You’re right, it’s nowhere near as bad as that was, however it doesn’t inspire any confidence that yet another subpar update was forced on everyone without proper testing and feedback. Also it’s not good that they won’t roll it back to the previous version everyone liked on the public channel, they are forcing us all to keep using the updated version while knowing our displeasure for it.
They could at least roll it back to the previous version on the public Plex channel and keep the new version on the Plex Preview channel only, to continue fixing it there while getting user feedback without forcing it on everyone. But they are choosing not to do this, the new app was not ready for widespread distribution it should still be in the beta phase only.
I see an update has been posted to the preview channel with some UX items called out – feeling hopeful this might improve things and will check out tomorrow and see how it looks !
Been taking a look at the 6.6.9 update which was posted to the preview channel. Some comments below:
The Good:
The default movie page has had some improvements. The summary panel is now a little bit larger so text not as truncated as it was in the previous update.
The main TV show page now had the season posters added rather than a full list of all episodes.
TMDB icon is displayed on movies.
The Bad (new bad):
On the episode page the buttons for play, mark watched etc… have been moved up ABOVE the summary panel. This looks considerably worse with the summary now down at the bottom of the page. Please reconsider this change.
The Ugly (stuff that is still bad):
The summary panel for both movies and shows still does not span to the width of the screen. As such there is loads of unused space on the screen.
In general there is too much space all over the screens.
Video information is still missing – 1080p vrs 1080p (HVEC Main 10 HDR) as an example.
Orange bar is still present vrs orange triangle. God we all hate this bar in this house.
That removes the median strip between selecting an episode and changing it’s watched status - which is what I do when I’m ‘skipping episodes’ - so I can keep On Deck working, but you’re right - it’s dumber than hell below the buttons.
A fix would be to show way more of the summary (above the buttons - does Plex not own that vacant lot next door not being used for anything?), but if it’s an encyclopedia, bring back the ‘More Info’ Icon that once lived to the left of the current buttons, so that the summary never becomes a hazard to navigation, but it’s expansion button is available ‘in the clear’, not buried under ‘More’.
Not showing the language and stream formats in the clear is a PITA.
Under On Deck - we don’t need the name of the show we can clearly see on it’s poster and S3-E5 means squat to everybody - the Episode Name and Run Time would be more informative, bringing back memories of ‘Retro’ and ‘The Pop-Up’ that went away and never came back.
There’s a bunch more - that’s what’s annoying me ATM.
At first, I was on board with the idea of a unified interface design across all devices. However, the more I think about it the more I realized I’m actually against it. Devices like the Roku and AppleTV (and probably most others) try hard to have all apps follow a unified design within their respective platforms. They each have their own sets of widgets, expected behaviors, and, most importantly, unique controls. So, trying to homogenize the Plex UI across all platforms is just going to create a single mediocre experience since the unique shortcomings off all platforms have to be taken into account while none of the unique advantages can be used.
Cursory overview of the new Preview version. As it relates to shows, I really feel like the old interface was just way easier to use, more intuitive for navigation, and easier on the eyes overall.
I appreciate the effort to move a few things around, but it still doesn’t feel as good as the old screens did.
I’ll get into specifics tomorrow. I miss episode names on all of them, the orange wedge, and the real estate usage is totally ineffective.
It’s like, they’re trying so hard to not be Netflix with the horizontal vs. vertical episode scrolling that it really shows the lengths they’re willing to go to justify it.
You had it right before. It worked. Nobody complained.
Oh yea - and let’s not forget “Go To Show” is missing from it’s cleverly hidden location - making it even more annoying when you Drill Clean Through The Earth To China only to find the thing you were drilling for - MIA.
Great Job Guys…
Well Planned and Executed…
What a difference a week makes…
If ya got something that’s working fine - send it over to Plex HQ. When they send it back you won’t recognize it.
Show level menu screen - The focus of this screen should aim to show as much of the description of the show as possible. Play controls could be moved to below the show poster to accommodate. Also, the More button has no justification. If you removed it, and added back all the nested buttons at this level, it would only add two to the screen, where there is plenty of real estate to do so. The show level of a screen should almost mirror what the movie screen is, with the exception of the seasons listed below.
