05-07-2015, 09:04 PM
While working on something Charm asked about a while ago, I was looking, again, at the get_cat.php page which provides the web-side functionality behind the Dock and the short- and long-term Magic Menagerie bottles.
A recurring request has been for the ability to view the entire Menagerie listing.
In addition, the long-term Menagerie is unfair, and of limited use, since it only has any use at all to those breeders who were active prior to the inception of the feature. And, then, only if the breeded avoids retrieving a third cat from that long-term Menagerie. The unfairness increases with each day, and the usefulness decreases.
It seems to me that the m=2 version (long-term Menagerie) of get_cat.php should be deprecated and, eventually, eliminated.
Instead, I propose an m=3 version of the page with the following adjustments:
1) No in-world component. The page can NOT be used to retrieve any cats.
2) ALL Menagerie cats be listed.
3) Since the listing can be quite long, rather than sending potentially thousands of cats, send them in blocks of 500 or 1000 and add a page= query parameter which selects the block. User interaction buttons "Next Page" and "Previous Page" would allow 'scrolling' through the blocks.
My belief is, except for point 3 (which is really not necessary, but only there to limit bandwidth and processing requirements), the changes required to the get_cat.php page to support the feature are quite minor.
With these changes, the oft-recurring, long-standing request to be able to review one's Menagerie would be satisfied while maintaining the company's apparent desire (which seems quite reasonable, when you think on it) to dis-allow wide-spread retrieval from the long-term Menagerie.
A recurring request has been for the ability to view the entire Menagerie listing.
In addition, the long-term Menagerie is unfair, and of limited use, since it only has any use at all to those breeders who were active prior to the inception of the feature. And, then, only if the breeded avoids retrieving a third cat from that long-term Menagerie. The unfairness increases with each day, and the usefulness decreases.
It seems to me that the m=2 version (long-term Menagerie) of get_cat.php should be deprecated and, eventually, eliminated.
Instead, I propose an m=3 version of the page with the following adjustments:
1) No in-world component. The page can NOT be used to retrieve any cats.
2) ALL Menagerie cats be listed.
3) Since the listing can be quite long, rather than sending potentially thousands of cats, send them in blocks of 500 or 1000 and add a page= query parameter which selects the block. User interaction buttons "Next Page" and "Previous Page" would allow 'scrolling' through the blocks.
My belief is, except for point 3 (which is really not necessary, but only there to limit bandwidth and processing requirements), the changes required to the get_cat.php page to support the feature are quite minor.
With these changes, the oft-recurring, long-standing request to be able to review one's Menagerie would be satisfied while maintaining the company's apparent desire (which seems quite reasonable, when you think on it) to dis-allow wide-spread retrieval from the long-term Menagerie.