I haven't forgotten about the long-delayed Collection page revamp, but I've been spinning my wheels a bit and wanted to try and spark up the conversation again. The way I'm approaching this is that it's a complete rewrite of the page, so anything is possible...unless it greatly impacts the data model, then maybe not

First off, here are the high-level enhancements that had previously been discussed:

• Ability to customize the columns that are displayed when using the "list" view
• Providing a "simple" view that would greatly reduce row height to increase the # of items on the screen at a time
• Ability to save filters so you can quickly apply them
• Using the customized views and saved filters, you should be able to set a default for each
• Move the filters in such a way that they're available at all times and take up less space
• Show additional information on the "flipped" side of an item when using the "shelf" view
• When using the "list" view, allow games to be grouped together if you own multiple copies of it
• Bulk editing of various elements
• Providing most (if not all) features in an intuitive way on mobile devices

Of course, in addition to the above enhancements, we'll also retain some of the basic functionality that we have today like sorting, filtering, quick editing, etc. I'm certainly open to more feedback in regards to the more basic operations since again, I'm treating this as a rewrite, but my main focus is to iron out the "bigger" enhancements like those mentioned above.

Using the items above, I'll now briefly touch on the challenges that I will encounter once development begins.

Customizing Columns

What can I say, this is a pretty large change Way back before I wrote a single line of code, this was one of the features I had in the long-term plan for Completionator. This would be a huge differentiator against other collection / backlog tracking sites, but my main hesitation is....will anyone use it? There are lots of fields you can enter on items in your collection, but only a very small subset of users take advantage of them. I've toyed with the idea of instead of having a full customization feature, allow the site to provide different "views" (poor name, I know, but bear with me hehe) that would result in different columns being displayed. I thought perhaps you could have things like "collector" view, "gamer" view, "digital gamer" view, etc. You would be able to switch these at any time and they would work very similar to the current Quick Filters dropdown. I'm not sure this is the best approach, I'm just throwing it out as a potentially easier option that can still achieve the same (or similar) effect as a full-blown customization feature.

Simple View

This is a deceptively difficult nut to crack since it's highly dependent on the column customization decision and will basically require me to bust up the "tower" of buttons for Quick Edit, Set Lists, etc, as well as the toggle buttons on the far right. But overall, this one should be pretty easy...once everything else is figured out.

Saving Filters

This is a fairly straight-forward task, but it will take a bit of development time. The weirdness with this one comes into play when you're trying to save a set of filters. For example, if you load a set you had previously saved, then let's say you entered a new filter or took one away. If you go to save that "new" set, should it save as NEW set or update the one you had just loaded? This will pretty much require a dedicated UI (and not just a dropdown) since you'll need to enter / edit a name, delete, etc. Once the wacky UI stuff is figured out, it's actually pretty simple to save the filters and apply them

Default Views / Filters

There's not much to say on this one as it's not even possible until other items are figured. But it should be pretty simple.

Optimize Filter Display

The way filters are currently displayed is a bit of a mess. It was even worse before I hid half of them under the Advanced Filters section. So it could desperately use some help I think @Marcelloz had an idea for pinning it to the side so it's always displayed and I like that idea and have done something similar in a UI before, but this site has A LOT of filters, so it might be tricky.

Additional "Flipped" Info

This is a super easy one, all we need to do is finalize a list of data to be displayed and I can add it.

Grouping Games

Ah, now this is a tough one. This has been a highly requested feature over the years and the main issue is that our data model simply doesn't line up with it. To recap, the issue here is let's say you own Soul Reaver on GOG, Steam, and Dreamcast. Currently, you would see three distinct rows of data when viewing your collection for Soul Reaver. The change here would be that Soul Reaver would get one "main" row, but allow you to drill in or otherwise view the individual "instances" (i.e. the three rows you currently see). Where this gets difficult is that each of the "instances" needs its own Quick Edit, Set Lists, etc. buttons, as well as its own cells to display data like platform, added on, etc. There isn't anything in the data model today that allows you to track data at the aforementioned "main" level. To make matter worse, this only applies to games that you have multiple copies of, so however we display these "multiple" games also needs to apply to "single" games. I'm definitely struggling with this one, but I'd love to get it implemented. Oh and it's a very large change and highly, HIGHLY dependent on the column customization item.

Bulk Editing

Hey look, I've actually worked on this one! You can currently bulk edit the backlogged flag and tags for games, so now it's just a matter of identifying other fields that make sense to be bulk edited and wiring them up.

Mobile Support

Depending on how crazy we get with the above changes, this one becomes more and more difficult. For example, column customization would likely need to be removed from mobile due to its complexity and the presumed infrequent usage of it on the go.

