The Netflix Website Gets a Major Upgrade

http://blog.netflix.com/2015/06/the-netflix-website-gets-major-upgrade.html

by philip1209 • 11 years ago

138 119 11 years ago

blog.netflix.com

philip1209• 11 years ago

It's built using ReactJS, NodeJS, and FalcorJS

Source: https://twitter.com/NetflixUIE/status/610506318860783616

smaili• 11 years ago

Was this redesign part of that one blog post from Netflix that criticized ExpressJS? Can't remember off the top of my head when that was posted.

aquilaFiera• 11 years ago

Not really; they were done by different teams.

KurtMueller• 11 years ago

Is there any info anywhere on when FalcorJS will be released?

hfsktr• 11 years ago

Can't wait to see it in action. I didn't care much for the site as it was. My biggest pet peeve was the difference between dvd/streaming interfaces. The DVD version would let you click to advance but the streaming list would only advance while hovering.

Second biggest is they don't have, last I saw, an easy way to see if a movie is now available on streaming when it's on the dvd list.

Maybe I misunderstood how it worked (is there a better way!) but it scrolled too slow for me. I usually wait a month to see if anything is new because of how infrequently they get new movies[0].

[0] streaming seems to be almost all tv shows now and they have those getting on the 'new' list constantly.

On that front...how come FOX/WB/etc don't compete and take those views? Last time I checked FOX only had the last 5 episodes when I really needed the a full season to catch up. Making me go somewhere else for their own content just seems weird.

duaneb7• 11 years ago

On that front...how come FOX/WB/etc don't compete and take those views?

Because it's a lot of work running a dedicated streaming service. Personally, I wouldn't do that. A better model would be licensing + free views (as they already do).

disposition23• 11 years ago

I kind of wish they wouldn't have changed it years ago...I feel like (as with just about all software 'updates' these days) they continue to remove useful features (like the ability to actually browse with a modicum of filter options) in favor of 'curating' results for 'you' and new graphics.

I'll continue to use InstantWatcher and other 3rd party resources when I want to find something / browse and then back to Netflix when I know exactly the search term I'm looking for.

endymi0n6• 11 years ago

Shameless self-plug: You might like our site at https://justwatch.com - all the filter options at your power and it doesn't make dizzy when scrolling :)

ohitsdom4• 11 years ago

Netflix and Amazon Prime- nice! Any plans on integrating Rotten Tomatoes scores?

themodelplumber• 11 years ago

gasp I just selected Netflix and AMP, and then filtered by year to the exact decade I was looking for, on the services I use! I was wishing for this capability just yesterday. This is incredible!!! Thank you.

disposition23• 11 years ago

about 5 seconds on your site and I found more of what I'm looking for than what I imagine would be 5+ minutes of Netflix and 3rd party sites. Thank you for sharing, I'll probably continue to use instantwatcher for finding popular / other people are watching but this site is perfect for drilling down and browsing.

IanDrake• 11 years ago

Awesome start! I wanted to build something like this but Netflix shut down their API. Here's a list of features I'd like to see if it helps any.

I'd like to be able to put movies into three groups, want to watch (watch queue), already seen (with a rating), and "have no interest" in seeing.

Then, all my search results would NOT show the movies I've put into one of these three lists, so I only see new content. From the search result list, I can easily put movies into one of my three lists.

Also, if your search results could filter out movies based on buy vs rent, since I have no interest in buying movies online. Also, remove pre-releases, I'm not looking for something I can watch in 5 months, I'm looking for things I can watch right now (GOTs season 5 pre-order).

I think who ever nails this implementation could be a big winner as we need an online tv-guide more than ever. But so far, I only see ways to have the same movies I seen (or don't want to see) thrown in my face over and over again.

As you watch more and more online content, you spend more and more time being offered movies you've already seen and that makes it hard to discover new content in the haystack of stuff you've seen or don't care to see.

