It would be good if the tag function could be extended a bit. I like using tags to represent subgenres and themes. I have a few ideas in mind.

1. Allow you to filter *against* tags. From what I can see you can only filter for tags.

2. Be able to filter by more than just 2 tags.

3. A better way to see all of your applied tags. Some people (like me) may apply a lot, and the scroll-down list can get pretty populated quick. Some method of organisation might be useful, either in another tab where you can see them and click through them.

Thank you very much for your suggestions, but I'm afraid I won't be able to please you

3 would break the way the filtered search currently works.

I have the same issue with 1. It's currently possible to make negative filtering of the genres, the chosen solution works fine because there are not a lot of genres. But in the case of many many tags, that would be an awful solution.

Regarding 2, you must indeed be using a lot of tags because I normally consider 2 tag filters to be well enough for most uses.

Admittedly 2 is mostly good. Being able to filter /against/ is probably a more useful use for people who might wish to structure Collector into a database.

I imagine this is primarily a layout issue, right?

Absolutely. I'd like the filtered search to stay simple, i.e. just a bunch of filters with drop down values...

Maybe if you can point me to an interface somewhere that has solved the negative filtering in an elegant manner, I could draw inspiration from it.

In a few versions, I will add the ability to save your most useful searches, to later apply them more easily by simply clicking from a list of saved searches (organized into folders).

Hopefully that new feature will come close enough to what you suggested.

Maybe I have a solution... When you'd add a genre filter or a tag filter, you'd be asked if you want the filter to be normal or if you want it to have NOT values.

Yeah, My mind was having the dropdown list displaying "tag1", "tag2" and then "NOT:tag" or "NOT:tag2" rather than them being in the same filter like with genres. That might work also too.

Honestly, making it work as a search field rather than a drop-down list might well be useful too - but with conditions being able to be applied like NOT or AND or OR. I realise that'd be a departure from how your system works now of course, but if applied it'd be cool to also do that for Country filters too (there are a lot of countries lol).

Sorry, I don't understand... Not in the same filter unlike with genres? How?



A search field is out of question. It'd be so weird to combine search fields with combo boxes. Also doing a search with boolean operators would repel the less savvy users.

What I meant was that you click a filter now and see "Tag1" and "Tag2". You'd also have "NOTTag1" and "NOTTag2" which deal with tags - just in reverse. Just one way.

But your idea for a choice that comes up when you choose genre or tag is better.




Well, okay. I can't currently think of a specific system that does negative filtering that works in line with how Collector does currently. Most of them use search boxes for it, booleans and such.

Like the genres? I thought you were saying it would be different from the genres, I must have misread you.

This is what I meant. Made in about 3 seconds:

https://imgur.com/wVrZKTl

But your idea of a prompt asking the user if they mean to filter for or against is fine too.

Thanks for the picture, now I understand. Not a fan...

Yeah, your idea is better

Also, an idea that's just come to me. You see this screen:

https://i.imgur.com/Mssn00v.png

Currently if you click it, you get to edit the tags again - which makes sense. But I wonder if it's possible for a left-click to do something different. Would be interesting if that text could work with the filter. So in that instance if I clicked "Anthology" there, it would add a tag filter or over overwrite a currently active tag filter with "Anthology".

There's another program that kinda works like that for doing this, uh, it's called "Eric's Movie Database" I believe.

Again, this is a small thing and may actually not even be possible. Just a thought.

Thanks for the suggestion, I add it to my (long) todo list.