homestarrunner.com
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- This article is about the website. For the YouTube channel, see YouTube#homestarrunnerdotcom. For the personal website of Homestar Runner, see Homestar Runner's Website.
homestarrunner.com is the URL of the website and primary home of the Homestar Runner body of work.
Contents |
Structure
The index page is the first page one sees when visiting the website, and offers the viewer the option to watch the Intro or go to a randomly selected Main Page (of which there are currently 26). The Main Pages, which are the main menus of the site, split homestarrunner.com into six main categories: Toons, Games, Characters, Downloads, Store, and Email. A few of these categories host subcategories such as Strong Bad Email and Teen Girl Squad. The Main Pages also link to the Museum, the Weeklies, recent site updates, the toon First Time Here?, and the rest of the Main Pages.
The frame itself takes up roughly 12% of the screen, depending on the resolution and screen magnification. The rest of the screen is simply black, with a round border around the Flash files. Some toons use this black space to their advantage, such as the Strong Bad Email virus, in which Strong Bad runs outside the frame, or flashback, when Strong Bad extends the boundaries of the screen to reveal Homestar Runner, who says he's usually "behind the black". Below the frame is the navigation bar, which has small links to various sections of the site, functioning as a more condensed, extensive version of the Main Pages on almost every page. There are other site components as well, embedded into Flash files so that they are rarely accessed on their own.
The site is navigated mainly via Flash menus (now emulated through Ruffle). Many of these menus have a specific theme or gimmick, such as the TV Time Toons Menu, which is listed on a TV Guide-like magazine, and the Downloads menu, which looks like an ATM. Most menus have an interactive aspect to them. The Main Pages, for instance, have certain events that play when the cursor hovers over each button, and the Scrolling Shooter Games Menu takes the form of a vertical scrolling shooter video game.
One unique aspect of the website is the abundance of Easter eggs. For example, clicking the last digit of the copyright date on any of the Main Pages takes one to the Homsar Main Page, and clicking "Eject" on the VHS player and clicking the "Homsar" tape on the Character Videos page will play Homsar's Character Video. The majority of these Easter eggs can be found in toons. Some of them require clicking on something while the toon is playing, but most of them can only be found once the toon has ended. Sometimes the clickable area will change when the cursor is hovered over it to indicate an Easter egg, such as the red letter "D" turning yellow at the end of Hremail 7, but usually there will be no indication of an Easter egg beyond the cursor changing. The "Tab" button on the keyboard can sometimes be pressed to locate Easter eggs.
Another unique aspect is the loading screens. The main sections of the website generally use the same loading screen: the Homestar Runner logo hovering up and down against a white background. However, specific toons often have a more unique loading screen, usually relating to the toon itself. These loading screens occasionally say something besides "loading", such as "load", or even no text at all.
The page titles are ordinarily different than the toon or menu name, and frequently contain jokes. For example, the index page has the page title "Everybody! Everybody!", which is the lyrics to the Intro.
Hidden among the website are various secret pages, ranging from toons never added to the main list, pages intended to be found, and unfinished toons. There have also been secret pages removed after fans found them, such as If I Ran the Camera.
The website also hosts several subdomains, such as podstar.homestarrunner.com, which hosts the menu and files for Podstar Runner; trogdorboardgame.homestarrunner.com, which has updates and information on Trogdor!! The Board Game; and new.homestarrunner.com, which displays a redesigned HTML version of the index page. There are also a few folders within the domain, such as "stinkogame", the folder housing Stinkoman 20X6, and "sadjournal", which houses Strong Sad's Lament.
On December 31, 2020, the website converted most of its content to the Flash emulation program Ruffle, bringing with it a new index page with Homestar Runner and Strong Bad standing in the Field, which changes during the time of day. To the right is info on the latest news, merchandise, and Tweets from @StrongBadActual.
Filename Conventions
Many of the page files (.html files) and Flash files (.swf files) for the main features have consistent naming conventions. For example, the page file for a Strong Bad Email is "sbemailX.html", where X is the email number, with a handful of exceptions. The same goes for Teen Girl Squad (tgsX.html), and Marzipan's Answering Machine (answerX.html).
Toon URLs, however, are less consistent. Sometimes, the page file relates to the toon. For example, A Jorb Well Done is "cantsayjob.html". Usually, the Flash file will have the same filename as the html page, but there are some exceptions. If this is not the case, the Flash file may be found by viewing the page source and reading the filename from the line that includes "<PARAM NAME=movie VALUE="FILENAME.swf">". Many URLs end in the number 2.
Domain
The domain is currently hosted by CaroNet, and was registered on December 6th, 1999 by Harmless Junk, Inc. Its IP is 69.59.23.70. The website used to be hosted by Yahoo!, but it was so popular that it had to be moved. It was hosted by Sagonet until sometime around October 2006.
Other Domains
Harmless Junk, Inc. also hosts other domains, such as videlectrix.com, thoraxcorp.com 
mild language, and whatthepfargtl.com. The first two of those websites are based on companies within the Homestar Runner universe, and the last is based on a toon, but the site was never set up and expired April 30, 2008.
Email Addresses
Until late 2015, "brotherschaps@homestarrunner.com" was the personal email address of The Brothers Chaps, the creators of Homestar Runner, while "strongbad@homestarrunner.com" was the email address for sending Strong Bad Emails. In sbemail206, it was suggested that any future emails should be sent via Twitter to @StrongBadActual.
Remarks
- homestarrunner.com does not pass the W3C Validation Test, at least not on many of its pages. This is mainly due to no DOCTYPE and because it uses the EMBED HTML Object (which is is not valid HTML 4.01; flash satay must be used in order to bypass validation errors.)
- Currently, the website is not supported by mobile browsers, as it is made up almost entirely of Flash files. It was suggested in Flash is Dead! that by circa February 2016, the website (or any future additions to it) would be in HTML5 format. It is not only more secure, but its video format is supported by some mobile browsers. However, this time has passed and the prediction has not come true, though The Brothers Chaps have started on an HTML redesign of the site. This redesign is much simpler and uses embedded YouTube videos instead of Flash content, with links to the old site, as well as links to other non-Flash content such as the Store, the YouTube channel, the HTML5 TROGDOR! game, and the @StrongBadActual Twitter account. In addition, selected toons and Strong Bad Emails can be viewed from mobile devices via official YouTube uploads, and a few toons released since 2016 have been posted on the site in embedded YouTube video format.
See Also
External Links
- Visit homestarrunner.com
- WHOIS
