
Show HN: 5000 best movies - arekp
http://5000best.com/movies/Personalized/
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agscala
Cool site. I love the simple interface.

From a UX perspective, the header should be sticky when you scroll. I was
having fun looking at the "moods" and genres that get highlighted when you
hover over a movie, but after I scroll down, I can't see it anymore

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arekp
Great feedback. I see I should do it this way.

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pooriaazimi
So, please, for God's sake, use a <frame>. I hate all those javascript/CSS
fancy tricks.

With <frame>s, you can press space/page down key to go to next page. Those
stupid CSS tricks break this 35+ year-old tradition, and add literally zero
benefit.

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jpb0104
Please no more frames, they are deprecated.
<http://stackoverflow.com/a/4263583> and
<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9612.html> (1996).

Edit: Not entirely deprecated, but are obsolete and highly discouraged.

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julienmarie
I must confess that I use this website quite daily ( in fact everytime I want
to watch a movie ) since I discovered it a few weeks ago here on HN. its a
real gem. I love the interface too, even if I think that we could polish just
a bit the css to make it more attractive ( if you want, I volunteer :) )

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arekp
I do not know when I will have time to experiment more with the website, but
volunteers are always welcome.

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clicks
Pretty decent and clean interface, I like that -- I think the next step to
take from here would be implementing a system that lets users keep track of a
list of watched/not-watched movies.

Up for it? :)

Anyway, do please remark on what kind of stack you've got going and what went
into making this.

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arekp
Thanks. We'll see. Each feature costs developer's time.

Edit: the stack is G-WAN and everything is written in plain ANSI C. I wrote my
own HTTP servers in C/C++ for my previous websites, but this time I tried
G-WAN. I think it saved me one week of work or two.

The website is running on the cheapest virtual dedicated server from 1&1 with
25% of one processor time. The total cost is less than $10 monthly.

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julienmarie
what is (approximately) the actual traffic and load of the server... i've been
curious about g-wan for a long time :)

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arekp
The website should withstand several times larger traffic than the HN
frontpage effect. I am not sure about the reddit effect.

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nbush
Very nice. Different but distinctive and useful design.

Row selection highlighting would help with navigation; I find myself getting a
bit lost when parsing such long rows. I would also like to see a bit more info
about how the site works.

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groby_b
One tiny recommendation: Give a visual indication that the movie I just rated
will move elsewhere. It was very confusing to see things vanish when I clicked
on them :)

But leaving nitpicks aside - I really like it.

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runlevel1
I'm finding your personalization algorithm to be impressively accurate.

Is there some way to download the personalized results?

It wouldn't have to be pretty - even plain XML would be great.

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wmeredith
This is an awesome little web app that I immediately bookmarked for later
reference. On a side note, only on HackerNews could this interface draw
praise.

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arekp
Yes, the interface became a little complicated. The previous version was more
accessible for a casual user, for example the following article about the
website was received pretty enthusiastically (retweeted about 1000 times)
<http://gigazine.net/news/20121012-5000-best-movies/>

I guess the right way to fix it is to hide some features and add a tutorial.

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wmeredith
I love the functionality, I wouldn't change anything there. I would just try
and clean up the interface a bit. Bring some consistency to alignments, add
some hierarchy to the controls with font weights, sizing colors etc... Normal
UX stuff.

Honestly, it may not be a priority for you. I was NOT trying to bash. I just
thought it was funny that the interface was drawing praise.

As a UX Specialist at my agency, I see interfaces like this all the time (I'm
usually being paid to fix them). We call this aesthetic "engineers designing".
Don't take it too hard, I'm sure my PHP looks like designers engineering :)

So after I used the site, my first thought was, "That's awesome, but it's
definitely painful to interact with; engineers designing." Then I pop to the
comments and the first one is about how much they like the interface.
Excellent HN moment for me there.

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arekp
Yea, that Excel-table-like design probably breaks all design rules. It
surprises me most when I occasionally see design professionals complementing
it. I am rather a backend programmer and I have no illusions.

But even the Hacker News audience does not have enough geekiness to understand
my previous attempt at a movie recommender system: <http://5000best.com/movie-
galaxy/>

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hinoglu
Way simple, yet charming. Loved the show-categories-on-hover feature, but it's
impossible to see the categories when scrolled down.

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marcioaguiar
How does the score works? 12 Angry Men has a 9.4 score and 7th place, but when
I filter by "Law" movies the score goes down to 7.5.

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arekp
Score is different in each of the 55 rankings. I do not know if this is clear
in the interface, but "Law" is one of the rankings, not a filter.

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aidenn0
Something seriously wrong with the "writer" credit. E.g. anything based on a
book, Full Metal Alchemist.

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pooriaazimi
I'm really impressed. The "recommender" system works _really_ well.

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arekp
Thank you. I was in top 50 in the Netflix Prize and wrote a book about
recommender systems (<http://arek-paterek.com/book/>) if someone is interested
how the bread is made.

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usaphp
How come "The Godfather" is a Horror movie?

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arekp
I have to tune that one. Violence and blood alone should not indicate a
horror.

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usaphp
once you scroll down, the whole information section becomes useless.

