IMDb Redesigns Title Reference View

Hi and thanks for your feedback. We reduced the size of the headings by 4 points on Tuesday. We are also continuing to listen to feedback on this thread and explore any solutions.

I'm among those displeased with how the "All topics" isn't expanded by default. The problems of the theme aren't as significant. If name reference view is ever reintroduced, I hope it manages to have a comprehensive layout. I've been asking for this for years now.

The reference view does have a menu that is expanded by default. Smaller screens may not display the right bar, though.

Indeed. I have to rework my TamperMonkey scripts so that this stuff loads consistently. The design's heavy reliance on AJAX or Fetch is very problematic. I expect for everything of a textual nature to load in the fewest number of HTTP requests.

Hm. I can't seem to get the "all topics" menu to be expanded by default on Web browsers running on smartphones, no matter what, even when "desktop mode" is activated. Interesting. I'll have to play around with the zoom settings perhaps.

Hi - the new Title Reference View page is not designed for mobile devices (even though it works better on them than the previous version of the page). We worked hard to maintain maximum compatibility with the old design within the constraints of the new technology and design patterns. This view is intended only for contributors auditing on-screen credits on a large screen device — a feature which has been 100% retained.

For some reason, IMDB choose to change the UI at the saem time as they change the back-end code to make it more efficient. I feel the same. Those section headings are too large. Also the vertical All Topics navigation bar on the right hand side wraps to below the cast if you narrow the browser window a bit, but this toolbar is *above* the crucial Edit button so you have to scroll down a long way to find the Edit button. Circular rather than portrait-rectangular photos for people looks very naff. IMDB, let me say this very clearly. No matter how much you change the "engine and transmission" (back-end) of the site, please don't tinker with the "dashboard and controls" (the front end).

I too am utterly baffled by the assertion that updated back-end code means that the front-end UI needs to change too. I'm not gullible enough to believe that twaddle. I would like someone from IMDB to justify why a change of back-end forced a change in UI. If that needs a development team leader who is involved in requirements specification, rather than support staff, to reply to my question, then so be it. I know how software development works: changes need the buy-in of many interested parties. They don't just happen. People took a conscious decision to abandon the old UI and design a new one. Why? In the case of reference view, IMDB can't use the explanation that the majority of users prefer the new one, because reference view is specifically designed for a small subset of users: those who contribute new data. IMDB is in danger of losing its team of volunteer data-submitters with all the creeping changes that there have been over the years. Let's list them: - Loss of Episode View, which listed all episodes together with their cast; this made it easy to grab all the episode data in one page which could be stored and compared with an up-to-date copy, looking for changes. Numerous times I detected and fixed malicious or ill-advised changes that people had made to episodes from long ago. I remember picking up an occasion when many of the credits for Irish actor Jim Norton, across various title, had been deleted and was instumental in restoring those that I knew about from my Episode View lists from a few weeks previously for various titles. - Loss of a full list of an actor's filmography. By "full" I mean that every episode of a TV series in which they appeared was listed separately, rather than being summarised as "10 episodes". This again made it easy to see where a regular character had been listed on IMDB with a modification of their normal name, allowing a submitter to investigate "is it a typo or was it like that in the on-screen credits?" Now we just get a summary for an actor's recent work, and we need to press a button to display their whole filmography going back to the beginning of their career, and we need to expand their credits for any given TV series, and then expand again for all the episodes in a given season. - Loss of useful metadata such as Books: details of a source novel (title, author, ISBN) from which a title's screenplay was developed; details of "making of" and novellisations developed as spin-offs from a title. The implementation needed an overhaul to make a clear distinction between the book spawning the title and the title spawning the book, which wasn't present, but all that valuable data has been lost. - The changes to title reference view that we are discussing here. Things like: - circular photos of actors - why? what prompted that? (not a usability problem but it looks very naff) - previous/next arrows for episodes which are not clearly distinguished (by a large difference in brightness) between active and grey-out - at series level, for a series with too many seasons to list them all across the page, the *first* (oldest) seasons are listed (with an arrow display the next block of seasons) whereas I think it would be more useful if the most recent ones were listed by default since most people will be adding/correcting entries for recently-broadcast episodes - also at series level when there are too many seasons, the years do not even have a continuation arrow so you have to click on the most recently-displayed year and this takes you to a *useful* season/episode list with proper previous/next buttons for season number and year - The title reference view and the actor view have been badly designed as regards side bars which have a tendency to wrap under the rest of the page, "trapping" the "Edit" button at some arbitrary place within it. This makes it very difficult to scroll quickly to the very beginning or the very end of the page to find the Edit button. I commonly use IMDB with one window displaying IMDB and one window alongside it displaying the video (eg VLC player) from which I am copying credits. On a 1920x1080 screen (so not a stupidly small resolution) with default-sized browser text, a browser window which occupies half of the screen width (so about 1000 pixels) provokes the wrapping. It is particularly bad in the case of the Actor page because the wrapped text is irrelevant general-purpose advertising which is not directly relevant to that actor: if it *must* be present, it needs to be made easier to ignore! There are probably many other creeping changes which have occurred over the years. When they happen so often, one loses track of them all! It's a "boiling frogs" situation, in which gradual worsening goes un-noticed until eventually people say "enough is enough - unless you can improve things *from the user's point of view*, stop tinkering! Note that I say "from the user's point of view". I take it as a given that behind-the-scenes changes will be made as old, inefficent code is replaced by faster, easier-to-maintain code. But those changes should, as far as is humanly possible, be invisible to the user. At all costs, the UI should remain substantially the same, with additions and bug fixes but *not* with gratuitous changes which appear to be motivated by "were are changing this simply because we *can*". I will end with the same thing I say every time I post on the subject. Your band of data submitters is paramount in keeping the data in IMDB up-to-date and correct. If you alienate them too aften, you will lose them and IMDB will stagnate. I will make the same offer as I always do: if you want people to sit on a "steering committee" for proposed changes, to catch some of the more heinous changes that you are about to make, so we can made suggestions, you only need to say the word! I'd be happy to give my advice. But... that needs to be done at an early stage, long, long before the point of no return "we are excited to announce" rollout of changes which are already a fait accompli. One last point: whenever I see a "we are excited to announce" forum posting from IMDB, my heart sinks because I think "what gratuitous and unwanted change have IMDB made this time?" It shouldn't be like that!