Hope that helps.

bowlich• 11 years ago

Nice. Bookmarked for future use.

I was going to say that my biggest complaint about the existing Netflix site is for me (who doesn't keep an ongoing account) is the inability to search for films without first having an account. I can't just browse anonymously, see if Netflix has a particular show available for streaming and then sign up for a month to watch it.

girvo• 11 years ago

I <3 justwatch! I live in Australia, and so I have to have 3 streaming services to get anywhere near the library that even just Netflix has in the US -- being able to search and find what I'm looking for on your site is an absolute god-send, thanks very much!

My only feature request would be rather difficult to implement, but I'd love it all the same: Have Foxtel Play's library in there somehow.

hrayr• 11 years ago

Excellent site. Something's wrong with your Apollo 13 listing [1], the Amazon Prime link points to a documentary about Apollo 13, not the movie.

[1] https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/apollo-13

ajmurmann3• 11 years ago

I agree. You used to be able to sort all movies by how much they think you will like it. What a concept! A little over a year ago I actually wrote a script that used their API to get me just that. Less than a month later they shut down the API... I honestly don't know what use case they are addressing. If I know what I am there to watch I just need a search field. If I don't know then there interface is a disaster. It keeps recommending movies they predict I will give a low rating. At the same time I found that they had "The Master" which I loved in the cinema after browsing the page for at least 10 minutes in order to find something. Most of the 10 minutes were spent looking over different lists that mainly contained the same movies I'd already watched or Netflix agrees I won't like.

I also find their rating system to be the worst. I always check at imdb first. Some movies that have 4/10 or fewer starts have 4/5 or even 4.5/5 stars on Netflix.

I can only assume that watching certain movies might be more beneficial to Netflix than others.

vitd• 11 years ago

I'm excited to see they're trying new things, and it does look slick.

That said, I just wish they'd get rid of the stupid horizontal scrolling list of movies. It's just not efficient and it works poorly. They could have use these same effects in a vertical list or even 2D grid that has normal button/wheel-controlled scrolling, zooming in when you clicked on a specific movie. But the 1D horizontal list that you can't scroll normally is really limiting and makes me avoid the website.

splawn• 11 years ago

Yeah when I am being indecisive about what to watch, the scrolling starts to make me feel dizzy.

leephillips• 11 years ago

Just click on the category title above the horizontal list (I hate that, too) to get a grid view.

boken• 11 years ago

Me, too.

Until then, under chrome/userContent.css in my Firefox profile folder, I will keep:

    @-moz-document domain(netflix.com) {
    
        .slider .agMovieSetSlider {
            position: relative !important;
            width: 100% !important;
        }
    
        .slider {
            overflow: auto !important;
            height: auto !important;
        }
    }

Edit: It strikes me that this may break with the coming redesign. Oh well, that drawing board's not such a rough thing to be dragged back to.

bluthru• 11 years ago

A "show more" button that appended another row or two would be much better.

malloreon• 11 years ago

fingers crossed this fixes the netflix recommending me things I've already rated before.

Heads up netflix: if I've rated something, I don't ever want it to be recommended again outside of "watch it again."

mdm_• 11 years ago

Another Netflix annoyance: if I watch the pilot episode of a series, then weeks and months pass, and I never watch another episode of that series, it's probably safe to infer that I didn't like it and you can stop recommending stuff to me based on my "interest" in that series. I feel like there's a few of these really common-sense things that Netflix doesn't pick up on and probably don't require some fancypants algorithm to detect.

corin_• 11 years ago

Is it possible the fancypants algorithm knows you better than you do, knows you will like that series if you watched 3 episodes instead of just the pilot, and is hoping you'll change your mind and listen to it?

skolor• 11 years ago

Its actually the opposite that annoys me: if I was watching a TV series, the last time I was logged in I watched episodes, and there are still remaining episodes, stop asking me to rate the series. Its a minor but consistent annoyance that I'll be 3 episodes into a series and it wants me to rate the entire series.

drdoom2• 11 years ago

Or shows that you watched months ago but Netflix does not know about.

