New site features
Posted by Huw,
I've made a few enhancements and changes to the site that I would like to make you aware of:
- 'Fuzzy' searching: You should find that searching for set and minifigure names is now not quite so fussy about spelling and punctuation. For example, searching for 'X Wing' will now return X-Wings and other similarly spelled sets. The feature is not going to be as forgiving as Google's system but it should be an improvement.
- There is a new FAQ/How do I... page that answers many of the questions we are asked via the contact form. It's linked to on the More menu above. It's a work in progress and we will be adding to it and enhancing it in future. If we've missed anything you'd like the answer to, let us know.
- The user-defined collection management flags can now be exported and shared with others. See the 'Sets flagged' section of your My Sets page.
- You can now find the news articles you have liked in the news archive, using a new drop-down selector.
- Want to see what parts you own? There's a new feature available that can be enabled in your profile. See the FAQ fo more information.
- Historical pricing information for Amazon has been removed. The graph of price over time and minimum price is no longer shown. This is to ensure we comply with Amazon Associates' terms of service.
I hope you find the changes useful. I'm always open to suggestions for further improvement, even though my development backlog is pretty long already, so if you have any ideas, let me know!
36 likes
34 comments on this article
"...minimum price is no longer shown. This is to ensure we comply with the Amazon Associates terms of service." Does that mean sites like C-c-c will have to remove some features too?
Thank you for adding the fuzzy search feature.
Shame about the Amazon graphs, found them useful but I can understand why they don't 'comply'.
Like the fuzzy searching
...an already excellent web site keeps getting better. Cheers Huw
"Historical pricing information for Amazon has been removed." Bummer...
It would be awesome if the user-defined collection management flags were selectable in the "my collection" drop-down on the "Shopping for Lego"-page.
I put a random 'h' in x wing so x winhg and it found what I was looking for. Great additiohn (joke selling intended).
^^ that might be possible, I'll add it to the list...
@bacon1986, I don't know. It's possible they license the data by some other means.
Very nice! I like being able to export my flagged sets. I can now get rid of some of my custom queries!
Thanks for the updates and to you and everyone else that helps for running such a fantastic website. It really has been a godsend as I evolve/devolve :-) from my dark ages.
Thankful for the search update.
Thank you very much for showing owned parts. That's very cool and very convenient!
You're welcome, but it's only as useful as the LEGO inventories we use which, as you've probably noticed, aren't much better than a chocolate teapot, which is why I haven't launched the feature with any fanfare.
thanks Huw, I love the new export feature for my sets flagged, and to be able to see the parts I own is a nice and welcome feature
Huw, fully agree. What about a possibility to add loose parts to the personal set inventory? Or would it be too complicated/ too much into "Rebrickable" (which I find not very user friendly BTW) style?
Huw, I think the Fuzzy Searching messed up somethingm now if you search a set number, for example, 76045 and hit enter, the results show everything with that number
@Huw : Thanks for working on my request regarding the user-defined collection flags. Here are some observations regarding limitations of the functionality:
It looks like you have to be signed in for this to work, which I suppose is reasonable. I tried it in a new private browsing window and there are no results. It could be a security/privacy issue, so it makes sense, but might not be obvious as to what happened.
Being signed in means that the user-defined collections flags are displayed according to my names, not the "running as" user's names.
And I appreciate the addition of the FAQ. It's where I went first when reading this article and was glad to find the trade list question listed.
^ and ^^, thanks for the feedback, I'll investigate fully later/in the morning.
Great site addition. Now "bat pod" actually finds the 5004590: Bat-Pod!
It would be nice, though, if it was featured in the list of sets on the results screen - its relevance should surely be higher than the other sets displayed as both search terms are in the title and spelt correctly. To see it you have to click the "View all matching sets" link.
Great work on getting fuzzier searching onto the site, Huw.
A bit of feedback though, based on me searching for my favourite theme - M:Tron (or is that M-Tron, or M Tron, or MTron or…). Unfortunately, only "M-Tron" gives good results still on the site, due to the tag used for the theme being exactly that. A bunch of minifigs are named "M:Tron" something or other, so those show up if you search for "M:Tron", but none of the sets without that explicitly in their name do. Things get worse if you search for "mtron" or "m tron", with things like "Mutation Chamber Unleashed" and "Mia's Lemonade Stand" stand showing up, respectively, but nothing to do with M:Tron, despite the short Levenstein distance.
Obviously you're limited by whatever system you're using to provide the fuzziness, but I felt it would be helpful to make note of the results in this case.
Adding iframe {max-width:100%;} Would be great inside @media only screen and (max-width:767px){}, site suffers on mobile when a post has a video embed.
@TitanArch, there are a couple of issues with the code at the moment. I think I've sorted it on my development machine so will deploy the code in the morning.
@OscarWRG, this should now be sorted.
@NeilCrosby, only set names are fuzzily searched at the moment, to avoid too much complexity. I'm not using anything complex like Levenstein, just good old TSQL difference() :-)
@burkie, will do.
@Huw, yes it is working fine now
@Huw - thanks for the info on what's being used for the fuzziness. That explains why the fuzziness is working the way it is then - TSQL difference uses the Soundex algorithm. Please don't make things more complex on my account - simplicity is good :D
I still got problem with searching "45080 " on the end is space. You have to delete space or you wont get any result, its pretty frustrated when copy and paste ;). I be appreciated for solving that :).
It's a shame about the Amazon pricing. I found that to be incredibly helpful when I would purchase sets.
^^ Will do, the fix will go live tomorrow.
Ah- I thought something was up when I searched "Rogue Shadow" and got a bunch of racers sets, too. Excellent work. :)
Yay! Fuzzy searching!
Otherwise, not gonna get much use out of the rest of these new things.
The loss of historic Amazon pricing data is a bit of a blow for price-concious consumers. It was nice to know whether or not the current deal was much of a deal at all when compared to its past price. I now find myself asking why they don't want us to have this information?
@Huw : cache or quirk bug i. iPad, chrome.
On top it said "showing 1 to 25 of 25", and the Theme filter was populated.
But the actual set listing/table was missing.
Worked fine for owned and wanted, but Flag3 etc is not showing up
Edit: saved a name change to first label, killed chrome and safari, then it showed up with correct name (not Flag3) and got data.
I noticed errors in the log from you and I've just corrected the code concerned so please try again and LMK if it's working for you.
Amazon is cracking down on sites that display it, so if any are showing it now it's unlikely they'll be doing so for much longer.
@Huw : edited the post and didn't see response until now, but it works like a charm (again) now. Great way to split owned from unbuilt, and must have from pick up at sale in the listings.
On a different but similar tip...thanks for updating mobile Brick by Brick app. No longer have to open up Safari on phone to see the pics / remainder of app. Massive improvement; thanks! One wee bug sees the page jump to the top when you scroll down quickly, but it's worth it to see everything in the one place. Good work :)
Thanks, Huw! The fuzzy search is going to be very handy, and I'm particularly pleased about the FAQ as it addresses some stuff I'd been trying to figure out!