Lists: Edit list enhancement requests

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled List management.

I think  IMDB should enable the possibility of changing the elements in our private lists by mouse movement . Typying any number to change their position is very exhausting.

I agree that dragging to reorder lists should be restored.  I don't understand why IMDb removed this capabilty in its recent wide spread revision of the website.

https://vimeo.com/265873386

That's from an early beta of a Chrome extension I built. It's in limbo right now because manipulating IMDb's complicated new pages is not easy and there's no point in finishing the extension if IMDb are going to add the features back themselves.

I have no idea what's going on and uncertainty breeds inertia.

Don't understand why this is taking so long. Must be permanent holiday time at IMDB

'E' is needed faster than ASAP, like yesterday. Gone in a flash, months later promised but not delivered.

I'm looking at your list of features as more or less a roadmap for ILMg.

(A) should be achievable but it will require a new layer of code because it'll require AJAX calls when I'm currently only dealing with DOM events. One of those things that's easy to deal with on the server side and not easy on the other side.

(B) not too sure what some of these mean because I've only ever made title lists. (B.2) just seems like a quirk that IMDb has always had -- it would be difficult to fix with a browser extension and I'm not convinced it's worth the effort (never been more than a minor inconvenience to me in the past). (B.3) should be trivial. In fact, I'll look at adding it today. Should the search open in a new page/tab or the same?

(C.1) is obviously already done. (C.2) is simulated to the best of my ability using the "jump to list controls" feature. The workflow becomes: check item -> jump to controls -> delete. It's hardly "one click", I agree, but it's a hell of a lot better than scrolling. I would also argue that true "one click" delete with no confirmation is a bad idea. I lost some great comment writing thanks to the old system. At least my current workflow feels somewhat intentional. (C.3) could be fairly easy now that I've cracked IMDb's DOM event system -- it's certainly something I would like to add and will look at today.

(D) I'm very happy with the current default but my ideal would be for ILMg to allow an arbitrary number of items per page. That is probably the single hardest feature request from the client side though. I'd love to do it but it's not in my current plans.

(E) would require much the same tricky coding as (D). If I ever solve one, I could probably solve the other rather quickly. But given that I would personally use neither feature, it would take a considerable amount of external motivation to encourage me to do either.

(F) I hadn't read your topic when I created ILMg but as you can see, I read your mind with the floating menu. Cloning the pagination at the top/controls at the bottom turned out to be harder than expected because my clones weren't receiving the correct DOM events. If I figure out what they are, I can hook my own elements up to those event handlers. In the meantime, perhaps I should add a "Jump to list bottom" (not sure of name?) that will effectively do what you want: provide easy access to both control regions from anywhere on the page. (F.4) can be done pretty easily, I would imagine.

The only planned feature not included here is a little element that appears after you change a position textbox value and then hover over it. The little box that appears tells you the name of the film that you're going to displace in the new position given.

B, C and F are the only ones likely to make it into any early public releases of ILMg. But 50% isn't bad compared to the 0% you're likely to get from IMDb.

ILMg update 1

Added "Open all results" option to the bottom results list attached to the "add new item" textbox.

In this example, clicking on the new option opens the following page in a new foreground tab:
https://www.imdb.com/find?q=terror&s=tt

ILMg update 2

• Pressing enter in a position textbox automatically enables the checkbox for that item and then triggers the "update list order" event.
• New toolbar button that jumps to the "add a new film" section.
• New toolbar button that fires the "update list order" event with a single click.
• Toggling Compact View now always puts the item closest to the top of one view at the top of the other (instead of generally preferring the next item down). Note: This lovely smooth transition between views doesn't happen automatically! I had to code an algorithm to do it. By default, you could be hovering around position 20 when you activate Compact View and then end up closer to 100! ILMg is full of tiny (often unnoticeable to the untrained eye) UX enhancements like this.
• Upgraded some of the technical stuff: swapped out the inefficient and deprecated DOM3 mutation event listeners for MutationObservers. Since IMDb's pages are already slow as dick and some people apparently struggle to use the new list editor properly on old hardware, ILMg has to be fairly well optimised.
• Fixed regression bug that enabled all list controls except "change order" after a drag and drop operation. Some controls listen for "change" and others listen for "keydown". ILMg now consistently fires both.
  

A public beta should be available this month.

ILMg update 3

Redesigned the control panel/toolbar thingy to add a bunch of features while also making it smaller. On the far left and right are pagination controls. With the additional buttons, it feels like you can do pretty much anything from anywhere on the page. :)

ILMg update 4

Self-explanatory video: https://vimeo.com/268239826

Another big extra feature that IMDb never had. The box only comes up if the position you're moving to is on another page allowing you to easily double-check your movements.

ILMg update 5

Latest showcase: https://vimeo.com/268535192

• Even though I've never made a People list and have no interest in doing so, I've confirmed that ILMg works with those lists. But Image lists will be incompatible indefinitely.
• "Save order" button is unavailable until there's actually a changed order to save.
• Placeholder now has a blue mark next to it -- a minor cosmetic change but one that makes drag & drop a better experience.
• Adding a new item whilst in compact view now reverts the view to normal. This is necessary because of how the code works. Fortunately, in my opinion, it's also the logical behaviour.
• Further code optimisations. Minimising jQuery calls as they're expensive.
• I've decided that ticking all boxes between the old position and new position after a move operation is useful behaviour even if it's unnecessary. It allows for simplifying range deletion: move the first item you want to delete to the position after the last item you want to delete and then it's a one click operation. Not sure how often it'll be useful but there's also no harm in doing it.
• Due to the slow speed of AJAX requests, the modal dialogue showing which item will be displaced from another page is activated by using the shift key inside the position textbox.

I feel a first release coming soon!

PLEASE return drag & drop. Lists are USELESS. For me IMDB is useless.