Collapsing all items in the people, groups, places side bar?

[rob]

Originally Posted by adzling

Well saving folder states in the side bar can't be a technical challenge....so I guess your comment was re: web-view?

Nope. I was referring to the desktop. And I'm not going to delve into all the complexities involved here. I already pointed out the complications from custom views and there are others. You are welcome to not believe me, but wishing something doesn't necessarily make it so. You're drawing conclusions based on assumptions, and some of those assumptions simply aren't valid.

[MNBlockHead]

"Waste of time", gheesh. Having a bad day? While the player view may not meet the desires of many, there are people who are buying, using, and happy with it.

For my players, I don't know that they will even bother going to Web view when it is available and I'm not going to demand that they do homework to play in my games. Most of my players want to show up and enjoy a game once a month. I start each session with a summary of the last session, remind them of important things that they may have forgot about but that their characters would know and care about, and will answer questions about past encounters if they ask.

That doesn't mean that the Player's Version or Web Version are a waste of time. Lot's of other people want this.

[adzling]

MNblockhead It's a waste of time for our table.
Should I follow all my comments with "ymmv"?

It's waste of time for us because it requires Windows and has no real-time updating.

From liz's comments in another thread it sounds like the web version (with cloud subscription & player edition purchase) will do most of what we need Realmworks to do for our players at table and between sessions (manage players hand-outs).

So yay!

Here's hoping they get it sometime soon.

And yeah clearly I don't understand why setting a flag that records a folder state is problematic/ complicated Rob. So I'll just sit here and quietly await the web version.

[kbs666]

Originally Posted by adzling

And yeah clearly I don't understand why setting a flag that records a folder state is problematic/ complicated Rob. So I'll just sit here and quietly await the web version.

It's not one set of flags. The global almanac is simply one view into the DB. There is some large, effectively unlimited number of such views possible. If they start storing view state between session for each it requires storing the state for each. Which is doable but is resource intensive. The question is, is the hit in performance, it would take longer to initially display each realm and longer to switch/create a new view, and the bloat in the DB worth it. It seems LWD has concluded that it isn't.

I think the solution is to leverage views so that you are working on, and therefore viewing, a small enough subset of your realm that having it all open at once is not an issue.

[adzling]

Well I've worked with databases before that remember the last state they were viewed in.

However I definitely do not know the minutiae of how Realmworks works or is built/ engineered.

[MNBlockHead]

Originally Posted by kbs666

I think the solution is to leverage views so that you are working on, and therefore viewing, a small enough subset of your realm that having it all open at once is not an issue.

Well, if we could create a lot more views, I might accept this as a solution. But we are currently limited to seven views.

When views were first released, I was excited and started creating views for different regions of my campaign world. I quickly used up the seven available views.

I ended up deleting the views and stopped using them until recently. I now use them to create game-session views. I usually only have a single custom view for the current game session.

When creating content, however, I tend to jump around and will have multiple tabs open and I try to apply search filters where appropriate. But I still frequently find myself needing to browse through the hierarchy in the side bar.

I would love to have persistent collapse and expand states. But I've learned that this might not be practical.

I would still like to set a default collapse state. Personally, I would prefer to dig in rather than have everything open. I'm guessing most people would rather have everything expanded and scroll up and down. A preference option would be nice.

But the most useful would be filter-as-you-type functionality. So I can start typing in the search bar and as I type "gob" I'll see articles on goblins, goblets, and once I get to "gobli" I'll just see the goblins article. That said, I'm guessing that this can be resource intensive. Evernote offers this functionality and frequently freezes for a short amount of time while typing your search. That can be frustrating when you have a long word or phrase to search for and you have to keep waiting for the search to catch up to your typing.

If the search-as-you-type only included the topic/article titles rather than searching the entire content, that might be a good functionality vs. performance compromise.

[adzling]

Same here, I think the larger your realm/ more content the more useful it is to have everything start collapsed.

Originally Posted by MNBlockHead

I would still like to set a default collapse state. Personally, I would prefer to dig in rather than have everything open. I'm guessing most people would rather have everything expanded and scroll up and down. A preference option would be nice.

[Grey Mage]

I have to agree... starting with everything collapsed would be a MAJOR help.

I have several thousand topics already (which are part of several dozen categories) and that is in just the Mechanics section. There are approximately 25 thousand spells (counting 3rd party and legacy [3.5] publishers). Feats are around 5 thousand or so. Wondrous Items and monsters I have no idea yet (haven't started inputting them save for a few dozen needed for ongoing quests). Bottom line is that taking the time to close all those categories, sub-categories etc is time consuming and a lot of mouse clicks

So a collapse everything button would be much appreciated. IF it can be done without taking too much time from other development.

Ultimately, from where I sit, RW is evolving weekly into an amazing campaign tool, and though I find it difficult; time and patience will probably see most if not all of our issues resolved.

[davidp]

Originally Posted by Grey Mage

Bottom line is that taking the time to close all those categories, sub-categories etc is time consuming and a lot of mouse clicks

So a collapse everything button would be much appreciated. IF it can be done without taking too much time from other development.

Have you tried the collapse all keystroke? Pressing and holding Control and then pressing the hyphen (-) key?

See this image:
CollapseAll.png

[Grey Mage]

David,

Yes I do use that... but it does not work on Categories (for example) when you open the Container pane. It does work on sub elements but not the categories.

I believe people (like myself) want a way of closing everything and then just opening the 3 or 4 categories, subelements, etc. that they need for the moment.