Or why you have 5 sreens of categories to choose from, but all categories have the same shows in them, anywhere around 60-75%.

catbird• 11 years ago

Well, don't get your hopes up. I talked with one of the 'data science' guys at Netflix and he said that user ratings are basically completely ignored in their algorithms. Apparently a large subset of their users actually rate movies before they've seen them, so hiding rated movies would only serve to decrease views overall.

tgb• 11 years ago

Are they sure this isn't a matter of people having seen the videos through other means? I've rated movies I saw in theater or dvd in netflix before so that it can know me better. Guess that's a waste of time.

chengiz• 11 years ago

The Netflix website is a piece of shit. Their recommendation system is crap. I liked a Robert Redford movie, now even his crap ones show up as five stars. They have decent movies but it's impossible to find. Their search sucks. Their foreign category has everything and the kitchen sink. Their scroll gives about ten movies then is done, even though they have a hundred movies fitting the title. If they had a good system, you wouldnt need instantwatcher and whatdoiwatchonnetflix. It's good to know that the major upgrade involves - ooh I dont have to click anymore, how cool.

andor• 11 years ago

Technically it might be completely rebuilt, but I guess that most people won't notice. They added more animations and a video element on top, both of which makes it slower.

As functionality and layout are the same as in the old version (which was pretty good already), I don't see how this one is "more like an app and less like a series of linked web pages".

Someone12342• 11 years ago

With the new Netflix website, we’ve created a richer, more visual experience, and a website that works more like an app and less like a series of linked web pages. Information appears in-line and in context rather than on a separate page, which makes exploring the catalog faster than ever before.

Eww.

So now linking something to someone is broken, the back and forward may or may not work, middle click definitely won't work, and all for what? So they look a little cooler? Meh.

ohitsdom4• 11 years ago

Have you actually tried this, or are you just speculating? I just did, and linking still works. Looks like they still have separate pages for movies/shows. But even for single-page sections, I'd assume they are updating the hash so linking works.

Someone12342• 11 years ago

Hasn't rolled out to my account yet. Per Netflix's blog post they're doing it in blocks.

I was replying to what Netflix said. Which is all the information I have available to me until they deploy it to my account.

delgaudm• 11 years ago

Does anyone know why you cannot filter by rating the same way you can by genre? Is it a hard problem to solve?

Infinitesimus• 11 years ago

I've always thought the reason was to remove the bias of only watching movies everyone else likes (i.e. only those that majority gave high ratings) but I'm shooting blindly here. It would be great if someone from the team gave input

ajmurmann3• 11 years ago

I honestly wonder if they try to direct users towards certain content because they might have different deals around the content that makes watching certain movies for them better than others. That's the only explanation I can come up with for why they would make finding something worth watching so hard.

EugeneOZ2• 11 years ago

And still no catalogue before purchase.. "We have something interesting, but will show it only after purchase" - very cool.

pfg• 11 years ago

Isn't the first month free anyway?

EugeneOZ2• 11 years ago

You should give them your payment card credentials first. I know they are big but it doesn't mean they can't be hacked. And when you submitted card credentials, only way to remove them is send email to privacy@netflix.com and wait for reply.

ChuckMcM• 11 years ago

I'm a bit jaded but it looks like a really great change to focus on what you can watch versus reminding you that there used to be a movie in this space that you can no longer watch.

