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Release Notes (Website: Links now point to new search results) - April 20, 2021


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If I go to the (old) dashboard and click the link for "Geocaches" (not "Yours"), I get a list of "Your Geocaching Logs" and not the list of geocaches I have found as I would expect. I have to click once more on "have found" to get that. Surely this is not the way it used to be or should be?

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1 hour ago, tomturtle said:

Does anyone have a link for the old search to see all of a specific type of cache for a player.  For example, I would like to see all the earthcaches I have found in the old search format?

Go to https://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx, select Eartcache in the "Search for" box and "User name (found)" in the "By" box and of course the name in the box below. The resulting link is a bit complicated, I'm not sure what is what.

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Suggested improvements to the Advanced Search interface are probably best posted in a dedicated thread. It's been around for some time now with lots of people asking for and suggesting visual stylistic improvements, and not much has changed. But there people can discuss; while here in the links release notes it might get removed (or moved) for not being about the links.

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1 hour ago, ChriBli said:

I'm all for refactoring of code to improve quality and stability, but you don't have to change the functionality of it do do that. It is hardly the appearance and functionality of the classic search that has vulnerabilities.  

I would argue that you aren't really refactoring if you eliminate functionality. And the new search didn't seem to be a refactor. It seemed to be a completely new implementation, without trying to copy the previous search implementation at all.

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28 minutes ago, niraD said:

I would argue that you aren't really refactoring if you eliminate functionality. And the new search didn't seem to be a refactor. It seemed to be a completely new implementation, without trying to copy the previous search implementation at all.

That's what I mean. If you have functionality that you are happy with, but the underlying code is buggy, vulnerable and difficult to maintain, you refactor the code and try to make it appear and function the same as before. Otherwise it is reimplementing for the sake of change. And I have yet to see anyone point out something that is better with the new search.

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47 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

Suggested improvements to the Advanced Search interface are probably best posted in a dedicated thread. It's been around for some time now with lots of people asking for and suggesting visual stylistic improvements, and not much has changed. But there people can discuss; while here in the links release notes it might get removed (or moved) for not being about the links.

That is true. The new search has been around for a long time, some people have used it and others not, and it is really not unusable when it comes to searching for caches. Just a bit less practical and pleasing to the eye.

 

But this thread is about the links. And the new search is UTTERLY useless when it comes to producing a list of own/others finds/hides. I don't think that many of those that have been discussing and using the new search ever envisioned that it would be used to replace those lists.

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8 minutes ago, ChriBli said:

I have yet to see anyone point out something that is better with the new search.

 

This statement alone is really missing the mark. There is a vast array of features that may have been improved, especially of which we're unaware. All we know of is UI features and visual aesthetic. UI feature functionality is an end result, and concerns and issues should be raised so they can make adjustments; same with our preferences about visual aesthetic. But to say nothing is better with the new search...? There are many improvements to the capability afforded by the Advanced Search over the old. There are also some feature that are lacking and other new ones that are helpful, but it's safe to assume that on the back end especially there are improvements that are very desirable to HQ. Database performance has got to be a big one, and it's one we generally won't see. 

 

Our issue should be voicing whether we like or dislike certain front-end features, or features removed that we want back. But jumping to "nothing is better"? Dare I say that's simply untrue.  And right from the rollout of the mobile-friendly (ymmv) design trend forced on desktop users I've not been a fan of the design aesthetic :P

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4 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

There is a vast array of features that may have been improved, especially of which we're unaware.

You are probably right. I don't think GS would undertake this if they didn't see it as an improvement. But I'm talking about the user experience. You can not justify inferior user experience with easier implementation.

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Why

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                       is

 

 

 

 

there                        so

                     

 

                    much                     white

 

 

 

 

                      on                  

 

 

 

 

every               page ?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On 4/21/2021 at 6:36 PM, terratin said:

A question to developers: why would a dev team decide to reduce functionality and make changes completely contrary to what people need? Why add so much bloody whitespace? It's the same with every improvement of this site again and again: people lose functionality and the layout is messed, information available without scrolling reduced. I really wonder why the team doesn't learn from previous backlash.

Don't blame the devs. Something like this probably comes from management. Devs are probably frustrated like we all are.

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1 hour ago, morinox said:

Don't blame the devs. Something like this probably comes from management. Devs are probably frustrated like we all are.

As a developer, I appreciate you taking the developers' side, but I'm not actually detecting anything here that would be driven by a manager, in the sense of an evil money grubbing manager. On the other hand, I am seeing things that reflect various arbitrary development "standards" such as the idea that more white space makes the interface "cleaner" or "less cluttered" that in my real life I've seen developers apply because some pundit said it was the right thing to do even though in any specific user interface, it actually reduces usability. That could be driven by the developers themselves, but it could also be driven by *developer* management, which is still "developers".

 

I seriously doubt the developers are frustrated. Well, to the degree they might be frustrated, it's not because, as I assume you're saying, they can't do what they know is the right thing. It's more because they're doing what they think is the right thing, and they're frustrated that we don't see the wisdom of their choices.

