IMDb Name Page Redesign

My frustration mainly fixated on the "all topics" button. I prefer the sidebar menu that is already loaded, so expanding it instantly was a possibility. I also agree with the complaints about the amount of white space, as I certainly prefer the newspaper style Web pages. I do suppose that the larger thumbnail images could be seen as a plus. That was one of the praises I observed being given by others regarding the redesign of IMDb title pages.

@tzx613​,

We are gradually launching the new design to a selection of IMDb customers.

If you have not seen the design yet, please note it is expected to make it broadly available in the weeks ahead.

For more information, please visit our help guide.

Thank you for using IMDb!

Please let us know if we can offer any further help.

@Edward​ "We are gradually launching the new design to a selection of IMDb customers.

If you have not seen the design yet, please note it is expected to make it broadly available in the weeks ahead.

Please let us know if we can offer any further help."

The best help you can offer is to reverse the roll-out of the new name pages, address the concerns (even if that means losing face by having to do a U turn), and respond to the overwhelming condemnation of the new Name page design expressed in this thread. When you have got it right, as judged by the users, then (and only then) should you release the code.

IMDB did a phase of beta testing. We responded with things we liked and things we found made life considerably worse by several orders of magnitude. IMDB sounded as if they were listening - but now it's been rolled out, nothing's changed and all the things we said were bad are still there. So the whole beta-testing exercise seems to have been a complete and utter waste of time.

How do I communicate to IMDB in the most forceful way - unless you can improve things *as seen by the user* then leave well alone and stop tinkering. It may surprise IMDB, but its users know much better than IMDB what they prefer and what they hate. IMDB does not know better. than us.

By all means rewrite code in a more modern, more easily-maintained language, but make sure that those changes are invisible to the user. The previous user-interface worked well and was liked, especially by the army of people like myself who contribute to IMDB. The new one (judging by comments in this thread) is hated by the majority. In the face of that, there is only one *sensible* response: go back to the previous page layout.

But I have no confidence that you will, because IMDB believes that it knows best, and that a one-size-fits-all approach is better than having different UIs for the different types of user - a causal browser of information on a mobile phone or tablet versus a serious, dedicated contributor on large-screen PC.

@martin_695862​  Thanks again for your feedback.  The points on the beta were addressed in our reply to you earlier in the week at https://community-imdb.sprinklr.com/conversations/imdbcom/imdb-name-page-redesign/6351563ae7100d725d54c0bb?commentId=63618fffeda63e18141b9b5b&replyId=63625232eda63e18141ba6a3 

The previous user-interface worked well and was liked, especially by the army of people like myself who contribute to IMDB. The new one (judging by comments in this thread) is hated by the majority.

We understand and appreciate that you currently prefer the previous version, but the new pages solve a large number of problems for a large number of customers. We are encouraging you at least give the new pages a chance and to experience power and flexibility which they offer over the old ones.  The feedback here is natually negative, just as it was when the old pages launced in 2010 vs. the design before from 2007 (and that vs. 2005 vs. 1999 vs. 1998 vs. 1996 vs. 1995 vs. 1993 yet IMDb would not still be here today if we were running the 1993 website in 2022).  It is a big change to absorb initially and we know this, but it is for the long term health and scalability of IMDb.  People who like the changes simply get on and use the new pages; the people most motivated to comment are the people who do not like them; the same is true in so many areas of life, not just site design.  We took plenty of feedback from such people in the beta and made adjustments.  We tested the changes you see today.  Around one million people joined the beta in the summer and less than one hundred posted a complaint.  All of our measurements of success show a favourable overall response by customers (and one of the bigger benefits is yet to come in the form of significant further improvements in page load times when we are able to launch client-side rendering when more of the site is one the new technology). 

... and that a one-size-fits-all approach is better than having different UIs for the different types of user

but the old pages are more of a one-size-fits-all approach than the new ones.  This is part of the purpose of the new pages -- to deliver a more consistent experience which works across different customer needs,  different devices, different screen-sizes, different locations and different accessibility concerns. In doing so, the pages work for a wider number of customers, including for customers who prefer all credits open on the page at once (which seems to be what you are seeking here).  As covered, last week, you may find the "Text view of credits" best suits your needs, have you looked at this view, for example, Felicity Jones' page in this mode at https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0428065/filmotype -- this is avaible from the filter menu as explained at https://community-imdb.sprinklr.com/conversations/imdbcom/imdb-name-page-redesign/6351563ae7100d725d54c0bb?commentId=635bd47d232e4267b003d395&replyId=635bf578232e4267b003d404  (we have a request to add this view to the "All topics" menu so it can be accessed even more quickly without even the need to scroll).  Please give the pages a chance, you might be positively surprised at what they can do.  

Hope this helps. 

@Edward​ Thanks

You have a paid subscription, Mr. Keven Santos​? What do you mean? Would you leave IMDbPro just because of the matters going on with the regular IMDb site? Why?

Yes. I will not use IMDb at all with this horrible design.

Exactly...

@quaraxkad​  Thanks for the script; your post was merged here so more people interested in this topic can see it (and in any case, we always keep topics related to announcements on the same thread). Beware the script does use an old-technology page itself so it will be need to be updated once /filmotype moves to the new platform too.

You know very well you can upgrade the backend and *still* maintain a similar or even identical UI.

Our point here is that while it would be possible, it is not practical, sorry.  The 12 year-old page design has fallen behind-the-times in terms of customer expectations, consistency across devices, support for different screen sizes, localisation standards, and accessibility considerations (in addition to all of the back-end speed, scalability, simplicity, search engine visibility and scalabilility benefits, some of which do benefit the front-end user experience themselves).  

Hope this helps. 