I love Netflix as an instant streaming service, and I really dislike the hoops that big media makes folks jump through, but after having yet another movie I recommended to a friend that I had streamed on NetFlix but had disappeared, I switched back to buying movies on disc that I want to have in my library.

berns• 11 years ago

Unless you're logged in the site is useless. I'm not a client so I can only comment as a prospective buyer. There isn't much to comment, though. It's a horrible experience. The help search is also useless. Tried the following search terms: pricing, plans, movies, guide; the results are always the same, the first result is always "Can I stream Netflix in Ultra HD?".

walterbell2• 11 years ago

With the new site, will it be possible to:

  - deep link to a movie listing
  - deep link to a start time (like YouTube)

city41• 11 years ago

Deep link to listing: yes, as you open up the details view on a title, the URL updates to reflect that. You can use that URL to go straight to the title, for example here is Daredevil: http://www.netflix.com/browse?jbv=80018294&jbp=2&jbr=1

walterbell2• 11 years ago

The previous site allowed anonymous viewing of a movie listing, for recommending a movie to a non-subscriber.

The Daredevil movie listing link goes to a login page, is that expected?

spacko• 11 years ago

When you hover your mouse over a title, you will now see a slideshow of images from that movie or show. We hope this slideshow will give you a better feel for what the show is about than reading the description alone.

Well, this is a standard feature of any average Joe's porn site for about 5 years now

harlanlewis• 11 years ago

There may be different expectations regarding spoilers.

wesleytodd3• 11 years ago

Built this for our site (stream.me) in like a day and a half. Makes you feel good about your work when big companies with much bigger teams "announce" features you have already tackled :)

duaneb7• 11 years ago

I would imagine it's much harder to roll out at scale.

Netflix's ui has been pretty terrible for a while, though, I wish they would have an alternative to the grid view. Sometimes I can't find the genre I'm looking for.

taytus• 11 years ago

How do you know?

ams6110• 11 years ago

No word on whether any of this will apply for those who use a game console.

shortstuffsushi• 11 years ago

Unless I'm mistaken, this update makes it in line with the consoles. I have an Xbox One, and it currently looks much like the site does now.

comrade12• 11 years ago

I've sort of given up on Netflix but maybe I'll take a look. I mean, I still pay my monthly fee but I now watch all of my stuff through Plex. I just subscribe to a show and it appears in my Plex server, with a much better ui than netflix.

I'm overseas and at first I tried to use the Plex Netflix plugin and connect to Netflix through a VPN that I would have dynamically open whenever it went to a range of ip addresses, but Netflix's amazon range kept changing - I assume to stop people like me from accessing from overseas.

And so I gave up trying to do it 'proper' and now I just download their shows and watch them from my own server. I live in a country where it's legal to download - just not share, and I think what I do is completely reasonable.

But I at least still pay my monthly fee.

bduerst• 11 years ago

How do you use plex with your TV?

I set something up with a RPi a while ago, but performance was ridiculous. Chromecast support from mobile app was also buggy.

comrade12• 11 years ago

Haven't owned a TV since 1999... I don't like how they become the focus of the room it's in. However, I do like the new oled tvs, especially the super thin one that can be hung up at any time (prototype only now) and may get one when they're available.

SG-2• 11 years ago

PlexConnect with an AppleTV here, works pretty well:

https://blog.plex.tv/2013/06/04/introducing-plexconnect-an-a...

Consultant324522• 11 years ago

Roku ftw.

anigbrowl• 11 years ago

Over the past four years, web browsers have changed a lot, becoming more sophisticated and allowing for richer visuals and animations.

I am used to this eye candy already from using it on the Playstation. but what I would really like is an ability to curate my own lists (instead of having just one), things on the stay on my list in the order they were added (pairs or occasional trilogies always end up 'drifting away' from each other for no special reason) and to see more information about who made a film than just 3 actors and a director. What if I want to search for films by a particular screenwriter?

Other missing features: request a film for streaming that's not currently available, so they have some way to gauge demand; a higher-priced streaming tier where you have access to the extra features that come on a disc, like interviews or director commentary; Scene search. Netflix has a massive incumbent advantage now, and a deservedly earned one, but user-side development has slowed to a crawl since they went into producing their own content, and the risk for investors is that the market cares more about user experience than the output of Netflix's TV studio (although I personally think their content division is outstanding).

