thing you should always try to err on the site of too subtle. Better to have viewers miss it, than overpower them with an image that’s too strong.

Summary
In summary, I like the site. I like its potential even more. It needs a little work, but all sites do. A little structural improvement, a little stylistic improvement, and it will be a stunning site, and easier to use and maintain as well.

Not all sites can use this sort of color palette and style, their content just wouldn’t support it. The Conservative Cowboy however, is one of those sites that will really make this sort of style work. The combination of text and imagery used here is set off nicely by this sort of presentation.

As with all of my Design Review posts, feel free to ask for clarification about any of my comments or ideas. I’ve always intended for these to promote discussions on design, that’s why I write them.

Trackposted to Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, and Shadowscope, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.