IMDb Name Page Redesign

Spot on.

@rwood10​ maybe it works for you too,

when i visit imdb without signing in, i get the old design

Now that is a hot tip 👍 Logging out for sure. New design is a clunky, unnecessary mess.

@twistachoo​ whenever I'm on google chrome I don't have it, but when I use microsoft edge I do

@rwood10​ Same. If Reddit gives its morlocks the option to “use Old Reddit”, then IMDb should be bending over backwards to do the same thing.

@TrevX​ Hmm, opposite. On Edge I see the old names style, on Brave and Chrome I get this new touchscreen debacle.

@rwood10​ I want the original format too, this one sucks

I am going to try logging out to see if I can get the original format back, but I REALLY think it should be added as an option to revert.  With each redesign they just keep getting worse.

@Warstream​ It is terrible. How are we still suffering through this??

@camarsh13​ Three months and we are still stuck with this garbage redesign. It feels like using one of those gigantic old house phones made for morbidly obese senior citizens. Everything is far apart and difficult to navigate. I cannot come up with one positive thing to say and everyone seems to agree... So why are we still stuck with this without the option of using the old design?!

• @twistachoo​ "So why are we still stuck with this without the option of using the old design?!"
  
  Because people at IMDB think they know better than users what users want. Simple (and as arrogant) as that.
  
  First rule of software design - never remove an existing feature or user-interface behaviour; only ever add an additional feature/UI, and give users the abiliity to switch between old and new forever. Some (maybe even many) people may prefer the new layout, but it is the height of arrogance and offensiveness on IMDBs part to say that everyone must use it.
  
  Since the code exists to produce the "compatibility" layout ("three-dots icon", "View all credits" option) I cannot see why that layout cannot be offered in prefernce to the truncated only-the-most-recent credits format, as a user-selectable permanent configuration option. But I'm only the user. What do I know?
  
  The other problem with the new format is that the "Edit" button for a person's page is no longer at the bottom of the page - you have to scroll up past irrelevant "More to explore" links/panels to get there. If the browser window is full-screen, it's fine. But if you set the browser to occupy half the screen width (on a 1920x1080 screen) so you can display a video player app at the same time for transcribing credits, then the irrelevant links/panels of "More to explore" wrap so they are below "Edit". That's a fundamental design flaw that should never have got through user-acceptance testing. Do IMDB actually do any user-acceptance testing - or at least do they do it in a way that means they will actually take on board an acceptance panel's comments and suggestions?
  
  If a UI works, why is there the constant compulsion to change it. Change the back-end code which generates a page, by all means - like replacing a tired old engine with a new more powerful one in a car - but for heaven's sake leave the car's controls exactly as they were, for those people who want this.
  
  A lot of us have made this sort of comment since the new page layout was introduced, but I am afraid that I have lost all confidence that Col Needham et al are prepared to act upon constructive suggestions that we make. The "consultation" exercises seem to be for paying lip-service to the idea of consultation "we've already committed to making these changes, irrevocably - and if you don't like them, tough". Not an admirable stance for IMDB to take :-(
  
  Ideally there should be two different IMDB sites:
  
  - one for casual viewers who want flashy layout and lots of links to "More things you might like" which are not actually relvant to the task in hand
  
  - another much simpler layout which is more geared to the army of people like myself who contribute new data and may need to research a person's exsting credits to make sure that we've identified the correct John Doe from amongst John Doe (I), John Doe (II) etc, and which displays all of a person's filmography, rather a few most recent credits, and "click here to display a few more" (rinse and repeat).
  

In general, event-driven Web page designs are overly abundant.

@griffinmills​ You pretty much stated in full detail the exact things I was coming on here to explain about the issues this "redesign" has. It is extremely nonfriendly for users and drags out the amount of time it takes to get the information that you used to be able to fully get just by opening the page.

