Changelog: Big Performance Upgrades

The Jolly Balloon Man commander page rocking the new additions to the filters sidebar

Hello there, it's GGards again, EDHREC designer and dev, and new member of The Jolly Balloon Man Enjoyer Club. We're here with another development update, beginning with something we really want to message strongly: we have made some serious performance upgrades to address lag issues reported by some users.

Big performance upgrades to crush lag

Upon launch of the redesign, some users were experiencing slower load times and lag across the site. We have been working very hard on reproducing and fixing these issues, like so:

• Firefox users were experiencing some lag, especially those with Hardware Acceleration turned off. Not anymore! We discovered that in the Featured area (the top section of each page) the background card image in combination with the subtle background gradient was a major culprit in causing far too expensive browser renders on scroll. We opted to remove the gradient both to greatly improve performance for Firefox users and to simplify the design. Firefox is running way better than before.
• Card images were sometimes slow to load as they were being deferred until they were on-screen, and unloaded when off-screen. In theory, this was built to bolster performance, but we quickly realized it did the opposite. Instead we changed up the lazy loading strategy and card images are loading in much faster.
• Card images which appear on hovering your mouse over card names gained a performance upgrade by being preloaded right away to eliminate the flash before they appear.
• The card rec view has a lot of moving parts which was putting some strain on render time, so we revisited and refactored that code to be both more optimized and more backwards compatible.
• The homepage now immediately renders in the Commander of the Day and Top Commanders and Trending Cards sections rather than needing to wait for a second request.

We heard your valid concerns and believe these are some seriously big performance upgrades, but if you are still experiencing any performance or lag issues at all please do fill out our Bug Report form with as much detail as you can. Developing for the web across browsers, devices, operating systems and all their versions can be a challenge and we want the site to be fast and easy to use for everyone. We are gonna keep testing, keep listening, and keep reacting as quickly as we can.

Filter Sidebar additions

Post-redesign, there's a long roadmap of cool new features, improvements, and controls to build, and we are starting with the launch of new enhancements to the Filters Sidebar. The Brackets filter now includes a small bar chart to visualize the distribution above each option and the Tags filter now also includes a tag cloud to show more tags with their deck count numbers. These are smaller enhancements that we think add some interesting visual data to the commander pages, and we are cooking on a lot more ideas like these.

More filters!

A bunch of top-level pages received new filters so you can better narrow results towards what you're looking for.

• Top cards (overall, with a color identity, and by type), game changers, staples and mana rocks now all have a new Bracket filter.
• Game changers now has a new Timeframe filter.
• Tags now have a new Budget filter.

In case you missed it...

The redesign took attention away from other cool stuff we recently did, and the back-end team rightfully threw their draft chaff at me for burying their awesome work. So Kaz, Adam, and Julia... please forgive me as I shout out some of the amazing new things that were launched recently.

Color identity filters on card pages

Previously, Card pages were unfiltered and included all possible color identities that could contain that card, but that was quite restrictive while browsing because much of the time you already have at least a color identity in mind. Color Identity filters change all that by letting you filter for a specific color identity, such as Geist of Saint Thalia in Izzet decks or Emrakul, the Exigent Doom in Colorless decks. These filters are also a huge improvement for the Lift score, where narrowing down on what you're looking for will show you more interesting results.

Trending cards chart and overall stats

A new chart with live, up-to-date data was added to the homepage which tracks trending cards based on Suurok-Class Science Vessel from our resident Duchess of Data, Julia. There is also a cool section tracking the site's overall stats (10.5 million decks... that's a lot!). These types of neato stats and charts are things we want to explore further in the future as well.

Full Changelog (Oct 28 - Nov 6)

• Performance upgrades for loading card images on set and precon pages
• Fixed a bug where exporting to Archidekt from your Clipboard would not set your commander
• Fixed a page layout "jump" on first visit if you set your Gallery to the small size
• Removed unnecessary blur on loading states to optimize performance
• Added card names over card images on mobile permanently, so they can be much more easily clicked to copy to your text clipboard
• Fixed a bug where new Doctor type cards were being considered Time Lord Doctors (they wish) and adding inaccurate links
• Shrank down default tooltip sizes so they don't get too weirdly large
• Big performance upgrades for scrolling in the gallery by not unloading what's already been loaded
• Performance upgrades to the background images to be much less resource intensive
• Fixed a bug where the partners would be out-of-order for some partner types (like those pesky Time Lord Doctors!)
• Added budget filters to Tag pages (can be combined with color identity filters as well)
• Stopped capping the clipboard count on the clipboard icon at 99+ (turns out EDH decks usually have 100 cards, who knew)
• Fixed a bug where the card name overlay would cover power/toughness
• Removed the "New" flag from the New section, because, well, they're already in the new section
• Added bracket filters to a ton of pages: Top Cards (also by color identity and Type), Game Changers, Staples, and Mana Rocks
• Huge performance improvements to address lag on Firefox with Hardware Acceleration turned off
• Various Card rendering improvements and backwards compatibility additions
• Fixed a bug where selecting a custom sort-by would sometimes not load stats for a card in the gallery
• Added the ability to filter Decks for prices including cents, improved the filter form and label
• Added the ability to filter Cards for prices including cents, lift and salt including the hundredths place, and improved card filter labeling
• Changed Text View so when selecting all cards it will not select the category titles
• Added new tag cloud view to the Filters Sidebar
• Added fading to the top and bottom of tooltips with scrolls to make it more obvious they can scroll, especially for Mac users who may not see scrollbars
• Fixed bug where Recs page modals would not open links in a new tab
• Performance improvements for the homepage
• Performance improvements for card preview tooltips that appear on mouse hover
• The Playtest on Archidekt button now accurately sets your life total to 40 life
• Added a bar chart above the brackets filter in the filter sidebar to visually represent the distribution

What's next?

We keep cooking. And we keep listening (you can still submit feedback here). And we'll be back. So, see you soon?