The first impression of the site is that it might be a little chaotic. There are adds and game pictures everywhere, which may confuse some users. The color scheme is also not quite right, nothing really stands out, and does make it a bit difficult to know which of the buttons are for navigation and which are shortcuts to game reviews or ads. They do however at keep it quite clear at what site you are currently on, the site has a nice Gametrailers.com logo and does not have a single ad next to it. As for the advertisements, they have tagged each ad with a name (Advertisement, Shows, Ad,…), which will help you separate them from the rest but it does slow you down little a bit.

At the top of the page they have a navigation bar at the top of and the bottom of the site logo, which does provide mostly the same services as the sidebar further down on the page. The top bare gives you access to previews, reviews the forum and things like that, the bottom one is for going to specific platforms. If you go to for example the playstation 3 section, the newest videos for that platform will be shown.

If you want to search for something the search bar is next to the platform bar. The problem with this however is that they have made the bare and the search button very small. The text on the bar is barely readable and the bar itself is barely noticeable. When you search for something you want, a list of games and videos are displayed, the best match will be at the top of the list. Each of the alternatives that are shown on the list display information about each item. It gives information like: Platforms, release date, Genre, developer and things like that. It also has a rating at the top right corner. When clicking on an alternative the videos are, consistently, displayed halfway down the page with ratings, size and all. The ratings on the games are given by both the users and site moderators, so there are two ratings for each game. The videos are rated only by users. While you are looking at a game, you have several options like for example: Rating, adding to favorites, tracking information about the game and find information about it on the forums. However, most of them are only available to registered members.

The thing that strikes you first when opening the page is the headline media part which covers about ¼ of the page itself. It does provide very good information about the newest events within the gaming community. Id may however be confusing as to whether or not this is an ad. You can navigate the headlines, but usually when something is at this position on a site, its an ad so you may find yourself checking what it is before you try to click it. However, this is a usual feature for gaming sites, and probably will not be a problem for a frequent user of such sites.

If you are not looking for anything specific, the site provides a nice service about halfway down the page where they display the newest added media. It provides a title, a thumbnail image of the video, when it was added and what platform it is for. When clicking on one of the videos you can choose between Quicktime and Windows media player for showing the video, if you just click on the image, the default player will be used. The newest media section provides 8 sections with 12 videos each that allows you to keep track of new videos.

At the bottom of the page, they display the top 10 videos and featured user media. This is something they probably should have put higher up on the page, because, at least the top 10 videos, is something i think most users would be interested in if they are just browsing the site. Putting it on the bottom lowers the interest of most users.

Some services of this site does require that you are registered and logged in. Most sites like this require some kind of payment in exchange for these services, gamtrailers.com does not. This is what gives this site an edge. Most of the other sites are chocked with ads and to get rid of them you have to be a registered member which costs money, this is not the case here. Registration is also easy and does not require much information from you. Just name, user name, e-mail address and date of birth. You are then sent an confirmation e-mail and you are good to go.

Personally I find this site to be very good, but a person with no experience with game sites, might find it a bit complex and will find himself using some time to get their bearings. So changing the color scheme of the navigation bars to make them stand out, and also increasing the size of the search bar will help inexperienced users.

For this assignment i decided to analyse the webpage of the mabye not so popular
kystpartiet (or coastal party ). As for the first impression of the page, you
see that it is very plain and simple. No fancy ads, no extravagant use of color
and no giant slogans that whip out at you.
The few graphics they use are pretty representative for their party. At the top
of the page you have a picture of a mountain going into the ocean, or a strip of
the coast if you will, with the name of the party fading down into the ocean. It
is a beautiful picture of the Norwegian coast and is probaly there to:
1)be an image that represents the name of the party, and
2)to give the viewer, mostly the natives, a sence of national pride over our
wonderful coastline.

