Homestar Runner

This week's post: Homestarrunner.com My favorites on this site: Teen Girl Squad and Strong Bad Emails.

Intended Audience:

• Children, teenagers, or adults interested in a variety of online, comic cartoons featuring the characters StrongBad, Homestar Runner, and the Cheat (among others) that are updated pretty frequently.
  
• Anyone also wanting games, downloads, and merchandise featuring said cartoon characters.

Usefulness of Content:

Like most of the purely-for-entertainment sites we review here, there is probably nothing that could legitimately be called "useful" on Homestarrunner.com, unless you think a site guaranteed to make you laugh while killing some time is useful. Which I do.

Consistency of Design:

• The home page (after a splash page) can be loud and visually overwhelming. Depending on which page design comes up (they change whenever you go back), the characters could be yelling the menu items loudly, or it could be a design that doesn't incorporate sound effects. Similarly, lots of animation happens when you roll over each link.
• The site is really colorful, and although it could seem like the colors would also be visually overwhelming, the pages are designed so cleverly, it's not an issue. For instance the "toons" link takes you to a remote control with links to each archived cartoon, and a TV guide-type publication shows right next to it shows you everything that's new. The "downloads" link takes you to an ATM-type interface where you choose the category of download.
• The best thing about this site's design, and which tempers the sometimes-distracting visuals, is that the content probably takes up the middle 2/3 of the screen, and the rest of the screen is black. This is true throughout the entire site, except the store. You never have to scroll down for anything, and the main menu buttons are clearly labeled (if in a small font) in white below the content box.

Ease of Navigation

• Due to my previous point about the site design being contained in a single box with the links menu below, it is very easy to navigate. Wherever you go from the homepage, you can always get back using the white links.
• Once you've finished watching a cartoon, there are usually clearly labeled links to watch it again, or go back to the cartoon menu you came from. In the cartoons that don't include links, you can easily just use the back arrow or the bottom menu bar to get back to where you were.
• My only gripe: there is no interface to control the videos - so you can't pause them for any reason. Most are so short, you'd never really need to, but it would still be nice to have the option.