INTRODUCING: Updated IMDb.com Title page experience

Users are taking their time and providing great feedback (although kinda obvious) and it's like IMDb doesn't care. At all. It makes me wonder why the site development happened at all and whether the employees have any passion for what they do. It's frustrating to see so many people engage just to be ignored.

Why. People were saying it looked bad in the preview, and you... changed nothing? It looks awful, we told you it looked awful, why are you so insistent on this design.

And then you make me sign up for a different website for the "pleasure" of being able to give feedback you won't listen to?

Is there any way back to the old?

It's already driving me nuts.  It's like the app version, and I've hated that for years. 

I find the new format less easy to comprehend and view due to the information I seek being spread out across different areas of the page. I don't find the black screen helpful either. Although, I understand that a site needs a spring clean once every so often, I also believe that if it isn't broken, then don't fix it! I have no quibble about the cosmetic enhancements. Just that the layout is less practical and even somewhat frustrating to view. Keep up the good work.

Far too fussy, an overload of photos, videos, and pictures, leading to a much slower page loading on Android 10, and a far more confusing look. It used to be far easier to see lots of info at a glance, scrolling down (on a film/ TV page), whereas now it just looks a confusing mess. Not user friendly for mobile users. Looks more like a student's messy mood board than a finished, professional webpage. It's just frustrating and confusing. 

Is the new look imdb.com still in Beta test because I am finding some problems? In the old version, if I wanted to go to a specific episode of a TV show (so long as there were no more than 8 or 9 seasons), I could just click on the number for which season I wanted and scroll down to which episode I wanted. With the new version, when I click episode list, it automatically takes me to the last season with a drop down menu to select which season you want. The trouble is, that drop down menu doesn't always work. On Thursday, I wanted to look at the cast list of an episode of season 4 of The Big Bang Theory and the drop down menu wouldn't allow it. I had to go to season 3, scroll down to the bottom of the episode list and click season 4. I do like the increased size of print in cast list for top cast, but that doesn't give the full cast list and the print goes back to normal size when you go to it.

After they destroyed the last old format version on Edge too, I changed to the reference view. It looks ancient and a bit unformatted, but I get all the information I need and the page doesn't load eternally. With big movie productions you have to scroll too, but it's way more useful than the bloated new „title page experience“.

(as stated before a dozen times)

Just go to your profile > (Preferences) Content Settings > Contributors: check the box for reverence view

It would be great though to have an option to change the layout to one's preferences - what to show (pictures/no pictures; videos/no videos; what content/which categories you want to see in general; black or white layout or something in between)... But I think that's too much to ask. Though asking still is for free.

Terrible design. Not intuitive in any way. How can I get the old version back please?

Why if it wasn't broke did you make worse????  This is a horror.  Takes more than twice what it did to just rate show.  They trimming the fat,not add more junk!!

This is surely going to drive data usage up for mobile users.  May cause increased fees for heavy users who have minimal data plans.

Two bugs in the new IMDB: 1) can no longer scroll through the large, sharp photos of the cast members; 2) if I enlarge the screen to better read it, the words are not reorganized to fit the screen, so I must SCROLL BACK & FORTH to read it.  Both of these bugs were NOT present in the previous version and MUST be fixed.

It looks crap, confusing and i there was nothing wrong with teh old version. If something isn't broke, just don't fix it. At least give us the option to have the original way instead of this mess

I'd like to thank IMDb for making their user experience so bad it pushed me to find a better alternative. xD

I just exported all my lists and took me just a few minutes (navigate to lists: Click the 3 dot option button. In Watchlist head to the bottom. Export as CSV). Better do it before IMDb makes it difficult to do (to keep people from leaving). I don't trust that IMDb have the users' interests in mind when making decisions and don't think it'll become better.

Alternatives (has more or less what IMDb offers):
Simkl.com - Nice page, has dark mode. App looks great. Actively takes feedback from users (via UserVoice)! Shows IMDb rating. Nice "want to watch"/"have watched" list system (and "not interested" button). Can automatically track what you're watching. App and extension support/integration (seems to go deeper than TMDb). Has ads (can be blocked or paid to be removed). I have a feeling Simkl will continue to improve. Respectable library size.

