Analyzed Websites

The first website that came to mind was www.ign.com. IGN stand for "Imagine Games Network", but they don't just deal with videogames. All kinds of media is reported and reviewed at IGN and it is a great place ot find updates on movies, DVDs, games, music, anime, comics, and TV. Ironically, IGN just redesigned their website a few days ago. The entire site hasn't been updated just yet, but the home page is a perfect example of what the entire site will look like. Personally, I'm fine with the style and look of the new site, though there are some complaints. There's defintely more ad space than previously before, and the new navigation will take some getting use to. This website of course uses CSS to style its layout. It has six errors when I went to validate on the W3C Validator. The site in my opinion is still, in a way, user-friendly because the navigation is at the top and the different categories are listed. Hopefully when the whole website is finished updating, it'll look like it's intended.

The second website I visited often is www.penny-arcade.com. It's a webcomic site where the characters, Gabe and Tyco, discuss (in a way...) current issues in the media, though they tend to focus the electronic (computers, videogames, etc) side of it. It's a simple website to begin with. It's basically a blog with links to other portions of the site. There's links to the comics, forums, store, and other works and events. It doesn't look like they use tables for their layout, so it's safe to assume they use CSS. It's just the site isn't too complex since as I said, it's like a blog with links to their comics. There are about three errors for the site according to the W3C Validator. It's easy enough to navigate throughout the site and that's what I like about the site besides the humor I find in the comics. The one and only thing I don't like is that if there isn't enough text posted in the blog portion, the ads will extend the webpage and leave empty space. This isn't a very constant problem though since most of the time they have more than enough to talk about.

The last and the site I think is pretty bad is www.msn.com. Ironically, I have this site as my home page, but I hardly spend time on the site to really take advantage of it. I'll usually see what's the top stories and uses the email service. Technically, MSN is just a page of links to their articles and other media. It's easy to click on links, no doubt, but it doesn't look that appealing. It's all blue text because of every statement, phrase, and line is a link to a video or article. I don't know why, and I hope it's not meant to be, but when I view the page source.... everything is on a single line. It also seems like the website uses CSS and surprisingly, the site validates on the W3C Validator. I mean, I like it when I just chance at it when my browser first opens, but overall, I can't stay on MSN for an extended period of time.