very cool i really dig it. one suggestion, the slider makes it a bit difficult to find recent releases, once you slide past 2005 or so you can't really easily adjust it.
even still, this is a great way to view movies - nice work!
Rotten Tomatoes focuses exclusively on English language reviews from "approved critics"(http://www.rottentomatoes.com/help_desk/critics.php ), so it's not that much of a surprise that there aren't that many Japanese anime films rated there. Since the 90's, the only major theatrical releases in the US have been Studio Ghibli films, and that's because Disney handles the US distribution.
I would imagine that it's similar for the vast majority of foreign films as well.
As noted below, I'm teaming with a designer friend of mine for a redesign of ABQ. We'll probably get rid of those JQuery sliders as the don't work well on mobile devices. In any case we'll keep this in mind. Thank you.
I wish Netflix UK had an API. It looks like we are not getting one. There doesn't even seem to be a way to get a list of the current films available, and the new ones which appear.
Looks great, but doesn't work in Canada (they have different movies). I'm not sure if APIs exist for different countries or if a flag needs to be set somewhere, but it would be great if you could detect the country and set it accordingly.
Yeah, using this just reminds me of how much I hate copyright law and geographic restrictions. Netflix is great, but the Netflix movie selection in Canada is... paltry, in comparison.
I don't necessarily agree with your taste (I like boring, pompous, overly-artsy movies) but the key problem for me is, like you, rotten tomato scores are a horrible indicator of my taste.
This is because Rotten Tomatoes uses a more thorough criteria for "Action and Adventure", whereas A Better Queue uses the first Netflix genre criteria that's listed on the result from its api. So yeah, Rotten Tomatoes is more thorough in this regard. Most of the movies listed by Rotten Tomatoes with this criteria are under different genres in A Better Queue.
Hey everybody. I made this thing. Thanks for posting, xbryanx! It's so cool that my first web app is on the front page of HN.
ADDENDUM::
I'm somewhat new to all of this. Right now I'm learning BDD principles. So, I'm going to use A Better Queue as a learning tool and blog about BDDing new features, like an 'add to instant queue' button. I'll probably blog here: http://abetterqueue.blogspot.com/
After that, I'll re-write ABQ using BDD principles and then I'll open-source the thing.
I would like to see a slider for minimum number of reviews counted in the tomato rating. A movie that has a 100% rating but only 3 reviews is something I'd like to be able to filter out.
While we're making feature requests: I'd like it to work better on narrower screens. I'm using the computer plugged into my TV (the one I use for Netflix) and I only have 1024 pixels across.
Cool site. Can I suggest adding Twitter/Facebook links to make sharing easier?
From a UI perspective - I'd reverse the slider so that it goes from highest rating to lowest and most recent to oldest. Most people will likely want the highest, most recent films.
Setting the tomatometer to above 0% and the years to 1915-2012 with the filter set to just Gay & Lesbian movies only returns 21 movies. Netflix has 256 Gay & Lesbian movies available for instant streaming, many of which (among the ones I quickly checked) are reviewed on Rotton Tomatoes.
Is there a technical reason for this or is this a bug?
Technical. A Better Queue's database currently takes in only the first genre listed for a movie from the Netflix API. So those other 235 Gay and Lesbian movies are present in A Better Queue, but in other genres. The choice to only take in the first genre listed from the Netflix API was that, beyond trying to keep it simple, the first genre seemed like the most accurate one. The choice was in no way intended to be exclusionary.
I would be able to take in multiple genres during a database load so that each movie could show up for all of its genres. So I will. Right now I'm waiting to hear back from Rotten Tomatoes' API team so I can get a second API key for development. (Using my production key to test new functionality would put me over my API call limit.)
Please add a favicon. I like to bookmark sites and delete the name so I can just recognize it by the favicon. Saves a ton of space. I assume I'm not alone in this habit.
Agreed. I think there's a way to add in a few features like this and still make it simple and user-friendly. One request when you do MPAA ratings is to not make it a slider bar, but just use checkboxes like you do for genres. Netflix tends to categorize lots of things as Unrated when you wouldn't normally expect it.
Other than one major feature request, I haven't got too much to contribute. The request would be sorting by Tomatoes score would be an excellent way to (optionally?) display films.
Aside from that, I don't have any critiques - clearly there's more that can be done, but already this is an excellent product! I will certainly be using it to help me decide what to watch :)
Nice site! One thing that I've been wanting for a while is to see all the Netflix streaming movies that are on the IMDB Top 250 list. That would be awesome.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] threadeven still, this is a great way to view movies - nice work!
I would enhance the 2nd bar to make one handle be able to push the other when they meet instead of getting stuck.
Does Tomatoes not rate animes much? Filtering from '95 to today of 50%+ only returned 3.
I would imagine that it's similar for the vast majority of foreign films as well.
very cool, great work!
'Professional' critics suck.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/dvd/netflix/
-------------------------------------------
Edit:
The rottentomatoes version also returns way more results (given the same parameters) -
Abetterqueue: http://abetterqueue.com/movies?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query[rati...
2 results
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Rotten Tomatoes:
75%+, Action Adventure, 2010-2012
29 results
ADDENDUM::
I'm somewhat new to all of this. Right now I'm learning BDD principles. So, I'm going to use A Better Queue as a learning tool and blog about BDDing new features, like an 'add to instant queue' button. I'll probably blog here: http://abetterqueue.blogspot.com/
After that, I'll re-write ABQ using BDD principles and then I'll open-source the thing.
Cheers, Dave
From a UI perspective - I'd reverse the slider so that it goes from highest rating to lowest and most recent to oldest. Most people will likely want the highest, most recent films.
Is there a technical reason for this or is this a bug?
Technical. A Better Queue's database currently takes in only the first genre listed for a movie from the Netflix API. So those other 235 Gay and Lesbian movies are present in A Better Queue, but in other genres. The choice to only take in the first genre listed from the Netflix API was that, beyond trying to keep it simple, the first genre seemed like the most accurate one. The choice was in no way intended to be exclusionary.
I would be able to take in multiple genres during a database load so that each movie could show up for all of its genres. So I will. Right now I'm waiting to hear back from Rotten Tomatoes' API team so I can get a second API key for development. (Using my production key to test new functionality would put me over my API call limit.)
https://userscripts.org/scripts/show/52589
- allow sorting by rating, year, title
- allow switching between "All Critics" and "Top Critics" ratings
- show additional movie information (summary, etc.) on hover for desktop users
Aside from that, I don't have any critiques - clearly there's more that can be done, but already this is an excellent product! I will certainly be using it to help me decide what to watch :)