NEWSLETTER SPECIAL

1st November 1995

edited by Col Needham

Welcome to the new style web interface to The Internet Movie Database. We've aimed to strike a balance between providing many new features and layouts whilst retaing a familiar IMDB feel. All our pages remain compatible with all standard HTML browsers for maximum audience coverage.

This is a quick introduction to some of the new features available. Many others are planned for the near future so keep watching the site.

• Many thanks to Mike 'Harlock' Massee for the new icons which are visible throughout the site. Mike's home page is http://www.raindrop.com/ where you can see other examples of his work and find details of his consultancy rates.



• Two new sections have been added to the database - the laserdisc section managed by Peter Simeon and an alternative versions section managed by Giancarlo Cairella. Not only can you now find the differences between various versions of the same movie, but you can also see if those versions are on LD too!



• A much requested combined search is now available as the 4th option on the main search page. Here you can combine genre, location, year, production company, sound mix, color info, country, ratings certificate and out of ten score searches in all permutations.



• The biographies section can now be searched via option 8 on the main search page to locate anything from places of birth to causes of death .



• The range of dates covered by the recent releases page (option 1 of the additional information sources on the search page) has been extended hence the page is now an ideal central source to help you decide which movie to see at the local cinema. The information is arranged on a country by country basis and the links provide a convenient way to access cast/crew/reviews/official sites for the latest movies.
  
  In addition the team have done extra research to pull in more information on the latest movies. We aim to keep this up on a regular basis to make the IMDB the only independent source of complete movie information on the newest releases.



• There are now three ways to search for titles in the database - an exact match, substring match and regular expression match. In particular the exact match is now much more tolerant of minor differences (The/A/An/etc missing) and also searches the alternative titles section too.



• The exact name search is also much more tolerant - providing the surname is only the last word of a name, names can be entered either in our traditional form:
  
  Hitchcock, Alfred
  
  or in the natural order:
  
  Alfred Hitchcock
  Lisa Jane Persky
  
  but watch out for:
  
  Robert De Niro
  
  which still needs to be entered as:
  
  De Niro, Robert



• Most of the page layouts have been redesigned to look better:
  
  
  • the title results page is considerably less cluttered with a separate pages for the external links (reviews, images, official sites etc) and also for the locations information
  
  
  
  • on the ratings page you'll find a copy of the vote menu to help make it easier to vote for movies in the database
  
  
  
  • other pages off the titles page (goofs, trivia, soundtracks etc) have been tidied up for a consistent look and feel
  
  
  
  • the filmography page layout is more compact and people who've worked in different roles by default have a separate filmography for each role (an option to view a combined chronological listing is available)
  
  
  
  • the biography pages have been tidied up and guest appearances in TV series have the titles linked to the details in the database



• all dates in the database have been linked to the corresponding "on this day in movie history" page so you can see what else was happening. The "on this day" page also lists anniversaries of movie releases from around the world



• the statistics page has more detailed information



• notable guest appearances in TV-series as stored in the biographies section are now displayed on the corresponding pages for the TV-series. For an example of this running wild, see: "Seinfeld" (1990)

That covers the major points. If there's anything you'd like to see added, please see the feedback page.

Finally, a huge vote of thanks to Rob Hartill who managed to rewrite the whole interface from scratch in under two months!

Col Needham on behalf of The Internet Movie Database Team