Episode level menu screen - The entire focus of this screen should revolve around the description of the currently selected episode. Having episode titles tied to the thumbnails also helps with navigation, so it would be nice to see those return. The highlight/lowlight focus visuals from the episode ribbon really darken these screens. I don’t think any button for play controls should be nested under “More.”
Consistency -
Every screen should have it’s primary purpose as the focus of its display. If you’re looking at a show, the focus should be the poster and information. The episode screen should focus on the information about the selected episode.
Navigation should follow a similar flow while surfing screens. At the show level I navigate down to select seasons. At the episode level I navigate up to select episodes. It doesn’t feel natural to switch directions while moving around.
Bring back the orange wedge, and only use the progress bar for incomplete episodes, as currently exists at the movie level. I can’t stress enough how “trained” many of us are to look for that little guy. Single items across the Plex-verse should utilize the same watched/unwatched indicator.
Remove highlight/lowlight focus visuals from the episode ribbon. Having most of them grey washed overly tones down this screen. Perhaps an orange frame to indicate the selected episode? Maybe have the selected episode thumbnail slightly enlarged in the ribbon? You wouldn’t take this approach on the movie side, or for watched seasons, and you shouldn’t do so here.
Other commentary
It’s funny, because when I sit down and start to move things around at the episode level in a way that makes sense to me, I put the episode ribbon at the bottom, with the description and play controls centered as the focus of the screen.
That feels… comfortable, and yet familiar somehow…
I’m looking at what we have (in either preview or in the proper app), and I can’t see a clear focus for the redesigned screens. I’m unsure what the most important thing is that I should be looking at. It seems like each part is competing with the others, and it ends up being a balanced glob of information particles, all of which are only half as good as they could be if they stood out.
I didn’t realize I needed to refer to a dictionary of emojis to interpret a post from a CTO & co-founder of a business responding to a customer’s concerns.
On the screen for that single episode, find More (click the … button).
Go to “Playback Settings”
Go to “Streams”
Go to “Subtitles”
Yeah, it’s buried in there.
I’ve always turned them on individually, because my husband & I both used Plex. But he died this year unexpectedly (and now I have to figure out how he configured the backend but that’s another issue) and I just went to look for a way to turn subtitles on EVERYWHERE automatically, without having to choose them. It doesn’t to exist?
Sorry, my lack of patience with these forums means I only just saw this.
Bottom line is I have little time for bullshit anymore and If I ever really can be bothered here at all I will call it out.
Exactly how can anyone claim their client is the benchmark for clients unless they have used 100% of ALL clients. (a daily thing until recently)
I can’t be bothered quoting but we have so far had how awesome VP thumbs are on the Roku… No, they suck big time now they actually caught up to how bad VP thumbs can possibly be. (yeah a contradiction)
Again, I have read (many times) how the Roku leads the way and other clients follow. Erm, No. tvOS is almost in all cases the “pre-beta” for UI/UX changes, but I guess If the 100% knowledge of all Plex clients (apart from the better or no knowledge of… unused ones) qualifies someone to feel the misery now inflicted on AppleTV users.
Where exactly? Will he come up with some proof/links? No, he won’t ( I already asked and got some random BS in return.) He will just continue to spread BS about something he knows absolutely sweet FA about.
I’m done and I really don’t a F**K.
The Roku for Plex is and always was a mediocre device with a mediocre UI/UX… Flagship? No.
Jesus even the much-maligned Smart TV apps overtook the Roku 12 months or so ago. Maybe we don’t all watch 2Mbps encodes. with CBR… and that’s before we start on how Plex friendly those encodes are to transcode.
Excellent point. Most of us view our plex installs on one or two devices, not 5 or so.
We get discomfited when the UI takes us out of the expected UI for each device, be it Roku, Apple, Fire, etc.
Witness what happened when Netflix broke the expected behavior of the quick rewind button on plex - with all other apps, it takes you back 10 or 15 seconds (sometimes configurable). Netflix changed that to put you back in the rewind strip (or whatever it’s called). They claim it’s the default behavior, but it totally isn’t.
The point is that we want a quick rewind button to work the same on all our apps. We want the screens to be similar, at least. We don’t want to have to learn a new UI for each app.