 

But I do agree the developers shouldn't be blamed. Regardless of whether it's like you say -- they want to do the right thing, but aren't allowed to -- or more the way I see it -- they don't know what the right thing is because they aren't getting the right information -- or even if it's more the way GS would spin it -- they're doing the right thing, we just don't "get it" -- I see the developers as a misused resource, not an agent that can be blamed for the wrong thing happening.

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1 hour ago, nykkole said:

We have updated the default sorting for viewing

  • Your finds
  • Your hides
  • Someone else’s finds
  • Someone else’s hides

to be “Found On” and “Placed On”, respectively. 

 

As mentioned in my previous post, this change allows Basic members to see the results sorted by a different parameter than distance (the default for all other search results): found date and placed date.

Thank you. (Somebody had to say it.) :D

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I use both the old page and the new page as they both have different  features that I use. There is so many different ways to use these features, it is a shame that both can't be maintained so we all get the maximum usage out of a platform that we pay for. 

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10 hours ago, nykkole said:

We have updated the default sorting for viewing

  • Your finds
  • Your hides
  • Someone else’s finds
  • Someone else’s hides

Yes, thank you for this. That was of course an unnecessary annoyance. Some of the other ones can probably be explained (but not justified) by implementation reasons.

 

But the big issue remains. The inability for a user to see a list of all his finds, or someone else's. Also of course it would be totally unacceptable not to be able to see all your hides, but there are not that many geocachers that have more than 1,000 of those. And to be able to reasonably access even the latest 1,000 finds or hides, pagination need to be reinstated. At the same time, that could be augmented with variable page size and skip to page number options.

 

Pretty, pretty please do this.

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Thank you for bringing back the 'correct' default sorting for viewing.

However, there's still a bug when content is loaded dynamically while scrolling down.
The sequence of the records seems to be correct (sorted by the *user's* "Found on" date when viewing someone else's finds) but the content is *not*.
The "Found on" date of the user (green in the example snapshot) then changes to the (latest) "Found on" date *of the cache* (red in the example snapshot).

example.png

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I don't like the changes, I don't see them as improvements & feel I am paying for a worse product. The loss of maps on a number of occasions recently also makes me wonder if the development team are delivering what geocachers need most. Ah, it looks like the default settings have been changed back to date rather than distance, thanks for listening admin team.

Edited by DIGGEMUP
new information found.
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5 hours ago, RCH65 said:

Thank you for bringing back the 'correct' default sorting for viewing.

However, there's still a bug when content is loaded dynamically while scrolling down.
The sequence of the records seems to be correct (sorted by the *user's* "Found on" date when viewing someone else's finds) but the content is *not*.
The "Found on" date of the user (green in the example snapshot) then changes to the (latest) "Found on" date *of the cache* (red in the example snapshot).

 

Others have noted this behavior, and I see it too.  When viewing a friend's finds, the first several are all recent dates.  I can see her activity back through April, then when I get into March, the Found On dates get scrambled, and April starts appearing again, and I don't know when she found it, or even how many caches ago it was because I have no idea where I am in her caching history except it's somewhere in the midst of her last 1000 caches.  Adding pagination would be a big plus for me. That would not seem to take any more server resources than dynamically loading caches as the user scrolls down, would it?

 

I also miss seeing the location.  Yes, I can see the distance and direction from my home coordinates, but I would rather see the state, or country.  It helps if I know I took a trip to another state, did some caching, and want to review those caches.  It's much easier to find a state name in a listing than to calculate distances and direction while scrolling.  Yes, we have the filtering and sorting options and yes, I can learn to use them.  I guess I just like(d) the ease of using the old search (even though I didn't realize it WAS the old search till it was taken away!).

 

I miss seeing the name of the cacher whose finds I am looking at.  It's up there in the URL, but not anywhere on the page that's loaded.  Please add a field that adds the cacher's name somewhere on the page itself!  I am trying to get used to the new results page when looking at my own or a friend's caching history.  It seems I (and many others) use this frequently, and it worked well the way it was.  Change is hard, and this change has seemed to remove, or at least made it harder to get to, information many of us used on a daily basis.  We need to relearn how to get the information we need/want to see, and then adapt to a new way of seeing it (full screen width, more scrolling to see stuff, more clicks and filtering to get to anything more than the "first 1000" that come up with the default, etc.) Changing the default sort of finds to most recent was/is a BIG step in the right direction and is much appreciated!

 

 

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14 minutes ago, CAVinoGal said:

more clicks and filtering to get to anything more than the "first 1000" that come up with the default, etc.

 

Is it even possible? In the context of the find list, I mean. I've been looking through the filter dialog, and I can not see that one could filter on "found by me from this date to that date" which is what one would need to access more than the last 1,000 (basically doing the pagination manually, with huge pages). Of course one could filter on D/T rating, make 81 lists and then try to combine them? Is that the recommended approach? :unsure:

 

By the way, in the filter dialog (for my own finds) I have a distance of 16 km in the "distance from location" box. I can't change it, and it doesn't seem to have any effect, but it's there. Of course distance from location is seldom something you want to filter your finds on.

