A couple of key pages on the official Pixar website recently went through a welcome renovation.
If you’re a regular visitor, you’ll notice that the home page now includes a Day & Night icon. As expected, clicking on the image takes you to a portal with information on Teddy Newton’s short, but the site’s biggest change is more general.
The infamous ‘Feature Films’ brick wall has been ‘torn down’ by Pixar’s web designer in favor of a cleaner layout. Also gone are the film canisters representing each Pixar short. Posters are now neatly arranged in all of those portions of the site, as well as ‘The Theater’ section. Dug’s Special Mission has even been added, but it’s not clickable yet.
It’s worth noting that the updated pages previously used Flash interfaces. Ever since Steve Jobs condemned the dated technology, web designers have shifted away from the program to avoid compatibility issues.
I continue to hope for a site overhaul one of these days. For example, the ‘Artist’s Corner’ hasn’t had an update in five years. With that said, I’m happy to see gradual change.
Your thoughts?
Last modified: June 19, 2010
awesome! in fact, i just opened the website 2 hours ago! nice job Pixar. 😀
and nice artivle martini833!
Love it!
When do you think a Cars 2 teaser trailer will release?
Yeah, I’ve always been surprised how lackluster the Pixar Web site has been, considering it’s the greatest computer graphics production company ever. So, it’s good to see they are actually putting some effort towards changing it a bit.
And to add, I visit this site just about every day and the Pixar site maybe only once a month. So thanks for providing such an informative and up-to-date blog!
wannabechef/stehako – Thank you guys! 🙂 Thanks for reading.
Anonymous – I’m not sure, but my guess is right after this year’s Comic Con.
The site never used flash that I know of… I think I would have remembered if it did.
Kyle- I guarantee it did. At one point, the feature films wall got too “full” so they made a scrolling Flash app for the site. That’s one of the reasons it wouldn’t open properly on iOS Safari. Just one question, why are so many of your comments dissenting? I’d love to hear your positive opinions more often. 🙂
Its not an intentional thing, if I see something that sounds inaccurate just usually feel the need to correct it, or in this case question it. I thought I remembered right clicking the pixar site (even after they added the scrolling) to see what they used, didn’t think it was Flash, but I could be wrong.
Usually all the positive opinions have already been posted, heh. When I see one I already agree with I don’t feel the need to comment as much. Something positive….I’m glad their doing something to change the dated site. still not very different or modern. Oops, went back to negative. It is odd though breaking down the brick wall. I remember first seeing the site back in 1999. hard to believe its been more or less the same ever since.
Not much else to say on this post, but to end on a positive note, I absolutely loved TS3, no real complaints. Still trying to decide if it tops TS2 as my favorite movie of all time, but will be seeing it 2 more times. maybe I’ll have a better idea once Ive seen the Imax version. its definitely up there though. Pixar didnt dissapoint.
Let me just say that I enjoyed your last comment a lot more. 🙂 I don’t think there’s a point in arguing over whether it used Flash or not since there doesn’t seem to be a cached version. I will say that I’m Flash certified (so I can obviously recognize Flash) and that, again, iOS didn’t open it. I also right clicked on it and that’s how I’m 100% sure, because it identified as Flash. Another soluton for the scrolling effect would be Javascript (this works on iPhone, iPod Touch, etc. and is even implemented in the theme changer of this site.)
In fact, there is a cache from July of 2008: http://web.archive.org/web/20080730005410/www.pixar.com/shorts/index.html
Notice that there’s a void between the links and the other shorts. A perfect place to put a Flash app.