I'm worried that this will just happen again in 2030. I look forward to the same ol' phrases, "Well, that design is over a decade old now." Hahaha.

I don't think the country of residence setting under Personal Details affects data display. The title display settings under Content Settings affect some aspects.

Yes, Peter is correct, thanks. The display settings are controlled via https://www.imdb.com/preferences/general This is explained on https://help.imdb.com/article/imdb/general-information/site-preferences/GDL9NWJRKWRH5L6K (scroll down to “Site Preferences”).

Release dates used to be shown based on your geo-location (ish). When I moved countries it used to take a week or so to kick in, but I'd end up seeing the release date in the country I'd moved to (and ads updated too). Where there was no local release date, you'd see the date it was first released anywhere. Now, as Martin mentioned and the replies seemed to have ignored, I'm mostly seeing US release dates regardless of where I'm located.

It works now. It was misunderstanding on my part of a change that has been caused by the new page layout. There are two places under Profile | Account Settings where a country is defined. Previously, Personal Information | Personal Details | Country/Region of Residence seemed to be used to determine which release dates you saw. Now, Preferences | Content settings | Title display country/region needs to be explictly set to your country, whereas previously the setting "Original" was sufficient for titles which were made in the country whose release dates you want to see. For example, I am in the UK and I am viewing titles which were made in the UK. So "Original" should have worked (and previously it did) whereas now Title display country/region needs to be set explicitly to UK. Fair enough. I know now.

Just small things, like the photo display for series has gone (unless you log out of reference view) But if a TV series has 30+ seasons, rather than the listing of 5 of them, and then you click to see the rest, it now has a mess of them all at the top, all 30-40 options in one clump.

The lack of photo displays really does harm the site as a visual experience IMO. I miss the little display of pics.

It seems to be getting clearer, or am I just getting used to it? I still miss seeing trivia under "fun stuff", but I can live with it. Can we have the photo displays back though, please? I used to like seeing the pretty pictures. I'm sure from a user POV as well, seeing a little carousel of pics is more enticing than a text line explaining how many photos a title has.

The lack of photos compared with the 'normal' view is exactly why reference view appeals to me and a huge reason I've not been lured away to more popular movie sites.

I just like a few thumbnails.. and it was easier to see if photos had gone up okay (as an uploader who does a lot of screenshots). I didn't realise there were more popular movie sites, I think of this place as being a real resource.

Okay, I understand your concerns -- just wasn't something I thought about before your explanation. Seems to me a robust Edit page strictly for photos (and another for videos?) is what you need. Maybe it's there: it's not something I've looked into. But is including every item on a single page easier or does it just promote bloat and make navigation more cumbersome?

@xianjiro Once again, title reference view is an advanced view aimed at high-volume data contributors auditing on-screen credits only. We recommend you switch back to the standard IMDb title pages as you are outside of the target audience, sorry. To switch back, please visit https://www.imdb.com/preferences/general/ and uncheck the option labelled “Show reference view with full cast and crew (advanced view)” and press the “Submit” button. For more information on IMDb’s site settings, please see https://help.imdb.com/article/imdb/general-information/site-preferences/GDL9NWJRKWRH5L6K

Switching views doesn't change the underlying problem -- as I've reported it exists with both views -- but you clearly do NOT care. Great. At least I know how much my twenty-five years contributing to your project is valued by you. I'm done. No more edits. If something else didn't require my IMDb export file each quarter, I'd leave the site completely. edit: I've changed my mind. Nothing is THAT important to keep using a website that I don't like. Final export of ratings and I'm gone. "Hope this helps!"

