Magic: The Gathering card search "startup" | Hacker News Reader

Magic: The Gathering card search "startup"

mtgcauldron.com

4 pointsblinks11 comments

Well this is something I feel extremely qualified to comment on. Since I do a Magic the Gathering podcast/site at http://www.mananation.com

You're getting into a very cramped space. You're competing with the game maker who has a card search, card vendors have search, some better than others, and then there are the other outlets which provide card search.

Right now, your search is extremely limited and the results are underwhelming.

The UI needs a lot of work. It looks like the site fails to load with the search at the top and a banner under it. There's nothing on the default page. Secondly, aside from the domain, there's no Magic the gathering symbols or graphics.

Your search results need card images, and it needs information which makes me need to use your database. Why shouldn't I go to Gatherer.wizards.com or MagicCards.info?

I'm indeed grateful for the criticism. I know of Gatherer, and can't stand it. I've used Essential Magic for some time, but it's slow and clunky. MagicCards.info is also good, but limited in its one-box search.

I built Cauldron as a sort-of Google for Magic. Because of this, all the power is in the search box. It can do all the searches that any other application can do, and has all cards, so I'm not sure what you mean by "limited" and "underwhelming." Perhaps an example?

I've been focusing on the backend, mostly, and I concur with the UI complaint -- I'm working on a module where I can start getting articles up on the front page, but for now, there's nothing there because nothing needs to be -- I'm not selling anything, etc.

The cards themselves currently link to the MagicCards.info card detail site as a stop-gap. I plan to get that information, as well as the kinds of information in Essential Magic, to make my own card detail pages.

As I say, my only excuse is that right now it's set up purely as a card search site -- by the way, did you see http://mtgcauldron.com/help/ ?

I hadn't seen the help page. That info needs to be on the frontpage, otherwise a new viewer has no idea how your search works. There's no intuitiveness to your search system. That's not a dish, it's an observation.

If you want to email me for more feedback or if you'd like to discuss ideas, trickXmananation.com (X=@)

I don't think you're in the same ballpark as the standard bearers.

There's WOTC themselves: http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/index.aspx?

And these guys have a pretty good search too: http://magiccards.info/query/cards/3529389.html

No need for another wheel, especially a square one.

Could you give some useful criticism? I know of both these searches, and I'm not a fan of the "let a thousand input-boxes bloom" search mentality.

This search is just as powerful (if not more) as these two, if you search for what you're thinking about. See http://mtgcauldron.com/help/ for examples.

Your help page throws an error.

Yeah, sorry about that -- working to fix some of the criticisms here and caused errors for a while. Should be ok now.

Also, I think I'll need to move the help to the front page. Something to work on this weekend. Thanks again for taking a look.

Make your engine search-as-you-type and you're onto something. Don't hide your searchbox up on the top right-- I couldn't find it on my wide screen.

Seemed fine enough once I started getting results, but I'd center/leftify the search box and make it search-as-you-type because you're filtering on a known set of data.

Search-as-you-type would indeed be good for prefix data, but the search box itself checks quite a bit -- one-word searches are regularly in the 1,000-card range. I'll look into it, though; I agree that it would improve things.

My UI is terrible, I know. "Leftify" is a great term, btw. Do you think it's visible enough from the header, or should I move it down?

As for "known set of data," the query language is a full, SQL-like language (including compiler to SQL). This is another issue with the search-as-you-type, but compiling an 80-character (ish) search and getting a few results back should be quick and easy, so I'll see what I can do.

Also, did you notice the sorting option, or was it too hidden?

Doing an autocomplete for that is no problem. Just use YUI autocomplete and set up a remote JSON data source.

That's what we do, and we have millions of names to complete: http://www.trailbehind.com

Here's the YUI library: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/autocomplete/

I can send you the code for my autocomplete widget if you want. Email me at andrewljonson [at] trailbehind [dot] com

Thanks for the link -- I'll take a look. It'll be much more useful when I have dedicated card pages.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com