Next Steps

So there you have it, all of the potential enhancements that are on my radar! This is by no means to be considered a final list or anything. I don't know if all of these will make it in and there might very well be other items that aren't on this list that will be included in the rewrite. I'm definitely ready to get moving on this, so my next step is to try and put together a gaming night / discussion like we have in the past to really nail things down. Anyone interested in this? If so, how does 9/16 sound? It's short notice, so we can postpone if necessary. I'm just ready to get started finally

Things are slowing down here too (finally!) so I will make myself available for any meetings you wanna have to discuss design and direction stuff. Looking forward to it :)

Ah, the collection page... I long for the day that I don't see 007 Legends at the top of the list when loading that page

Good set of additions, so just some remarks :
- Customizing columns; Perhaps best to provide a set of fixed views + one that you can customize the way you want. You can optimize those fixed ones for view (like displaying 2 fields beneath each other, or grouped etc), the custom one is just ... rows of fields.
- saving filters : just filter and present a 'save filter' button. In a model a user can select an existing one to overwrite or save it to a new filter.
- Filter display : my suggestion once was using filters / facets at the left hand side to quickly filter out what you want. Something like https://www.amazon.com/gp/goldbox/ref=nav_cs_gb or something like this (right hand side) http://preview.codecanyon.net/item/woof-woocommerce-products-filter/full_screen_preview/11498469?_ga=2.178244901.1000117374.1505069589-894231628.1505069589. You loose some of the width but can filter a whole lot faster.
- grouping games, indeed one I would like. I think your line of thought is sound. Treat every game in a collection as a main game, except the one's that have more that one entry. Just pick one (to begin with) and display that 'main' row. The others are hidden and have internally a reference to the main one. That way you know you don't have to display them (by default). Of course you should have an option to switch the main entry. Or have an option to display all. Now the main challenge is what to display on the main row. I would like to see all the different platforms I have a game on. Perhaps by using different colors or shades indicate what the 'main' entry is and what the other are. You should also see how many entries (instances) you have. (I think that such information should be added to the main record internally to avoid unneccessary calculations\counts\etc but that just technical stuff hehe)
- Bulk edit is great as it is right now, just keep adding :)

I'll keep an eye on this thread the coming days.

@dhobo - How is your schedule looking for 9/16? Is that too soon? If so, what day would be good for you to (re)kick things off?

I'm good with Saturday. What time you thinking?

Cool, I should be available pretty much anytime tomorrow evening. It seems like we've done 7:00pm EST in the past, does that work for you?

Sounds good!

I don't know if what I'm seeing now is the 'revamped collection page', but I find the new view far less pleasing than what it was.

I'm seeing lots of field names that I don't use for most of my games
(Region: Type: Purchase Source: Date: Paid: Est. Value: Cart/Disc: Box/Case: Manual: Extras: )

Yet all the info that was plain to see that I DO use: - a big field with my own notes in full view next to the game thumbnail, - an icon for difficulty, - the percentage of completion, - a column listing what status the game has (playing, backlogged, completed etc.) are all gone or minimalized to a point it's hard to get an overview!

What's happening?

@Dub Conqueror - I know not everyone is going to be pleased with the change at first, but we tried to keep as much of the old data displayed while adjusting everything to better accommodate the new "minimal" layout that has been highly requested for some time. We're hoping that any unfamiliarity with the changes will be alleviated as people poke around and re-familiarize themselves with things. You can mouse over several of the icons that lack descriptive text that will give you a pop-up describing the icon's function.

All of the elements that you used previously are still there, save the progress bar. It occupied a large amount of real estate while being severely under-utilized by the vast majority of users. Essentially almost everyone either had 0 or 100 there which was auto-set with their game completion status (which is now represented by the coloured banners.) If you haven't made use of it yet, I would highly recommend checking out the playthrough and goal functionality which is very well suited for keeping track of your game progress as an alternative.

Regarding 'unnecessary' data being shown: This site accommodates a large variety of collectors/trackers, and while it may not be important to you, that information is important to many of them. We're still investigating potential methods for separating that info in a way that can be more pleasing to everyone, but this is just the first (well, second round now) of testing to get feedback.

So on that note, thanks for the initial feedback, as we're still working on it!

I actually really like some of the changes in the new page but I have to agree that there are a lot of data (Source: Est. Value: Cart/Disc: Box/Case: Manual: Extras:) that I NEVER use so it would be nicer if there was a way to hide it (like in Goodreads). There is also data that I'm actually REALLY interested in that isn't being displayed there at all such as the date of my first completion of a certain game or the total time between al completions of a certain game (It would also be cool if you had a section in the Profile page that tells you how much time in total you have between all completions from all games).