Oh, and please stop ejecting me from the credits of a film to show me what you think I want to want to watch next. There is nothing more annoying than to be sitting there in a reflective mood following a great film, thinking about what I watched as the credits rol and the music plays, only to get kicked out into a static advert for some other film usually wildly inappropriate/irrelevant. It's like being woken up when you're still dreaming, and every time it happens I want to throw something at the television.

ajmurmann3• 11 years ago

Agreed on al of these. A lot of this used to exist, but it's gone now. Instead we have big pictures and shiny stuff no one needs.

ajanuary• 11 years ago

Other missing features: request a film for streaming that's not currently available, so they have some way to gauge demand;

As a UK user, it'd also be nice to be able to somehow monitor when something that's only available in other territories (i.e. US) becomes available in the UK.

danso• 11 years ago

Scrolling through rows is now much faster, with a mouse-click advancing a full row at a time.

Jesus. Not only have other competitors had this (Amazon Prime, HBO)...Netflix itself had this nav "feature" before it moved to the tedious mouseover scroll it's had for the past couple of years. The slow-scroll was so infuriating that I thought it had to be the result of some incredibly counter-intuitive A/B insight. But now that they're reverting, it just seems like a poorly conceived idea.

drdoom2• 11 years ago

I keep hearing praises of Netflix's recommendation engine. I wonder when they will roll that out! Because when I browse Netflix, I have 5 pages of categories, each with upto 75 shows. However, and this is the critical point, each of those categories contains about 60-75% the same shows, presented in different order. And with no respect to genre, to boot.

oimaz• 11 years ago

The killer part of this redesign is the in-context, in-line information cards which makes shifting through the netflix's catalog a breeze.

saberworks• 11 years ago

I wish they would bring back plain text titles under each cover image. Hovering over each image isn't an adequate solution.

mmcru• 11 years ago

my question is, do i still have to google some arbitrary and arcane silverlight hotkey code in order to change video quality?

TheHippo• 11 years ago

Silverlight has been ditched for over a year now, so I guess no ;-)

dysfunction• 11 years ago

I don't understand why the console Netflix apps have the ability to show you exactly (ish) the quality you're currently streaming at (on PS3, hit 'select' button and it'll say "720p" or whatever it's at), but the PC browser client doesn't.

simoncion5• 11 years ago

Press ctrl+alt+shift+d . The video resolution will appear, along with a bunch of other debugging info.

jaredsohn• 11 years ago

The same hotkey (Control+alt+shift+S) still works for me with Chrome in the HTML5 player and shows the same interface as before.

mattnguyen• 11 years ago

What frontend framework was used? Any lessons learned? I hear Netflix uses Ember, Angular, and React for different applications. I imagine a wonderful eng blog post will be posted in the near future :)

nly• 11 years ago

You know what would be better? Ditching Silverlight. Fucking thing crashes on me every few minutes. I've been trying to watch the last 6 minutes of an episode of HoC for about 30.

simoncion5• 11 years ago

I've been using the Netflix "HTML5"[0] player for what seems like at least six months. Check your playback settings and flip the "Use HTML5 player" switch.

[0] It's actually the EME player, which uses a binary blob for video decryption. But, The Industry calls this DRM scheme HTML5 video decoding, so whatever.

icebraining• 11 years ago

They call it HTML5 player because it's using the HTML5 <video> tag and using native browser controls. Being decoded by an external module isn't determinant - in fact, Firefox uses the same infrastructure (GMP) for both encrypted and unencrypted videos.

SG-2• 11 years ago

As mentioned they've had HTML5 playback for browsers that support which is basically Safari, Chrome and even Firefox I think.

