May 2021 Update

Hey collectors! Welcome to the May 2021 update for MTG CB.

Current Site

First, the current site caught up on The List, Prerelease Promos, Retailer Promos, and Secret Lair Ultimate Edition, rounding out 251 new cards in the MTG CB database.

I also put in some extra love for the current site, implementing quick-win features while we wait for the new site to release. There were a few bug fixes, along with a "Hide Table" button added at the bottom of tables on the main collection view which automatically scrolls the user back up to the top of the set box as it closes the table up. This saves a lot of vertical scrolling and was a great suggestion!

I often have to shut down feature requests for the current site in favor of working on the new site, but it's always nice to find a suggestion that's quick and provides value to many users.

Additionally, I've started working on my backlog of folder spine and cover requests. While I originally made these folders just for my collection, requests have been pouring in for the remaining sets and these are now unofficially also a part of MTG Collection Builder. :) These are great to work on while I'm between tasks or waiting for a test suite to execute.

(Is there a particular folder missing that you'd like? Patrons get priority on these -- feel free to let me know!)

In May, we gained 341 new users. That's about ten new users per day! 🎉

New Site

While I've been continuing to work on adding additional filters to the new image gallery view, I've started work on the table views for the new site as well.

The current tables on the current version of the site are OK, but they have a few drawbacks:

- The text is very small.
- The color scheme could be better.
- Hovering over the card name to see an image on hover is awkward.
- While logged in, the buttons to add/remove cards from the site are fairly small. This isn't great for my tablet users.
- They weren't designed for some features coming down the pipeline, like being able to mark card locations and conditions for individual cards -- they need the ability to trigger a dropdown to reveal each individual card instance.
- They're not customizable -- you can't show/hide specific columns.
- They're not paginated.
- They don't support exporting to .csv or .pdf.

I've been iterating on the UI design and table libraries to address the above. I'll most likely go with React Table as that's been a pleasure to work with in my prototypes.

Once I have a look and feel that I'm happy with, I'll be sharing a preview video of them so I can solicit feedback from my awesome Patrons and then move on to the next milestones for a v1.0 release!

Personal Life

My day job workload started off light but drastically picked up toward the second half of May. I did have an opportunity to take a four day vacation which was fantastic, along with the three day Memorial Day weekend.

I also got the chance to play in a four-player Jumpstart event. I, uh, don't recommend "Spooky Milling" as an archetype. Was still a blast!

MTG Arena has been featuring better and better content for Limited players, and I somehow qualified for Day 2 of The Arena Open!

I immediately scrubbed out at 1-2, but it was still a great experience. :)

Conclusion

It's been very satisfying to work on the UI and UX for the new MTG CB as I've been coding it along. I love the current MTG CB, but it wasn't a "top-down design" so much as a "hey let's see if we can get this idea to work" -- and it did! But it can be so much better.

I hope that the effort going into the new interfaces shows as we near an alpha, beta, and release.

As always, feel free to reach out with any questions, comments, feature requests, board game recommendation requests, whatever! You can do so via email at brian@mtgcb.com, via Patreon, the Facebook page, our Discord, however works best for you.

Thank you for your support!

P.S. Opting Out Of Emails

If you're like me and suffer from email Inbox fatigue, you can always opt out of these emails notifications for any Patreon creators that you support by heading over to https://www.patreon.com/settings/email -- I keep updates once a month in order to not spam you. :)