Themoviedb.org - possibly has more movies than IMDb (less TV series and non-movie videos). The most familiar to IMDb users (but with better UI). There are apps, I think some of them are unofficial? Community driven and impressively well-covered information. No dark mode. Shows where you can stream or buy and has country-specific information for streaming services (works well for my country!) with price comparison. Alternative titles and translations. There's app support/integrations. E.g. Plex gets their info from TMDb. Also, it has a message board that long-time IMDb users should feel at home in.

Reelgood.com - Nice page, has dark mode. App looks good. Streaming service integration, shows IMDb rating, "have seen/want to see" buttons, "love/like/dislike buttons", shows where it streams (US and UK only it seems). Integration with other services. Pay to remove ads (or block). Seems well-updated. The UI seems really good, seemingly considerably smaller library size. It's just statistics, it might have everything relevant for you so don't write it off.

Thoughts:
TMDb looks to have the best information (country-specific works well!). Users/contributers are active. Site founder and mods are actively contributing. Support forum isn't very active, so I'm not sure how active the site development is (might be wrong). I miss some features from the other sites although TMDb has a lot of media and info.

Simkl has a comparable library size although a bit smaller than TMDb (might not matter, might simply lack things like YouTube/short videos and old/rare titles). It seem to be ahead in terms of apps and neat web features. The site and app is really good, the community feedback/engagement is compelling. 

Reelgood seems to have the smallest library of the 3. It seems to have a lot of the same strengths as Simkl, though, so I wouldn't write it off necessarily. The web site have some really good stuff going for it.

___
Simkl and Reelgood are bigger departures in terms of what you are used to from IMDb, some people prefer something familiar. Others are happy to try different style UIs.

You should judge for yourself. Give them a try yourself. In the end it depends upon what you are looking for. Discussion? Automation? Apps/integration? Library size? IMDb-parity? There's stuff I love about all these 3 sites.


It's more productive to provide feedback to somebody that actually listens and improve. These alternatives already seem like a better place than IMDb depending on what you look for. So may my research be useful for others as well.

As of July 1 all IMDb title pages and the main page www.imdb.com are locked into displaying the godawful mobile view, and there is no longer a link at the bottom of the page to "view full site" to use the normal desktop site.

Manually adding "mode=desktop" to the url (which is what the "view full site" link does) has no effect. Choosing "request desktop site" from your browser also does nothing.

Name pages and all sub-pages off the main title page are unaffected, as their mobile pages still have the "view full site" link which works fine.

The only workaround is if you have an account (most viewers don't), you can set title pages to "reference view", which does get you the desktop site (and no ads which is nice), but this page style is difficult to navigate, for instance to sub-pages, and there are some features and links lacking.

This needs to be fixed pronto.

Oh, and it would be nice if there were a "default view" setting in our account, so we don't have to constantly scroll to the bottom and click that "view full site" link every time (major hassle). Not every browser has site-individual settings to do this.

But it seems like IMDb is trying to defeat our browsers and force mobile view, just for title pages (and the imdb main page) for some idiotic reason. Stop trying to control us. Many of us don't want mobile views on websites, even if we're using a mobile device, and this is a nasty trend that many websites force on us now.

We want to see the Internet the way it was meant to be seen. No more "optimized" for our sucky viewing displeasure!

Unless we ASK for it.

Of course, IMDb may just have created this bug inadvertently, in trying to promote their "new and improved" imdb mobile view, but these ideas are NEVER an improvement. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and wait for you to fix this.

Meanwhile, I'll use reference view, and encourage everyone to do the same, and IMDb can lose oodles of advertising dollars.

Don't like the new design.  Don't like the dark background and white letters.   Much more difficult to find/get to the real information about the movie I'm interested in, seems to be geared towards giving us previews, ads, pictures, etc.  I can see previews and trailers elsewhere if I wanted to.  Disappointing -- more so because there is no button to return to the previous style.