The most annoying feature that I have issues with is having to stay on the page when you click on a link for "Episodes" instead of them just having them show already on the page when it loads because it's now a pop-up box. I now have to go through an immense amount of runaround just to get simple information because I can no longer use the "Open in another tab" option because all it does is reopen the same page on a new tab. To top that off, it doesn't immediately load all the credits on an actors page anymore. You now have to click "show all" and then scroll up to try to find where you were in the list because it jumps to the bottom of the page. That's a VERY bad setup.

That increases the amount of time it takes to try to get information fast. I think that they added that simply to increase the time people have to spend on the site to get more information, so it looks better for their stockholders because it'll show people as spending a TON more time on the site... because they'll HAVE to in order to get the information they're trying to get! 

Please let me know when you find a userscript or browser plug and where to get it that will help with this time sucker and very bad redesign. This totally goes against the smart business practice and solid fact of the matter, where the things that draw more customers and users to a place is when they can save both time and money. At this rate, if I am unable to get a browser plugin, I'll spend more time on Wikipedia to get the information I want. 

The sad part of this is, IMDB isn't going to fix it. They will just label the users as "people who just don't like change" and keep the unwieldy page no matter how many people say how bad it is.

@griffinmills​ I have the OWL Firefox addon that works on most sites, but not this one because of the half white/half dark design. Hope this saves you a little bit of headache. If you do find one that works, please share.

I agree about Year being not emphasised enough. Especially on desktop - there's lots of white space between the name of the film and the year.

I like to browse filmography by reading the name of the film, then the year, and proceed down the list. Right now, this is harder than the first version of the page.

It seems to me that the fonts work well on mobile, but work less well on desktop with the white space in between.

@davidblank​  No sorry, there is no opt-out as this is no longer a beta test. We have factored in the feedback from the beta and this the new version of the page.  Please see the FAQ for launch details.   Hope this helps. 

Then good bye, this "new" format is too irritating to deal with. 

No, it doesn't help. Not one single tiny little bit. bit.

I have no idea why IMDb sees fit to continually make stupid, unnecessary, counterproductive and utterly useless "improvements" but for some unfathomable reason, you do. So now, after 20+ years of putting up with this garbage, you've finally done it.

I'm out of here.

Martn, right! Code can most certainly be modernized without changing the skin, chassis or dashboard. What is "modernized" even supposed to mean, anyway? Everything from the last twenty years is already rather modern.

@Col_Needham​

Hi again. I still don't like the new design. Can you at leat give us the old text view of the credits in the new "Text view of credits" section please?

I don't like to see big lists of episodes. I like the way it was before. Just 5 episodes. And we can expand to rest of the episodes if we wan't. That way we don't get the big lists when an actor is in a telenovela por example. I'm an actor so I can really tell all actor like it this way. I've been speaking with a lot of actors friends and they have the same opinion. Thank you. 

@Col_Needham​ You may have thought to factor it, but you didn't care about what people actually wanted. It's a disaster of wasted space.
Maybe those of us who were still on the old page didn't need to move.

@mrkevensantos​  Thanks for the feedback …

Can you at leat give us the old text view of the credits in the new "Text view of credits" section please? I don't like to see big lists of episodes.

The text view was created based upon feedback during the beta-testing over the summer with the very specific goal of presenting all credits, across all categories, and all episodes open by default so that any credit / character / etc is visible and can be located on the page without any additional clicks.  You can see a good use case in this part of the old beta feedback thread -> https://community-imdb.sprinklr.com/conversations/imdbcom/imdb-name-page-beta-optin/62db09f1e232bb632089ba01?commentId=62db1035c998636027ac8d0b&replyId=62ee311327c9e55d81c8e5bb

Hope this helps. 

What is it about new designers thinking they can always do better than the original folks, who thought and thought about what format is best, how to best minimize clicks and scrolling, screen space constraints, etc.

@Col_Needham​ No. It doesn't. It makes using IMDb for what I do A LOT harder. I really hate this new design -- especially relying on photos instead of names/titles. I absolutely DETEST the redesign! Horrible. Horrible. Horrible. 👎🏽👎🏽

Also, load times on my mobile device are extremely slow when trying to find information in a nm page.

