One day I got an inching to see what I could find out about some of my favorite cartoons. So I turned to the Word Wide Web. Where else to find information on old cartoons?I found two sites that were about the same cartoon yet they were very different. So what made me chose the one over the other? Eye-catching graphics, readable text, and downloads, are the elements that sold me on Robotech.Simplenet.com over Robotechgames.com.

The first things I look at on a web site are the pictures and graphics. Because I am a visual person, the pictures and graphics are what determines if the site is worth my looking into it. For example, on the home page of Robotech.Simplenet.com there are two pictures that stand out and grab my attention right away. The first one is a headshot of the Valkyrie, Roy Fokker’s Veritech Fighter. The next picture is another headshot of a character in Robotech Armor. Some other eye-catching graphics are two scrolling text boxes. The first box announces important site events. The other informs the viewer about new updates to the site. The Robotechgames.com site, however, has no such picture or graphics. All it has is text: nothing to attract the viewer into further exploration of the site.

While text alone may not be extremely interesting, it is another important element of a website. To be understood, text must be readable. The background color is the first component of text readability. the Robotech.Simplenet.com site’s background color draws you into the text and does not detract from it. It accomplishes this by using two colors. The outer border of the page is blue. The middle is black with subtle blue lines running through it in a crisscross pattern. This background causes the text to stand out. Next comes the color of the text itself, gold on the black background. The golden words are soft on the eyes of the viewer, and easy to read. The whole page uses basically the same size font, which makes reading pleasant. The last element of text readability is the amount of text per page. On this page the text is written in the short and to-the-point statements. This makes it easy to know the purpose of the page.

The use of text on the Robotechgames.com page differs greatly from the Robotech.Simplenet.com page. Robotechgames.com has a plain black background, which causes a problem. More than half the text is written in white. White on black is a sharp contrast that tires the viewer’s eyes. Another thing that irritates is the variation on the font size of the text. It switches from small to large bold lettering. On top of that, the small print is seven paragraphs of really useless information. And the useless information is written in white on a hard to read black background.

Once the website has snagged my interest, I look for stuff I can download from the site to my computer. This bugs my wife, but is the area that can make or break a site. Here Robotech.Simplenet.com excels. The site has many different things to download. It has games, fonts, sound files, background images, and many more interesting tidbits of Robotech lore.

But the Robotechgames.com site stinks! Oh, they promise full-scale games for free, yet when I got to their download page, there was nothing but text describing the games. Under each description is a line of text that states, “No downloads yet.” What a letdown! After all they say they are doing, they have nothing to show for it except words on a page.

All in all, the Robotech.Simplenet.com site presents its information in a pleasing and entertaining manner. And it beats out Robotechgames.com in graphics, text readability, and downloads. I recommend Robotech.Simplenet.com to anyone who wishes to learn more about ROBOTECH.

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This was a paper that I wrote for a English class at collage. It was a Comparison and Contrast assignment. I did not have any dates on the paper itself but the attached print outs of the web sites had the date of 04/13/2000.  I will try to post more of my papers as I find them, and I might work on writing some new ones if I can find the time to.