What's the matter with Netflix's interface?
Asked by
Kardamom (
33525
)
May 25th, 2015
I hadn’t looked at Netflix on my computer for about 2 weeks, when I had added some new movies. Last night I went on there to post a review about a show we had watched and the interface has totally changed.
It used to be that if you hovered your mouse over the the title, then clicked on the title, not the arrow that starts the movie, a dialogue box would pop up with lots of information about the movie, including a list of member reviews, and a button you could click to add your own review.
Now, when you look at the Netflix page, there is a sideways scroll of movies, but when you hover over one of them, a downward pointing arrow appears, but when you click on it, you get a very limited overview of the movie. It shows the cast and directors and an extremely brief synopsis of the movie. There is no option to get more information or to add your own information, and there is no star system to rate the movie.
What’s going on?
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10 Answers
Works the same as it always has on my Mac. Try another browser.
@Pachy I have, it’s the same situation. It’s a new interface that works differently.
The first thing I would recommend is that you go to your browser, settings, History – and clear your cache. Delete your entire history and try again.
There is a better than 80% chance that you have some old cache files that are screwing up your display.
Clear your history, try again, and let us know.
Netflix’s interface varies depending which streaming device it’s being accessed on (like Roku, which I have), but as far as I can tell it hasn’t changed on my Macfor quite a while. Good advice from @elbanditoroso.
Now that I think about it, there are multiple differences between Netflix.com (as encountered in Fire Fox) and the Windows 8 Netflix App. When browsing for new content in Fire Fox, hovering over a title displays a short description of the plot and an estimate of the rating I would give it. When I click to add a movie, for example, Netflix follows up with suggestions of similar movies for me to consider.
In the Windows App, suggested titles do not appear. Searching for a title (or an actor) of interest is much easier.
In both interfaces, the up to five star ratings do still exist, but in different places. However, like @Pachy, I have also noticed the disappearance of the viewer comments section. It would be really nice to have it back.
@elbanditoroso I’m using Chrome with Windows 7. I tried clearing the cache and history, closing the browser and re-opening it. That didn’t do anything. I also tried using a different browser. It just appears that I have been given a new interface that doesn’t work very well. It doesn’t have the dialogue box pop up, when hovering with the mouse, with the extended description and user reviews like it did several weeks ago.
That’s interesting. My PC runs on Windows 7 and I use Chrome. Netflix displays in the older format described. There’s a blog link at the bottom of the Netflix site, and there is no mention of testing or rolling out a new format. It’s a mystery.
I finally talked to someone on Neflix live chat. Seems as though they turned on some type of test mode without asking/telling me. They’ve now turned it off and everything works fine now.
Good for you for reaching out! Did you give them specific feedback on your experience with the test mode design?
@Pied_Pfeffer They didn’t tell me anything about the test mode and didn’t ask me any questions about it. I just told them that I was having some sort of a problem. It was only then that they told me that I had been in some sort of test mode, unbeknownst to me. I signed off the live chat as soon as they said it was fixed.
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