adidas.com

adidias.com has come up with a creative and visually appealing way to have a lot of information on a home page with out being overwhelmed with type. When you first enter the site a group of labeled boxes come up then they turn into images which indicates that these images are clickable and will take you to another area. When you scroll over each image a menu pops up giving you options as to where you'd like to go. There are also logos on the top which have pulled down menus. The logos represent different areas of the adidas world. When you click on them a box appears and doesn't go away if you move your mouse away. Sometimes it can be frustrating navigating when a drop down box doesn't stay dropped down if you move you mouse slightly too far to the left or right. I like that when you scroll down on the menus the areas are highlighted in red. This makes it easy to tell where you can click. This is a well designed site.

zombieland.com

When you first look at this site, its visually appealing and is designed well. The menu on the left hand site is stationary and doesn't move as you scroll up and down which is kind of nice. The menu buttons that have sub categories have small red arrows pointing down to let you know you have move options below. The are visible yet subtle enough to not look out of place. The one thing that bothered me a lot is that when you press the button that says rules to survive zombieland it brings you to the youtube subscription of zombieland. I was disappointed I thought it would bring you to something fun and interactive or at least the list. Also when you click ABOUT you are directed to Wikipedia. It does give you information on the movie but it seemed a bit lazy to me. So all in all I got sick of the site fairly quickly.

IMDb.com

IMBd.com is a site I use often to answer those questions such as, why does that actor look so familiar or who was the guy in, whatever that movie was. I also used it once to prove that I was right in saying that Samuel L Jackson was in more movies than Steve Buscemi. I like the function of this site because you can find information by typing in an actors name or typing in a movie. It gives you information on all the movies or tv shows or guest appearances that the actor appeared in. As for searching movies, it gives you the cast and also trivia and memorable quotes. There is a lot of information on the home page so it can be overwhelming. However I feel its well organized and is easy to navigate. Links are underlined and the tabs look like tabs so there is no doubt what is active. The search box has a clear drop down menu and the logo is in the upper left which is usually standard on most sites. The logo is clickable to bring you home and it remains in that general area.

craigs list

craigs list is a visually boring website. Upon reaching the homepage I start having anxiety because I am bombarded with words. I feel like I am in middle school again looking at a list of words I need to know for an English final. There is no contrast and if you didn't move your mouse you wouldn't be able to tell which words are clickable and which words are not. There is no contrast and because of this I'm not too sure where to start. So I decided to go through the site and look for job opportunities. It's somewhat easy to navigate but there is something about this site that just turns me off. The site is well organized but I feel like some information should be boxed in because it gets a little hard to read one section apart from the rest. In defense of craigslist, it is an actual list and it is set up somewhat like classified ads in a newspaper which is probably something that some people may like because its a familiar format. I also like their logo because of its simplicity. 

pandora.com

Pandora.com is probably one of my favorite new sites. Its a free internet radio site. The design aspect pf it is very simple, using light blues and white, with simple typeface. Even though it is a music site, it is a site for all music, so keeping the design simple works for all genres and all music lovers. When you get to the homepage you do need to create an account. It simple to start an account. Its easy to navigate because the buttons read what they mean (i.e. your profile, about this music, create a New station). It also has little pop up tabs that give you suggestions, like did you know you can do yadayadayada. How the site works is you create a new station, then you are asked to type in the name of an artist or song. Then they play a song by that artist. Then songs by that artist and similar artists are played. If you like the song you can give it a thumbs up and more of that artists will be played.  There's also a thumbs down to do the opposite. Also each song that is played has a menu that gives you options  that you can choose starting that you are tired of it, to move it to another station, Information on why the song was selected, there's an option to bookmark it and an option to buy it, the buy option directs you to itunes or amazon, you can choose this. I am so happy this site was introduced to me. 

www.timburton.com

I went to Tim Burton's website because I've never been there before and decided to check it out because I love his work. The opening count for when the page is loading is pretty cool because they are illustrated numbers instead of your run of the mill count down. When the page initial loaded I saw the illustration of the ink guy and although it was visually appealing, I was a little concerned about how easy it would be to navigate. Within a few seconds a screen came up explaining a few ways to navigate the site. Which I thought was a good idea to do. 

I like his site because it is interactive and you use the character to walk from each area to the other. The Gallery he has is cute. It has his illustrations on the wall and you need to make the little guy walk through it like an actual gallery. This is a fun site. 

dillinger4.net

I feel this site can be improved greatly. The left hand menu can be condensed and is not in an appropriate order. The Home button should be on top. It bothers me that it isn't there. The background image is too dark and not a good option to put body copy on because it makes it difficult to read. http://dillinger4.net/D4_Home_Default.html