When it comes to the use of color on the page itself and their logo, they only
use the color black, white and green. The use of green shows their polotical
affiliation (centered party), and as for the black and white its just the text
and the background. The logo of the party is a picture of a buoy, not sure what
else to call it in english, but its an image that makes you think of the ocean and
perhaps safety. An overly connotational analasys of the image could be that they
will ensure you smooth sailing.

As mentioned earlier the layout  of the page is very simple,  a possible
connotational analasys of the layout could be that it is focused on the older
generations of the country rather then youth. Another example to support this is
that there are absolutly no pictures of anyone under the age of 40 on this
entire site. Which goes to show that this party is mainly focused on the older
voters.

The dominant mode at this site is the text/language. There are few graphics and
no audio recordings or videos. They are only showing you the necessary
information, what they stand for, history and information about what they are
doing. There are some possibilities  to why they didnt got for a more
extravagant design, one is that they didnt have acess to anyone with skills
necessary to create it, but the more likely one is that there wasnt any need to
make it more complicated.
On the left side of the webpage there is a menu, its divided into two main
sections, politics and organisation. Whenever you scroll down or change section
you are in, the menu stays in the same spot which makes it easier to navigate.
There are a few submenues, but nothing unusual. There is a history, party
program, a section where you can sign up and the usual things. The ones that
stand out are:  «no to EU», ideology and the dice-roll sections. Dice-rolls are
usually given to things like movies and music, so when they show up in a
political website i think they are somewhat desperate to show that they actually
get some credit for the things they do. And the fact that it came from an
extreme sports magazine, i think, shows that they dont get much praise and that
its the only published «score».

The ideology section is very nice concidering that I am analyzing them, but I
suppose that I have to show if they actually manage to convey these ideologies
in the messages they give on their webpage.  At the top of their website it
says: Verdikonservative sentrumsparty (value conservative center party, or
somesuch..).  As you can read from their choice of things to fight for in the
news section, their conservative nature shines through. They are against open
immigration, they do not want to seperate church and state, they dont want to be
a member of the Europeic union, etc. Their use of color could also give off a
conservative feel, no overly exaggerated colors and very neat and clean.  

>From the different texts on this page you can find a recurring opinion, that is
the one about major cities. They are very supportive of smaller communities,
farms and fishermen, which is not very surprising concidering the party,  among
other things there are a couple of paragraphs in their ideology section which says:

-Menneskene blir mindre når byen blir større (Humans grow smaller when cities
  grow larger).

-Menneskene blir mindre når husene blir høyere (Humans grow smaller when houses
  grow larger).

-Flytt kapital, ikke mennesker (Move funds not people).

As for provenance, you can find in the different texts that the party represents
the coastal and rural parts of Norway, and that they are trying to ensure the
continued survival of these areas.

There are some obvious things you can get from this text, and that is that the writer is a student, he has no sudden need(or possibility) to aquire more furniture….sounds somewhat familliar…

The writer also mentions he likes things tidy, but judging by the sentence:

But I have a vision of how I’d like it to be; nice and tidy, but it probarbly won’t (or maybe it will, because I really don’t own that much).

He probably wont act on this desire more then he has to. Personally i envy him because of the big screen TV, and I can understand when he seems to be somewhat irritated about the fact that he cant get any channels. And as for the Internet, not having Internet is like beeing cut of from the world (when you are on the computer at least).  The part where he mentioned changing rooms for a smaller one (I assume its a smaller one when he said the other one was better, but who knows….?) :

 My friend got a much better room, but I’m a view man so I don’t care.

A possible connotation of that, is that he likes his privacy, and the view of course. Muffling the sound of his feet with carpets also goes to show he probably doesnt want people to know he is there so to be left alone. So what i can read from this text and that room, is pretty much what I said at the beginning of the text, the room is that of a student: Just what it can be (can in the sense that it cant be much else), and what it should be (that of someone with really little use for material goods at his current point in life…except for computers, tv, stereo, etc).

Wonderful isnt it?