Main Pages

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Revision as of 23:36, 3 July 2023

This article is about the main pages on the website. For the main page of this wiki, see Main Page.

Today the Main Page, tomorrow the world!

The Main Pages are the themed menu pages for homestarrunner.com. Every time a viewer enters through the Index Page (previously the intro), a random Main Page will load. This also happens when returning from another area of the site, although certain toons (usually holiday toons) have set Main Pages they will always return to.

Structure

The Main Pages consist of Homestar Runner (or one of his variations) standing in the foreground on the right of the page. To the left, six bubble icons appear on a rail:

• 'toons
• games
• characters
• downloads
• store
• e-mail

Rolling over these with the cursor results in Homestar usually reading them aloud, while certain simple animations relating to the theme occur in proximity to Homestar. Main Page 23 is the one exception: designed to show the reverse of the menu, the positions are swapped left-to-right.

At the top of the page are four buttons: the Quote of the Week, Weekly Fanstuff, the Sketchbook, and a Random Toon. The first three features were updated near-weekly; this schedule was abandoned in late 2009 and as of 2021 none of the buttons function.

A message in the top-right corner exhorts viewers to "go on and see what's new!", explaining the site is "updated every someday" (previously, the main pages had offered the date of the most recent site update). A bubble cycles through the latest toon, merchandise, and game in succession. This button used to cycle through updates with more descriptive messages, advancing whether the mouse pointer was on it or not; currently the cycling animation pauses if moused over.

Finally, a semitransparent "First Time Here?" button is located near the updates, linking to a welcome speech from Homestar Runner (which he repeated fails to successfully record).

Page List

These are all of the Main Pages that can be accessed from the bottom-left menu on each page.

Main Page 1 (The Moon)	Main Page 2 (The Alps)	Main Page 3 (A beach)	Main Page 4 (Bowling alley)
Main Page 5 (Waffle House)	Main Page 6 (Heaven)	Main Page 7 (Graveyard)	Main Page 8 (Falling through the sky)
Main Page 9 (Notebook sketch)	Main Page 10 (Old-Timey)	Main Page 11 (Channel 4 Action News)	Main Page 12 (4th of July)
Main Page 13 (Atari 2600)	Main Page 14 (Shower)	Main Page 15 (Powered by The Cheat)	Main Page 16 (Wintertime)
Main Page 17 (20X6)	Main Page 18 (Sweet Cuppin' Cakes)	Main Page 19 (The Show)	Main Page 20 (Storybook World)
Main Page 21 (Vector video game)	Main Page 22 (Virus)	Main Page 23 (Rear-view)	Main Page 24 (Near-sighted)
Main Page 25 (Puppet Stuff)	Main Page 26 (Xeriouxly Forxe)	Main Page 27 (Peasantry)

Other Main Pages

There are a few other Main Pages that can not be accessed through the menu. Some have limited or different menu options.

Luau Main Page (at the end of The Luau)

Strong Bad Main Page (Homestar Talker messages)

Homsar Main Page (see below)

King of Town Main Page (The King of Town DVD menu Easter egg)

Easter Eggs

• Clicking on the Homestar Runner logo at the top left takes the viewer to the Museum.
• Clicking the last digit of the copyright years (currently the "1" in 2021) on each Main Page takes the viewer to the Homsar Main Page. This Main Page is also accessible as an Easter egg in interview.

Fun Facts

Trivia

• The only Main Pages that have Homestar in his regular outfit, size, and style are Main Pages 8, 18, 19, 23, and 24. Of these, Main Page 18 is the only one where nothing special happens with Homestar; he merely stands at the front facing forward and says the various words.
• With the exception of Main Pages 10, 12, 19 and 25, Homestar's voice will play over top of itself. Homsar's and the King of Town's voices will also play over top of themselves, but not Strong Bad's.
• The copyright year has been updated irregularly — not always at the beginning of the year, sometimes missing a page, and more recently skipping several years.
  • Updated to 2005 — February 21, 2005
  • 2006 — January 8, 2006
  • 2007 — January 14, 2007
    • Main Page 23 was not updated until July 24, 2007.
  • 2008 — April 11, 2008.
    • Main Page 24 was not updated until August 25, 2008, or earlier.
  • 2009 — January 26, 2009
    • Main Page 23 was not updated in 2009.
  • 2010 — April 12, 2010.
    • This coincided with the addition of Main Page 26.
  • 2021 — December 31, 2020
    • This was also when the website underwent a complete redesign for the discontinuation of Flash.

Glitches

• When using the Wii to access the Main Pages, listening to the Quote of the Week causes the navigation button sounds to play at half-pitch.
• The original audio files of Homestar saying the words "toons", "games", "store", etc., each contain a noticeable audio click at their beginning and end.
  • This is a common error in sound production when the audio cuts off abruptly instead of fading out.
  • All Main Pages utilizing the original files contain this audio glitch, even on much later pages, but Main Pages which use alternative sounds, such as Main Page 13, do not have these problems.
• If you click on the navigation buttons from the left-hand menu area, drag your mouse away from the menu area while still clicking down, and then release the button, you can make certain effects persist. You can even combine more than one effect, sometimes producing unexpected results. (Other buttons throughout the site behave in a similar manner.) See Main Page Glitches for a complete listing.
  • You could use this trick for at least one effect on all of the Main Pages except 7, 12, 19, 23, and 25. For the trick to work, the effect had to persist as long as you hold down the mouse bottom.
  • You could use this trick with all six effects on Main Page 11. If you do "downloads" first and "store" second, all six effects can be seen at once. This is the only Main Page (including the hidden ones) on which you can see all six effects at once.
  • All of these glitches were seemingly "fixed" in December 2020 when the site was first updated to use Ruffle, as the effects would no longer persist once the mouse moved away from the buttons whether the click was held or not. However, more recent versions of Ruffle have changed the mouse input handling to more accurately reflect how it was done in Adobe Flash Player, and these glitches have returned as a result.

See also

• Page Titles — Main Pages

External Links

• view the Main Pages menu
• view the Main Pages menu on the old Flash site
• view the Flash file for the Main Pages menu