@Col_Needham​ Who did your beta testing? 12 year olds on their iPhones? Like everyone else on here, this new one is much harder to use, required many more clicks to do what you could do before in one click, and is visually unappealing. Short comment, it sucks. 

@Col_Needham​ That's disgusting. I'm going to find some other way for movie info till IMDB gets their sanity back.

The bit about "More To Explore" and "User Lists" is interesting, but I've tended to prefer the presence of the user lists section over the presence of the more-to-explore section any day, because of the content differences.

"The collapsing sections in the previous design were ideal because all the information was contained in a tiny area and was visible without scrolling, and then if you wanted to expand you could.  The filters are a poor way to do this." - @Spassvogel42​

EXACTLY. THIS. And having precisely THREE filters automatically selected, regardless of the number of categories in which a person has credits is completely ludicrous. Sure, like in the old design, allow people to select their Top 3 categories, but this (very poor) re-design makes it look like no other categories exist. And the only way to View All is to DE-select the AUTO-selected items one by one until nothing is selected is... Ra Nd0m and idiotic. This is not how people's brains work. Please revert to the old design ASAP @Col_Needham​ and IMDb.

@twistachoo​ Thanks for the feedback. 

Taken from a longer update here, for those people seeking a quick route to view all credits, please see the "All credits" link in the "All topics" menu as shown in this screen-grab (see red highlight to activate the menu and yellow highlight to access the all credits link):

@Shaggie​  Thanks for the feedback.  This is a data error rather than an issue with the name page itself.  Episode 3.7 was incorrectly listed as still being in-production and it also lacked a release date.  Corrections to this data have been submitted and the sort order will be updated once they have been processed. 

@Col_Needham, I do not recall it being apparent that it was still marked as "In Production". In addition, there was nothing in the sorting that indicates that "In Production" titles, or other similar incomplete works, would be listed first.

Also, perhaps those should be shown with a question mark beside the date, or some other way, to clearly indicate that they are tentative.

I do appreciate the update to explain what happened. 

Thank you. 

@bob3214​ Thanks for the feedback.  We are unable to reproduce the “see all” issue you describe above, sorry.  Please can you provide the URL of a name page where it behaves like this, and ideally, a screenshot of the duplication so we can take a look. Thanks. 

Do you have beta testers?

The new pages were extensively beta tested by hundreds of thousands of customers over the summer (as previously announced here) and this final new version takes the testing into account. 

Please see the FAQ for further launch details.   Hope this helps. 

@bob3214​  We have since been able to reproduce this duplication — it is a new bug and not the intended behaviour at all.  This has been reported to the appropriate team. Sorry for the inconvenience. 

@Col_Needham​ I hate to break it to you but the "see all" drop down issue of jumping to the bottom of the page and then HAVING to scroll back up and trying to find where you were in the first place, is happening for a LOT of people. I tried it in Firefox, Chrome, and Edge and it happened in every single browser. Not to mention the fact that having episode information now come up in a popup on the bottom of the page instead of just being listed already, limits our ability to visit several other pages easily because we have to click on every episode link and wait for the popup just to be able to open the information in a new page whereas before, we could just open in a new page easily. The credits list also takes up more room and browser power but gives LESS information than it did previously.

And I think the majority of your Beta testers were/are employees of IMDB who were afraid to tell the truth and/or regular people who just want to agree with you people because they think it'll give them special access to the site. I've been a beta tester for sites and you guys NEVER listen to the people who are giving you honest feedback because you just want to hear the people who agree with you and tend to ignore the rest.

@Sabriel​  Thanks for the feedback; there’s a new bug with “See all” which we are investigating now and is likely is part of the behaviour you are seeing, sorry.  

To see all episode credits all at once, please use the “Text view of credits” link on the filter menu (access details explained above). 

The new design was extensively tested with a wide range of customers privately during development and it follows best practices of scalability across different device sizes, accessibility, and localisation.  It was then tested in an open beta across the summer where every IMDb customer was invited to test the page and around a million people opted-in to the beta at this time.  While the new design is a large change, and it obviously takes time to people to see all of the advantages of the new design, it tested extremely well against our success criteria. The final version of the page which is live now takes the beta feedback into account as far as it was possible to do so.  It is worth exploring the page and giving it a chance as it supports a much wider range of customers and use cases. 