Come on now, flower, this particular reply section is all about Love & Kittens. Keep it nice in this bit.

Yeah, there's always room for manners.

I very much agree. I would have thought (and I may be wrong) that most data-submission will be done on a Windows or Linux PC with a mouse and a physical keyboard, rather than a mobile phone or tablet (Android or iPad) with an on-screen keyboard and touch-screen unser interface, given the great difficulty with the latter of accurately selecting, copying and pasting information, and the difficulty in typing acurately when the on-screen keys are smaller than one's fingertips. That being so... It would be foolish to redesign the UI of the Title Reference Page to look better on a mobile. It *may* be that this is one situation when you design mainly for large-screen mouse interface rather than small-screen touchscreen interface.

Sadly this happens all too often: sinking to the lowest common denominator rather than making desktop the definitive all-feature version, with mobile doing as good a job as it can to keep up. I would prefer two separate versions, each tuned to the capabilities of the platform. Give them separate URLs so the user can choose, for an "intermediate device" such as a tablet, whether to use the desktop or mobile phone version.

Ironically mobile devices can barely handle all the JavaScript and HTML5 bloat from Amazon that is crammed into IMDb webpages, and yet the Amazon shop website has maintained the ability to mostly run fine, even across subtle upgrades, throughout the decades.

As I see it, the arrow is a lighter shade of grey when it doesn't work.

It's a very subtle difference. I only noticed it when I went to check after seeing your reply. Greying-out of disabled options needs to be as conspicuous and unambiguous as possible. I liked the total absence of the arrow in the previous version of the page.

I've examined a screen shot (with the page displayed in the lastest version of Firefox). An active next/previous episode arrow has pixels of various intensities but the darkest are RGB=117, so medium grey (half-way between black 0 and white 255 would be 128). An inactive arrow has pixels which are about RGB=160. I don't think that is enough of a difference to be clearly noticeable. How about making the active arrow and the associated episode title/number text a proper RGB=0 black so the distinction from an inactive RGB=160 arrow is really obvious?

That's contributor logic, and so for that to be changed in a layout intended to be "for contributors" does seem negligent if not antagonistic.

Thank you both for highlighting this. I will discuss it with the team.

@strerd Sorry, but this is how reference view works — the same information was present on the previous version of the page. Title reference view contains the complete credits for every title for the purpose of contributors auditing those credits against on-screen credits. This view was created for that sole purpose at the request of contributors in 2010. If you are unhappy with the display of this information then please opt-out of reference view by visiting https://www.imdb.com/preferences/general/ and unchecking the option labelled “Show reference view with full cast and crew (advanced view)” and press the “Submit” button. Hope this helps.

If it's in the credits, it should be displayed in IMDB. IMDB shouldn't deliberately modify the credits that it displays because they happen to contain spoilers.

I get that. But why do you list credits twice. Indirectly you put in spoilers. There is an entry for Writers & underneath that a second spot for Writers listing their comics. Writers Eric Pearson Joanna Calo Kurt Busiek. No spoiler involved. & two lines down: Writers Eric Pearson screenplay by and Joanna Calo screenplay by Eric Pearson story by Kurt Busiek Thunderbolts created by and Mark Bagley Thunderbolts created by Stan Lee Avengers created by and Jack Kirby Avengers created by Joe Simon Captain America created by and Jack Kirby Captain America created by Paul Jenkins The Sentry created by and Jae Lee The Sentry created by This was done in an attempt to remove clutter. You made it worse & included spoilers. @Col-Needham - If you are unhappy with the display of this information then please opt-out of reference view by visiting https://www.imdb.com/preferences/general/ and unchecking the option labelled “Show reference view with full cast and crew (advanced view)” and press the “Submit” button. I like to get the full credit list for my Google Sheets. You've succesfully limited me to a versions a synpopsis & main credits & with ads for movies I might be interested in.

@strerd as both @martin_695862 and I have pointed out, this page has a specific purpose for IMDb data contributors and the contents are designed to match the previous version of the page. We will not be removing credits from this page. It sounds like this page is not for you. Please opt-out as described above. I am not sure I understand your point on Google Sheets, but once you have opted out, please see the “Cast & Crew” link towards the upper right of the regular title page (and also in the “All topics” menu). This will take you to the full credits page which may suit your needs better. For example, for The Matrix (1999): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/fullcredits/ Hope this helps.

I feel as though you are missing his point a little with his reply. He's saying that with the new layout, you've put writers twice on the top of page, the summarised writers that's always been at the top, but then where we used to go straight into cast, you've put director and writers again. He's right in that you may be trying to remove clutter, but you have just added more clutter.