Single line change here to make sure links clicked in the filmogrophy open full-page instead of stuck in an iframe: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/Quaraxkad/f19b6a021f6f8460e161e26727e4e9c1/raw/31bd601cce540ae47621205a28b5337e80502cf5/fiximdbnamepage.js

@brianspike42​ You'll need a browser extension that supports Userscripts like TamperMonkey or ViolentMonkey installed. Some browsers also support them out-of-the-box just by saving the script as a plain text file with the extension user.js and putting them in a specific place under the program folder.

@quaraxkad​ Thanks for this! Installed it in Chrome, with ViolentMonkey, and it works well. Just a little heads up; I got an error message that the pattern to match was missing ://, so I had to edit the

// @match        *.imdb.com/* 

line to

// @match        https://*.imdb.com/* 

to get it working for me. But now it's working, it's certainly a good aid to make the name pages far less crappy.

I noticed brianspike42​ mention Fandom (aka Wikia), but there are so many additional examples to think about, chief among them is Reddit. Somebody else mentioned YouTube, but that one has seen dozens of subtle upgrade over the past decade, the most jarring being the transition to the "polymerized" navigation away from the older non-polymerized equivalent. Facebook has change a few times in the past decade, but none of the changes were especially jarring. (I wouldn't know to well, since I've gone multiple periods of time without visiting Facebook, so some changes might've gone unnoticed by me.)

@quaraxkad​ I tried installing your script on Chrome using Violentmonkey as suggested, and it does not seem to work. In the spot where the credits should appear, there is literally nothing; the pages skip from "Photos" to "Personal Details," with nothing in between. The script also seems to block me from doing new searches using the search bar across the top.

Is anyone willing to create an actual Chrome extension that will actually work?

@quaraxkad​ 

p.s. And by the way, I followed the advice from @cartman_1337 to correct the URL in the script. So that is not the problem. 

@quaraxkad​ 

It occurred to me that maybe your script does not work on my computer because I have an adblocker enabled. The blocker could be interpreting the text credits field as some sort of an ad. 

What I would really want is some kind of forwarding extension that, whenever one visits a name page, would automatically forward the URL to the "filmosearch" page for that name entry.

For example, when you visit the name page for Ava Gardner, it would automatically forward you here. 

It would also be nice to have the "filmotype" data (this data for Ava Gardner) included on the same page with the "filmosearch" functions, but that may be asking for too much. 

That "old" layout debuted from over a decade ago is so beautiful.

@jeorj_euler​ '00s layout was better. 😎

@martin_695862​ 

Crap like "User lists", "Our favroite Hollywood power couples", "User Polls", "Add a demo reel" may pander to the hard-of-thinking Hello-magazine-reading people, but it is utterly irrelevant to the person whose page is being displayed. If you deleted all that, the "Edit" button would be near the bottom of the page, as it used to be.

This isn't the right place to say user polls are crap, to call for their suppression and to qualify poll authors as "hard-of-thinking"🤣. Most of this forum's most active and helpful members are pollmakers.

@martin_695862​  Thanks for the additional feedback … 

there should be a single button/link which expands to show everything in a section

This is already available — the “Text view of credits” is what you are seeking (for example for Sally Hawkins). 

The "Edit Page" button should be moved either to the very top or else the very bottom of the page. At present it is necessary to scroll up and down the page to hunt for the Edit button.

The bottom is where the button is already placed. Please try to increase the width of your browser — the edit button only moves up when the browser width is too narrow (for example for mobile devices).  

totally out of keeping with the rest of the site, but I could live with that.

The rest of the site is moving to this design and this technology though — home, title, video, photos, and various other pages have already moved over recent years. 

Col:

This is already available — the “Text view of credits” is what you are seeking (for example for Sally Hawkins).

But how do I access "Text view of credits"? The example you have given is exactly what I'm looking for, but there doesn't seem to be a button/link anywhere on https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1020089/ - am I missing something very obvious? I suppose the only enhancement beyond having a "Text view of credits" link/button is to make it "sticky" by having it as a user-selectable parameter like Reference View for titles.

The bottom is where the button is already placed. Please try to increase the width of your browser — the edit button only moves up when the browser width is too narrow (for example for mobile devices).

Ah. That positioning seems to have changed since I posted my earlier comment, at which time it was above Releated News and several sections that didn't even relate to the actor.

So it seems you've already improved the placement of the edit button. Thanks!

@martin_695862​  

But how do I access "Text view of credits"?

We are not sure you are seeing all of our replies here as this is the third time in this thread we have referred you to the “Text view of credits” (1 and 2).  Details with a screen-grab are here but it’s on the filter menu pop-up accessed via the blue symbol directly below the “Credits” heading.  It’s also in the work queue to add a link to it on the “All Topics” menu at the top of the page so no scrolling will be required to access it soon.  

In terms of making it the default view, this is not something we can support as it is not suitable for use as a landing page given it is missing the rest of the information associated with the name.  However, another customer has provided a temporary (and unsupported) workaround for this, also in this thread. 

Hope this helps. 

The text view of credits wouldn't need to be the default view, as it could be its own URL per name page URL, just like name reference view.

@PatrickD​  Thanks for the feedback.  Our long term aim is to move away from the white background as we have already done on the home, what to watch, video, photo and other modernised pages (and then allow light/dark mode options).  We temporarily compromised on a mixed background as all of the subpages still have a white background and our tests showed the change was too jarring when moving between the main name/title pages and the subpages. 

Hope this helps. 

@Augusto​ Thanks for the feedback, as mentioned earlier in the thread … 

Personally, I agree and these were two of my favourite new features in the version we beta tested over the summer.  Unfortunately, the customer feedback at the time showed that overall there were too many changes for people to handle at once.  The version you see now is a compromise and we will keep monitoring the feedback as the new design settles in and hopefully they can return.