Hope this helps. 

@bob3214​  The credit duplication bug has now been fixed.  Please let us know if there are any further issues. 

@Col_Needham​ I haven't been trying the new Name formats since it's not one of my main-used features, but from this and other responses, it appears that I'll be using the "Text view" a lot. 

@cinephile​  No sorry, the underlying (12+ year old) technology powering the older parts of the site is long overdue to be decommissioned so keeping the old pages around is not practical.  Each time we move a page type from the old technology to the new technology, it means it is easier and faster for our software teams to fix bugs, expand the content & features on IMDb, and to make further improvements. The new name pages eliminates hundreds of bugs and issues with the old ones and help to make IMDb easier to use for many more customers for years to come. 

Also, please remember the purpose of title reference view is to make it easier for IMDb’s contributors to update all of the credits attached to a title via a single view. There is no direct equivalent purpose for updating name pages. Anyone wishing to see all credits attached to a name via the new name pages can use the “Text view of credits” available at the bottom of the filter menu pop-up on the new pages (the filter menu is the symbol on the left of the page directly under the “Credits” heading).   However, we do not support making this view the default. 

Hope this helps.

@Col_Needham​ Now that things have been made easier for the software teams, could they take on some of the tasks that contributors have been awaiting for many years?

For example, making it possible to add languages which are not already listed -- both to submit to titles and in the Advanced Search function? (See here and here.)

Or adding new genres to the existing lineup, specifically those which were approved by the IMDb staff twelve years ago? (See here.)

Each of these tasks has already taken about as long, or longer, than it took for the U.S. to develop the Apollo program and land human beings on the moon.

@Col_Needham​

No, it does not

@Col_Needham​ Why NOT make it an option to have "Text view of credits" be the default view? The apparent refusal to do so seems almost mean-spirited. Is user customization not a modern enough concept anymore?

The design as of today is much too convoluted for me. It requires too many button presses to get to the view I would want from the beginning, when I first reach the name page. Makes for a frustrating user experience. Makes the site less useful as a research tool. Makes me look for alternatives.

@edwardgrobinson​  Thanks for your feedback … 

Why NOT make it an option to have "Text view of credits" be the default view?

This is because the page only contains the credits and nothing else, so it is not suitable to use as a landing page, sorry. 

The design as of today is much too convoluted for me. It requires too many button presses to get to the view I would want from the beginning, when I first reach the name page. Makes for a frustrating user experience. Makes the site less useful as a research tool.

IMDb has over 200 million monthly visitors with a wide variety of needs in terms of what information they are seeking, which features are important, what device they are using, where they are located, and what language they prefer to speak.  The new IMDb site design has been carefully designed over several years with inputs from many different customer groups all the way along, and also building for scale for the long term future of IMDb.  All designs are compromises when there are so many use cases to cover but we are very happy with the end result, which has also tested well across our customer groups. 

We would ask that you give the new name pages a chance — in terms of research potential, the page is significantly more powerful than the previous version (as well as addressing a large number of bugs).  For example, on the old name pages it was not even possible to get a simple list of the feature films which David Fincher had directed, whereas see the new page:

If there are research cases not addressed by the new name pages which were covered by the old ones, please let us know and we can add them to the ideas list for future consideration. 

Hope this helps. 

The new platform (as observed on the IMDb home page, IMDb title pages and now IMDb name pages) is incompatible with older Web browsers. At least in the case of the IMDbPro interface, it is far more friendly to more browsers. The worst part is the the "all topics" feature, which I've already complained about in regards to IMDb title pages. The menu is slow to load!

@Col_Needham​ Funny. I never saw any bugs on the old version. I loved it. This is a big white canvas with too little content spread out way too far. Reminds me of the olden days with HTML and novices still learning how to size frames properly.

