Netflix's New Web Interface Gets Thumbs Down From Users

Verdatum writes "Entertainment Weekly is one of many sites reporting the strong negative reaction from users of the new Netflix web interface. The new interface presents larger title images at the cost of visible ratings and the 'Sortable List' view. To see a suggested rating or view details, one must now first hover over each individual title. Netflix announced the new interface on Wednesday, in an official blog post. So far, the post has received thousands of negative comments, but only a few dozen comments by users believing the change is an improvement."

Comments

Re:No surprise there

[24-bit Voxel]

Agreed. Now I have to wait for the sideways scroll and it's all movies I've already seen. There are less icons on the screen so therefore fewer results and they scroll slower so it's doubly bad.

chrome extension fix

[aztrailerpunk]

Someone has already posted an extension for chrome that fixes the layout. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ngacmlmclfopgbnmefcffgbcjiafbfpo?hl=en-US#

link

[the_Bionic_lemming]

This link works ok for now if you want the most of the older interface (hover is broke)

http://www.netflix.com/WiHome?fcld=true

Re:Netflix API

[kwerle]

You are being facetious, right?

I'm part way through writing my own interface that will let multiple users view their queues and juggle between them (so that people in the same household can manage each other's queues and see/set both people's ratings at the same time).

Not good in Canada

[lucm]

The problem with Netflix in Canada is that you can get only the online stuff (not the mailers), but both kinds are displayed, so when you see an interesting movie, you click then it says: sorry it is not available online. It's like Amazon a while ago when it was not possible to filter out the stuff that is out of stock. Very annoying.

Re:No surprise there

[immaterial]

Search is great, when you know what you're looking for. If I want to look through the latest TV or movies they've added, it has to be no faster than 1 per second; the "see all" button doesn't exist, and there's no way to get a sortable list. If I want to browse through and find movies with good ratings - well, in addition to the slow-as-molasses scrolling, I can't see the ratings for the movies either unless I hover the mouse over each one one at a time!

Re:They just want to sell the mouse over info

[Bieeanda]

Netflix doesn't just buy a thousand copies of a movie, rip it to a streamable format, and send it to the end-user. They license titles for streaming, and that means keeping a positive relationship with their suppliers, the movie companies. They've consistently said 'no' to a 'buy this movie' button, but that doesn't mean that they really can or should resist every other offer that their suppliers make.

This article indicates that Netflix is happy to play with media companies in order to smooth ruffled feathers. A primary UI redesign that basically turns it into a marquee of movie posters, that probably feeds interaction metrics back, and definitely showcases individual titles more effectively, seems a logical decision from that standpoint. Whether or not the users are going to stand for a radical redesign like that is another question entirely.

Re:Leaving well enough alone... not!

[radicalpi]

If you really want, you can replace http://movies.netflix.com/WiHome with http://www.netflix.com/WiHome?fcld=true to use the old interface. Note the www subdomain instead of movies and the ?fcld=true. I set up auto-redirects in Firefox so if I'm on the watch Instantly or Genre pages it will send me back to the old layout. From my end, you can't even tell that I'm being redirected or that the layout has been changed. Hopefully, they don't drop this and leave me stuck with the new UI.