Studio Daily had an article about a FireFox Greasemonkey add-on called “Less IMDB”, that removes a lot of the nonsense that has been ladled onto IMDB during the last update of the site. It even has a switch to let you look at the more graphically heavy version.
It is also available for Safari and Chrome.
Nice. Thanks for sharing that.
You’re* welcome.
Thanks for sharing that.
Speaking of IMDB and Firefox, I can’t get any of the photos to load (it works fine in IE) and have a similar problem with YouTube, but there it’s only the main ad and certain videos’ pictures won’t show up when I do a search.
It’s not just me? I thought I’d done something to screw up my browser. Where did the tight menu with trivia/quotes/dialogue/etc. go? I’ve been scrolling all over the place for a while now–that absurd mess was intentional?
YESSS! Thanks Gaffa!
Yes, they’ve been taking lessons from MySpace:“How To Screw Up A Perfectly Usable Website By Making It An Ungodly Mess.”
Just wanted to note you don’t need an add-on if you are a registered user (not just the “Pro” account, but a regular free account). You can update your site preferences from your account to “Show previous title and name page design (reference view)”.
Brilliant! It worked! The ugly pages are gone and it’s just like it used to be. Thank you!
Cool, I hadn’t noticed that option. (Not that they’ve gone out of their way to let people know it exists.) The add-on still produces a very nice result though.
Another heartfelt thank you!
The old design definitely needed a spruce up. However, what they came up with was awful. This add-on turns things into a much more agreeable compromise. I love it.
Someone should now make something similar to make YouTube look decent again. Even after constant adjustment this year it still looks clumsy and cluttered.
I had already changed the view style in my account to “old style”. Isn’t this the same thing?
I completely disagree. Change for the sake of change is pointless. They made it less user-friendly and added no functionality that I can find. But hey, I guess it looks spiffy.
I rather like the “best known for” section. Much of my imdb traffic is to remember where I know someone from, and the answer is usually in this section. For example, just yesterday I was trying remember where I’d seen Leila Arcieri before. My answer was right there in the top section: Son of the Beach.
What they really need to fix is the clunky message boards. That, “flat, inline or nest” business. Just set it up so each topic displays its contents like this and most other boards and give posters the ability to quote whatever they may be specifically responding to.
You’re all very welcome, but I can’t take full credit for it. Roger Ebert actually posted that tip in his twitter feed not long ago. 
Otherwise I’m not sure how long it would have taken me to find it; I don’t often go the settings page and yes, they didn’t make it obvious at all you could opt out of the redesign.
Same thing I mentioned, yes, but I don’t know how it looks with the add-on. Some may prefer that view to either the old or new.
I dropped him from my feed – he tweets too damn much.
I downloaded the file for Safari. I double-clicked on less-imdb.safariextz, expecting an installation window. What I got was another Safari window and the Finder window.
How do I install it?
Yes, but in his case it is completely understandable. Roger is a perfect example of how, with all that is wrong with the world today, on the whole things are better. Before computers and the Internet, he would have been reduced to communicating via a chalkboard to family and friends.