Out of Cards Changelog - 2020-07-14

A few updates were pushed throughout the day today to support the new Scholomance Academy Hearthstone expansion and more! These updates have come a bit later and earlier than originally planned.

For the Out of Cards site anniversary last month, a large bundled site update was planned to release. Long story short, it was not released due to having some unfinished pieces (including the auto-sync plugin) and things have been very busy which has resulted in further... you guessed it... delays. I decided to push everything that was fully ready today due to the increased expansion traffic and since there were some quality of life updates, it would be helpful for everyone to get them today.

New Features

• OAuth Support
  • We can now let partner services and applications login with your Out of Cards account securely.
  • This is used in our Hearthstone Deck Tracker collection syncing plugin that is currently in alpha testing. More on that in a moment.
• Profile Header Bar
  • A new bar has been added above the old site header.
  • This is where desktop users will be able to access their account-related stuff!
  • Because of this addition, we've made space on the navigation itself that can be used to promote more of our content.
  • Also features an instant search bar (details below)
• New Search
  • Get results instantly without using the search page!
  • Type in a Hearthstone card name and get to its database page quickly. It also works with tooltips!
  • Supports Hearthstone Cards, Runeterra Cards, News Articles, Guides, and Hearthstone Expansion Pages with more to follow.
  • Dev Notes: The search page itself still needs an overhaul because it sucks.

Hearthstone

• Expansion pages now support dual-class cards.
• Deckbuilder now supports dual-class cards (and family cards from Mean Streets of Gadgetzan)
• Card Detail pages will now display multiclass instead of class for those types of cards.

Changes

Hearthstone

• Instances of "Family" have been replaced with "Multiclass"
• The Expansion and Mechanics multi-select fields on the Card Listing page have been switched to a better interface.
  
  • Dev Note: Still not happy with our card listing pages. These are going to be updated sooner rather than later.

General

• You can now see quick links to game portals across the entire site. They have a condensed appearance compared to the previous homepage listings.
• The site background has been updated with card game flair.
• Removed site supporter promotion blocks on sidebars. They have been replaced with new features in the profile header which better promote our Premium offering.
• Premium page no longer mentions our Birthday discount since it has (finally) been deactivated.
• Performance-related improvements on several pages.
• Search Engine Optimization improvements on several pages. 

Bug Fixes

Forums

• Forum threads within homepage and portal blocks now display full titles on mouseover tooltip.

Hearthstone

• Collection Manager no longer displays hero cards in the total counts for Basic cards.

General

• Icons on navigation for mobile users now include descriptions of what they are for.

Collection Manager Automatic Syncing

You made it this far. If you want to participate in an alpha test of our automatic collection syncing plugin for Hearthstone Deck Tracker, here's what you need to know. Once we're comfortable with it, a front-page announcement will be made. I want to get automatic plugin updates happening for that.

• You're going to be installing a .dll file into your HDT plugins folder. Browsers will warn you the file may not be safe, as long as you're downloading it from a post or guide created by me, you're in the clear.
• There are no automatic updates yet when a new version of the plugin is released. You'll have to copy the new version over the old one if an update is released. We'll make a dedicated thread for updates when the first one comes out.

Now, onto the fun stuff!

Out of Cards now has an alpha plugin for Hearthstone Deck Tracker. This only works on Windows. It will automatically sync your collection to the site. It will require logging into the plugin through your Out of Cards account so we can sync the data.

• You do not enter your password into Hearthstone Deck Tracker. You will authenticate with our OAuth authentication service via the website itself. Do not share your account password with anyone!
• Syncs will alert you when they happen (each time you enter your collection).
• The site will process your collection update in the order it is received. Sometimes there can be a couple of minutes delay for your collection to fully update on the site.

Interested and on Windows? Let's get it installed!

1. Install Hearthstone Deck Tracker
2. Download the Out of Cards Plugin for HDT. (Click Here) [Version 0.0.1]
3. Move the downloaded "OutOfCardsPlugin.dll" file to "%appdata%/HearthstoneDeckTracker/Plugins"
   • You can copy and paste the path between the quotes above and paste it into your file explorer to get to the right folder.
   • You may need to "unblock" the plugin if your antivirus or windows freaks out about it.
4. Restart Hearthstone Deck Tracker
5. Go to the Hearthstone Deck Tracker Settings Menu
   • Expand the "Tracker" section of settings.
   • Under Tracker, click on "Plugins".
   • Activate the Out of Cards plugin by toggling it.
6. Login to the Out of Cards Plugin
   • On the menu bar of Hearthstone Deck Tracker, click on Plugins.
   • Find the Out of Cards dropdown item.
   • Click on the "Login" submenu option.
     • You will be brought to the Out of Cards website to authenticate.
     • It will state you are logging in and giving the Plugin access to your Hearthstone Collection.
   • After logging in, go back to Hearthstone Deck Tracker.
7. Launch Hearthstone and visit your Collection to have it upload to the site automatically.
   • A toast will appear in the bottom right corner of Hearthstone when your collection syncs successfully.
   • Sometimes, your first load of the collection will not sync. Not sure why, but HDT gets no collection data.
8. Wait for the site to process your collection.
   • We process collections in the order they are received.
   • Once your collection is processed on our end, new collection data will be used across the site.
   • There are sometimes longer than normal delays in processing collections. This is due to us slowly scaling processing based on demand and performance. 
9. Enjoy an updated collection!

Special Notes

• Toasts look ugly, they're purely functional right now. We'll put out an update in the future with something that looks more pleasing though remains small.
• Automatic updates to the plugin itself are not yet available. This will be once we finish the alpha phase of the test.
• We aren't collecting any other data outside of your collection.
  • If we start collecting more data in the future with the plugin, we'll let you know and keep that data collection off by default so you can opt-in to it.
• Some other updates need to be pushed to the site to make collection dust counts appear on the deck listing and on news articles. I know! Hoping we can push this live tomorrow or later tonight.