On other notes I really liked the different icons for each difficulty (the cake and all that) and I thought it was a way nicer way to see how hard a game was than a mere boring number. Further on that I think all the icons are better off with color so that way they also tell you the value of that which they are representing and not everything is so grey. This is what I mean: https://gyazo.com/f0671bf710cfd24f93949079a8b36a1d (the numbers could be either overlapping the icons or below them, and the colors don't have to be those I just took the ones that are usually used for easy-to-hard style ratings (again I really liked the cake and all those ones)).

Just to finish I would like to point out that when I sort my games by something (eg: difficulty) I would like to always see the games that don't have data the last no matter if it's sorted from higher to lower or the other way around (because if I sort my games from lowest rating to highest I get a thousand pages of unrated games first).

I'm really happy you're updating and improving the page so frequently so keep up the hard work!

@dhobo: Thanks for the explanation for choices made. I'll take some time some time (right now I'm busy resting from a lot of work) to familiarize myself the playthrough and goal functionality, I'll check if that suits my need.

It would be a nice thing if the site had customizable columns or you could choose what items are shown, but I won't know if that is feasible at all, maybe it would involve way too much effort, I'm assuming you do this work voluntarily, so I don't want to ask the impossible.

@Zaidel - It's not the most elegant solution, but for now you could enable the filter option to only show games with a difficulty rating so it won't display the blank rating ones when sorting lowest to highest.

@Dub Conqueror This site is and always has been moho_00's baby.

I'm just a fellow user like yourself who enjoys using the site enough that I try to help out with the layouts and design of pages that moho_00 wants to tackle next for updating/improvement.

As @dhobo touched on, when we looked at reworking this page, we tried to identify the features that the majority of users were utilizing and that was one of the main factors in determining how we handled certain pieces of data. The progress % metric was primarily used to indicate 0% or 100% (the latter of which is automatically set when you change your progress status). This was actually one of the very first fields I added to collection entries, but over time, the site has evolved and now has much better and more accurate ways of tracking progress (the playthroughs / goals functionality that @dhobo mentioned). Unfortunately, that means the progress % usage has been declining even further and it was hard to justify giving it a spot over other things that were previously missing, such as condition info. I'm not trying to pick on progress % here, just trying to expand on why certain elements were removed or minimized.

That being said, one of the goals I had with this revamp was to provide some customization. I originally thought this would be with columns in a standard table layout (like the old page and pretty much the rest of the site), but the minimized view (which was also very important to the community) made that tricky, so we opted for a non-standard sort of table layout. With some extra room to work with in the expanded view (and no longer constrained by table columns), we were able to fit just about everything that was in the old view, plus more data. Sure, some of it was minimized (like the now playing, backlogged, and strategy guide buttons turning into toggle icons), but I think the only casualties were the aforementioned progress % and ownership status (which previously had its own column is barely used across the board). The Avg. Completion Time element is actually an oversight on my part as it should be in the new layout. I had it in there in the initial revamp release as an icon, but I must've left it out when implementing the first round of feedback. It will be making a return

But anyways, after we were able to find a home for pretty much everything that we wanted to show on the initial release, there really wasn't any reason to provide customization as it could all be displayed at once. But in doing so, I think I overlooked the importance of being able to NOT view certain things that aren't important to an individual as I was more focused on providing all the things ever hehe

Providing the option to exclude certain elements when viewing your collection is a pretty easy thing for me to add, so long as it's an "all or none" kinda thing with each "pillar" of data (ex. the four condition values). As long as the pillars are grouped appropriately (and I think they are at the moment), this should be a reasonable approach, I think. One issue with being able to exclude certain elements is that the expanded view is going to be awfully empty if you hide a pillar or two. I can always add more pillars to choose from, but if it gets to a point where you have to scroll through pillars (kinda like how the carousel stuff works on the Home page for bounties), things get a lot more complicated and potentially slower as I have more data to crawl through. It's all a balancing act

So given all that, what sort of data elements aren't showing up now that you'd like to see? I know a few have been mentioned, but before adding much here, I'd like to give everyone a chance to chime in and then I can see what's feasible and how we could organize it on the screen. I'm certainly open to having a Discord chat or something in the near future if anyone is interested in talking through this (and maybe play some games too!)

EDIT The Avg. Time icon / metric will be returning in the next release (sometime this weekend). Things look a little dicey on lower resolutions as I haven't fully optimized them yet, but it's at least back. I'm not sure it'll stay an icon, but I wanted to get it out there.

@Zaidel - I added a new metric to the Completions Search page that shows how much time you've entered across the completions that show up in the results

Also, I modified the difficulty and rating sorting options on the Collection page so if you choose one of those, the ones that don't have the corresponding element will always be on the bottom of the results (regardless of sort direction). This is sort of a test run for this type of functionality, so let me know what you guys think!