@Col_Needham​ Look here:
https://www.imdb.com/filmosearch/?explore=genres&role=nm0888882&ref_=filmo_ref_typ&mode=simple&page=1&sort=moviemeter,asc&title_type=movie

This is how a list on a actor page SHOULD look like! ....
With a nice rating and you can see if its in your watchlist or not. Watchlist is an easy way to track all the movies you have seen!
And there is a detailed version option on that page as well.
This is the only page left on IMDB that I like. The rest has all gone down the drain over last years.....

@DexteRNL​  Please see our reply at https://community-imdb.sprinklr.com/conversations/imdbcom/imdb-name-page-redesign/6351563ae7100d725d54c0bb?commentId=6377e2f7e46457627f669e6f&replyId=63780f11e46457627f669f93

The “by genre” (and compact) filmography view is still available and supported, please open the “All topics” menu in the upper right of every name page to access it (a screen-grab of the “All topics” menu is included in the reply here).

Hope this helps. 

@jeorj_euler​ Since you mentioned "slow to load," what I've noticed is that when I go to a title page to check if I've seen it or not, which I can tell by whether or not I've rated it already, everything loads quickly except my rating, whether positive or empty. 

So many of the so-called "modernized" websites are just full of JavaScript bloat, and the way IMDb is going is no exception. None of this stuff is inherently slow either, but library developers are cramming too much unnecessary junk into their libraries. Sometimes AJAX/fetch calls are slow, but that would be due to connection problems. The way the XML data or JSON data be converted into document object model (DOM) elements is often what is slow, perhaps because of poor management of resources either by the Web browser engine or just how frivolously event listeners are implemented in the coding of the website.

I agree, for the amount of content you see, it takes too long to load, that tells me that there's tons of junkware loading. It uses up my data and makes me wonder what data they are collecting and why.

@Col_Needham​ "in terms of research potential, the page is significantly more powerful than the previous version"

NO, IT'S NOT.

@gromit82​  Thanks for the bug report.  We have alerted the appropriate team. 

It is technically a data error, but this is such a common case that we will need to do a larger data clean-up on our side vs fixing this one title.  The problem appears to be that title has not been released, yet it lacks a production status so it falls into neither section of the filmography.  

A big advantage of the new pages is that there is no longer a huge tangle of repeated display logic across all of the front-end clients so this can now be fixed in one place at the source. It is this kind of entangled display logic, repeated across every IMDb interface, which made things like adding new genres much harder than it should be (per your earlier point in this thread) — we just need to finish moving all of the pages. 

@stan_lins​ You should be able to click anywhere in the mini-biography text (aside from any linked names or titles in the text) to reach the full biography subpage, or failing that, the “>” link at the end of the bio text extract.  

Hope this helps. 

@Col_Needham Thanks for the reply.  What you describe is true, I can click in the mini-bio and that page I'm on will redirect to the bio.  But I want to be able to right-click and open the bio in a new tab.  No matter where I right-click in the mini-biography text or the ">" at the end, the option I see in the pop-up is "Open Image in New Tab".  I am using Firefox, in case you need to know.

@stan_lins​ Thanks for clarifying, we will take a look at the issue.

Bug report: viewing the trailer part of the actor page causes very high amounts of gpu usage, movie page doesn't seem to do that

Also yes, like everyone else is saying, the page is now less informational and more difficult to use.

Hi, sh4d3s. What are some of the important hardware specs of the device you're using? Which operating system are you running? Which browser (along with version) are you running? What kind of plugins, addons and extensions are installed?

Just to note, I've not observed any performance issues with playing trailers or demo reels when using the lasted version of Chrome on a NR-capable smartphone. It's a whole different story when dealing with technology debuting long before 2022. I don't know. I'm always worried that device manufacturers might deliberately quietly disrupting the performance of any tool that is not has not been updated within a most recent three-month period.

@Col_Needham​ Yeah, but unfortunately this means while scrolling on a mobile device we're constantly being diverted to other pages for content we aren't looking for. TBH, I simply WILL NOT be using IMDb's nm pages on mobile -- it's an exercise in frustration that I just don't need.

The old look was way better. Way more comfortable. The new looks cheap and rigid