Last Thursday Disney announced what many probably saw as a minor update to the Disney.com web site. The press announcement somewhat downplayed the upgrades as well. You can read it here. Nothing could be further from the truth! Let's see why.
The main online web portal still looks much the same at first glance, but lots of subtle and good changes have been made. The biggest change you'll notice right off the bat is what used to be called Disney XD is gone. Okay, not really gone per-say. A better way to put it is probably more integrated. All of the features that used to be in the XD web area are now 'sunk into' the main site experience (you'll catch notes in places that these new areas are called D-pages).
Things like Chat, your list of Favorites, etc. from XD are now persistent across the first 4 areas of the new site and are kept in what's called your Backpack.
The areas are called: Games, Videos, My Page and Characters. Each of these used to be a semi-separate area on the XD page, but now are tightly integrated with the main portal and highlight as bluish-silver buttons on the toolbar (once you leave the main page, where for some reason they are all still dark blue), vice the darker blue of the other web areas. As long as you stay on one of the silver button areas, your chat windows stays open as does access to your favorites.
In the Games area, all of the games are now 'findable' in one area. Playing the web based games also allows you to earn D-points, which can then be spent on exclusive content on the web portal, like videos of interviews, customizations for your own personal portal, new chat phrases, etc. There are a variety of games to play both on the computer and on your mobile phone. This area also includes links to Club Penguin, Toon Town, Pixie Hallow and the POTC MMORGs, though clicking on these will obviously have you leave your portal.
The video area is just what it says, a link to tons of videos. These can be searched, watched and added to your Favorites list for easy access from your page.
Each user login also has it's own My Page, which allows for some themed customization (some of it free, some requiring d-points). From the first page you can click on 'Create Your Own Page' which takes you back to what looks like the old XD desktop, but updated with the new backpack and toolbar. The My Page area also lets you click to view other people's personal pages too.
Lastly is the character area. This area contains the links to pages that have info about a whole host of popular Disney characters.
The biggest structural change is the addition of an integrated mobile web portal to the main site. The specific web link ends up being http://m.disney.go.com. That's not particularly important, since the main disney.com domain will redirect you automatically if accessed from your phone however.
From the phone you can access parts of the new online area just like at your desk. Login on your phone for instance, and games you play earn d-points for your profile just like from your computer. You can also watch videos and view parts of your own personal page through your 'backpack'. No Chat from your phone though.
The mobile page also gives you links to the other areas outside of the new experience areas just like on the main page: Movies, Television, Music, Live Events and Travel. Not represented on the phone are the Parks and Shop portals. The Travel point on the mobile side just gives general info about traveling around with Disney, but that might be different on different phones.
With only one phone (an older Palm Treo 700p) on Verizon to look at, I can only speculate from what I see that the portal has enough logic in it to determine some of the things about your phone browser and customize it slightly to your experience. Those of you with an iPhone are going to have a much better experience than me with Safari vice Palm's pretty crappy browser called Blazer (which is also the default browser in the new Palm Centro as well. Bleck.) I can't watch any videos for instance, which I'm sure work fine on an iPhone.
Is it perfect? Not quite. It still has a few warts in my opinion. For one, the way in which the new pages are integrated are almost so subtle as to be missed by the casual viewer. I'm not sure the differences from the main page and the subsequent pages using different colored toolbars for an area to mark what replaced the XD experience is apparent enough for instance.
Disney keeps a pretty tight lid on things like chat of course (this ain't a Skype or iChat replacement by any stretch), but the fact that you can go from the Games link to the Movies link and loose your Chat window and history with no warning is an interesting design move too. If you surf right back, your chat window is gone and doesn't restore since you left the main area.
Likewise, I'm certain the phone experience is going to vary wildly by phone model. This is less of Disney's fault than that of a lack of standards and capabilities on most phones with their small screens and embedded operating systems. From what I can tell, they've done a respectable job of working around those fact as best they can.
Lastly all of the new areas on the web are still done largely in Flash, just like they have been done since the Disney.com got its major re-do. If you hate Flash, block it, or your computer runs it slowly, your experience will still suffer. Additionally if you are running Vista 64 with IE in 64 bit mode, their is no current Flash player so you'll be out of luck there too (it should work fine in 64 bit Vista with IE set to the stock configuration of running as a 32 bit app however).
On my computer at home it seems to run just fine with our DSL connection and both in IE 7 as well as Firefox 3, but like most Flash apps it crashes on occasion and takes the whole browser with it. This is something Microsoft has promised to fix in IE 8 (by crashing only a tab vice the whole browser) and it remains to be seen what if anything Firefox does similarly. For Adobe's part, they've largely moved on from Flash to Air, but that makes little difference here.
Overall, it's a MASSIVE update when you look at it in detail. Disney deserves a lot of credit for launching what is in essence a new portal with nary a burp or hiccup in service. That's a big deal. Bringing the connected experience to your phone is no small feat either.
Good job guys!
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