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dwmckim
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Well, now with principal shooting wrapped for "The Muppets", looks like Disney is putting some attention towards updating muppets.com since after all, as they prepare their massive publicity push for both the movie and the brand, lots of people will no doubt be checking the site out.
Since the "XD" version of the site, the main things with muppets.com have been outstanding content and awful presentation/functionality. The changes so far follow that pattern.
We still get the "portrait" opening intro but once over, gone are the Rizzo set-ups and we go straight to the main room. While you can see the old "room design" in the background, the "room set-up" is gone. You still have different sections for Kermit, Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo, Animal, and Pepe but these are via "character pages".
The options in the upper right are replaced with a menu on the left with is a step up since it's more obvious that it's a menu as opposed to having to "explore it" or find it out on your own. Sadly, the gadget that takes you to the Muppet News Flashes is gone. The Do Not Push button is still there (relocated) and there may be a couple new ones but overall there only seem to be about 11 in current rotation.
There are links to Muppets Kitchen and Amazon store as well as a big "billboard" for the upcoming movie. Nothing happens when you roll over or click on it but that will probably change later.
The meat and potatoes of muppets.com has always been the videos and...well...prepare to not be very happy. You get a different kind of video player that pops up after the "portrait intro" with what seem to be six random videos (with no titles or identifiers) on the initial view. You can then click to watch more videos which will take you to a dramatically reduced playlist. No menus for categrories of types of vids (like elevator tapes, or Bunsen's tech support) - it's a big (well small, actually) catch-all. The only thing "new" i hadn't seen on the site is the music video for MWOO's "Kansas".
As mentioned, the Character Pages replaces the six Muppets' "rooms". Each page is another place where you can watch more videos and also view photo galleries of the character (most of them ugly poser/photoshop shots) and ... not much else. No random things like the joke-telling bananas in Fozzie's room or cheese in Gonzo's. Like the main screen, there's a severe reduction in the amount of videos on each character's page. The only really new thing there is the FULL version of Kermit's "I Believe" video (longer than the one Muppets Studio had on their YouTube channel).
I was wondering if Pepe's rumored reduced role in the movie would affect his being featured as The Main Six on muppets.com but Pepe fans can rest easy for now that Kerm/Piggy/Foz/Gonzo/Animal/Pepe are still the featured stars.
So we've lost lots of great videos - hopefully they'll make more this next year but it's pretty bare-bones right now. Oh and one more thing - sometimes when you click on a video, it's something totally different (and non-Muppet) like an ad for Tangled or episode of Phineus and Ferb's new talk show shorts...and when this happens, they typically freeze in the middle. This seems to be a genuine mistake rather than some kind of "forced commercial" since refreshing the page will fix this (though no amount of refreshing fixes it on Gonzo's page where Classical Chicken is replaced with something else). Also the Do Not Push videos sometimes lock/freeze the page up occassionally as well.
Since the "XD" version of the site, the main things with muppets.com have been outstanding content and awful presentation/functionality. The changes so far follow that pattern.
We still get the "portrait" opening intro but once over, gone are the Rizzo set-ups and we go straight to the main room. While you can see the old "room design" in the background, the "room set-up" is gone. You still have different sections for Kermit, Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo, Animal, and Pepe but these are via "character pages".
The options in the upper right are replaced with a menu on the left with is a step up since it's more obvious that it's a menu as opposed to having to "explore it" or find it out on your own. Sadly, the gadget that takes you to the Muppet News Flashes is gone. The Do Not Push button is still there (relocated) and there may be a couple new ones but overall there only seem to be about 11 in current rotation.
There are links to Muppets Kitchen and Amazon store as well as a big "billboard" for the upcoming movie. Nothing happens when you roll over or click on it but that will probably change later.
The meat and potatoes of muppets.com has always been the videos and...well...prepare to not be very happy. You get a different kind of video player that pops up after the "portrait intro" with what seem to be six random videos (with no titles or identifiers) on the initial view. You can then click to watch more videos which will take you to a dramatically reduced playlist. No menus for categrories of types of vids (like elevator tapes, or Bunsen's tech support) - it's a big (well small, actually) catch-all. The only thing "new" i hadn't seen on the site is the music video for MWOO's "Kansas".
As mentioned, the Character Pages replaces the six Muppets' "rooms". Each page is another place where you can watch more videos and also view photo galleries of the character (most of them ugly poser/photoshop shots) and ... not much else. No random things like the joke-telling bananas in Fozzie's room or cheese in Gonzo's. Like the main screen, there's a severe reduction in the amount of videos on each character's page. The only really new thing there is the FULL version of Kermit's "I Believe" video (longer than the one Muppets Studio had on their YouTube channel).
I was wondering if Pepe's rumored reduced role in the movie would affect his being featured as The Main Six on muppets.com but Pepe fans can rest easy for now that Kerm/Piggy/Foz/Gonzo/Animal/Pepe are still the featured stars.
So we've lost lots of great videos - hopefully they'll make more this next year but it's pretty bare-bones right now. Oh and one more thing - sometimes when you click on a video, it's something totally different (and non-Muppet) like an ad for Tangled or episode of Phineus and Ferb's new talk show shorts...and when this happens, they typically freeze in the middle. This seems to be a genuine mistake rather than some kind of "forced commercial" since refreshing the page will fix this (though no amount of refreshing fixes it on Gonzo's page where Classical Chicken is replaced with something else). Also the Do Not Push videos sometimes lock/freeze the page up occassionally as well.