Safari was the first browser that got supported and it's been working on Macs for ages without Silverlight installed.

neovive• 11 years ago

I'm looking forward to a follow-up article from their development and/or ops team. Netflix tech articles are very interesting. I'm sure there is a good tech story behind this upgrade.

brianstorms• 11 years ago

What I don't understand is how Netflix seemingly ignores a user's incredibly valuable feedback regarding a given title. For example, you're browsing all the titles and you see some stupid animated movie you have no intention of ever seeing. You select it, to get the detail view, then click "Not interested" or if that doesn't appear (why I don't know), you click one star. You're telling Netflix basically, "I don't wanna see this, ever, so please don't recommend it to me."

But... Netflix keeps recommending it. Come back a day later, it's still there in the list while you're browsing titles. Spend an hour indicating "Not Interested" on all the crap and filler (there is a ton) of streaming content Netflix shows you, and it makes no difference. It's all there the next hour, the next day, the next week.

I reckon Netflix is afraid the truth would be revealed, that they have VERY little streaming content, if they honored a user's "Not interested" and hid those from the genre lists. Why, you might wind up with a handful of titles listed.

But would that be so bad? I would be perfectly fine if Netflix's lists were EMPTY today. I would still come back tomorrow to check to see what was new (gosh, imagine if Netflix sent me a notification of some sort listing out what's been added since last time I looked).

Today's "Major Upgrade" does not, so far as I know, include these kinds of improvements. I sure wish it did.

Consultant324522• 11 years ago

I'd be interested in seeing what kind of (negative) correlation there is between giving a movie 1 star and watching it. It seems obvious to me that your assumption is true, that if you give a movie 1 star you'll likely never watch it. But human psychology/behavior is pretty stupid and often irrational.

berkay• 11 years ago

Can't agree more. I can't figure out why this is possibly the case. Similarly I have lots of that I have seen (and rated in Netflix) presented on my home page. Why? I don't even have an hypothesis. Netflix also don't have trailers, which means I have to go to IMDB or Youtube to see a trailer.

mixmastamyk• 11 years ago

Wish I could whitelist the shows to watch in the kids section, most of it has little educational value.

dagw• 11 years ago

A whitelist feature would be amazing.

nextw33k• 11 years ago

I had to cancel my satellite TV subscription because of the Disney channels. All the main protagonists are self obsessed trouble makers that never get their comeuppance.

I would rather run the risk of my kids hearing a youtuber swearing about the latest minecraft addon than watch my kids grow up with Disney shows. At least the Youtubers are causing my children to want to create things and then showing them how.

superuser2• 11 years ago

I think there's simply not enough in the catalog that's more plausible than what they're suggesting.

wodenokoto3• 11 years ago

Because they have the viewer data, they know that what people watch and what people admit they want to watch (even to themselves) are not the same thing.

Netflix does not have "very little" streaming content, where do people get off saying this? Is it because you watch it outside of the US, where the selection is admittedly much smaller?

extra88• 11 years ago

Netflix in the US may have a lot of streaming content (movies, especially) relative to their streaming competitors but they have very little streaming relative to all the movies and TV shows that have ever been made. Compare their streaming offerings to their disc offerings and you will find very little of what's on disc is also available streaming.

tunesmith• 11 years ago

This is a pet peeve of mine about all of this predictive big data stuff.

There's what people want, and there's what people want. The big assumption in the industry right now is that "what people REALLY want isn't necessarily the same as what they SAY they want".

But isn't that dreadfully cynical to put the emphasis on the "really want" side? Like - I want to eat healthy, but if a bowl of crappy chips were put in front of me, I'd probably eat some. That doesn't mean I don't want to eat healthy, though. It doesn't mean I REALLY want chips.

It's really just that they're invested in serving our urges rather than what we think of as important.

Think of it as our "better selves" versus our "worse selves". Couldn't they also make conclusions about what are better selves are, and suggest that sort of content?

chupy• 11 years ago

Honestly I think removing those movies that the user is not interested in from the list that netflix is recommending to you could be related to a scaling/optimisation/coding issue on their side regarding the results from the recommending algorithm they are using then a lack of content issue.

The Netflix Website Gets a Major Upgrade

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