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17 hours ago, nykkole said:

We have updated the default sorting for viewing

  • Your finds
  • Your hides
  • Someone else’s finds*
  • Someone else’s hides

to be “Found On” and “Placed On”, respectively. 

 

As mentioned in my previous post, this change allows Basic members to see the results* sorted by a different parameter than distance (the default for all other search results): found date and placed date.

*written in bold for better understanding what i mean

 

Thank you for responding to customer requests.

But what I did not understand, why do I still no longer see with my basic Account someone else’s finds with just a click?

Did I missunderstood something?

Greetings Johannis10

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On 4/21/2021 at 12:15 AM, nykkole said:

If a Basic member looks at the profile page of another player, the text "All Geocache Finds" (and any cache types in the finds list) are not linked. Viewing the finds of another player is a Premium member filter option.

 

4 hours ago, Johannis10 said:

But what I did not understand, why do I still no longer see with my basic Account someone else’s finds with just a click?

You're out of luck, Johannis10. Viewing the finds of another player is a premium member thing. :o Apparently to prevent you from finding out the super-secret GC-codes of premium only caches.

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I do not like this new format. It makes it extremely difficult to search through my own and others caches. Especially unhelpful when trying to solve mystery cache puzzles.  Also the new format takes up to much real estate on the screen limiting what you can see at any one time. Can there be a condensed option to allow one row per cache?

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On 4/23/2021 at 5:23 PM, nykkole said:

We have updated the default sorting for viewing

  • Your finds
  • Your hides
  • Someone else’s finds
  • Someone else’s hides

to be “Found On” and “Placed On”, respectively. 

 

As mentioned in my previous post, this change allows Basic members to see the results sorted by a different parameter than distance (the default for all other search results): found date and placed date.

 

2 hours ago, ChriBli said:

 

You're out of luck, Johannis10. Viewing the finds of another player is a premium member thing. :o Apparently to prevent you from finding out the super-secret GC-codes of premium only caches.

I'm confused now.

What results is being referred to in the post by nykkole? The ones basic members can see. Just their own finds and hides?

 

"As mentioned in my previous post, this change allows Basic members to see the results sorted by a different parameter than distance". 

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4 hours ago, Max and 99 said:

What results is being referred to in the post by nykkole? The ones basic members can see. Just their own finds and hides?

 

"As mentioned in my previous post, this change allows Basic members to see the results sorted by a different parameter than distance". 

 

Basic members can only sort by distance, none of the other column headers, so I presume this means that when a basic member views the hides of another user (this is still possible) the default sort will be by hidden date for them as an exception. Basic users can only see caches found by themselves.  And Premium users can sort by any sortable column.

 

However I just tested with a dummy account and the default sort for that basic account viewing its own finds is still by Distance ascending. Hmm... @nykkole?

 

 

Edited by thebruce0
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10 hours ago, ChriBli said:

 

You're out of luck, Johannis10. Viewing the finds of another player is a premium member thing. :o Apparently to prevent you from finding out the super-secret GC-codes of premium only caches.

 

Well, it does have an advantage of some very convoluted kind: The starker who just creates an account to see what caches someone found won't be able to do so without going premium. Leaves the question how big this incidence rate really is. :antenna:

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On 4/22/2021 at 6:59 PM, cerberus1 said:

Just tried to look at a forum members caches found, and caches owned.

First thing I asked, after scrolling....and scrolling...  There's mileage there, but what state or country are they in ?

 

I think this might have been overlooked, as I feel it's an important error.   A member asked in these forums how to get people interested in their cache.

Most showed a little over a hundred miles and seemed about right, then clicking on one showed it was a state over where I thought it was...

Unless you click on a cache, you have no idea what state or country these caches are in. 

Please bring back the older, makes sense search  Thanks.

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Just like many other players, I think the new update is terrible. The updated search, which is reduced to 1000 finds, is a disaster. Not only are many old functions missing, such as when the cache was last found, trackables and location, as well as the amount of space wasted, turns this update into a downgrade. And it doesn't even work properly! Look at the screenshot of a friend's list of finds and take a look at the order of the finds! Does that show "newest finds first"??? I don't think so.

 

Please give us the old version back!

New Search.jpg

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It's good that they've fixed some of the issues but I still miss being able to see the location and both the "last found" and "last found by user". :( As some other people have said, I didn't even realize lists were considered a search. I thought it was just a part of the dashboard. It sure seems that way since that's where you find the link to your geocache finds. It feels weird that this part is still on your profile: 

2027074538_Skarmavbild2021-04-25kl_20_06_01.png.2450fad6b986e1688106466f3f00f09b.png

 

but as soon as you click on any of the links you're suddenly transported to the search page. It felt more intuitive when it was like a part of the profile page, regardless of if that was the case in the actual code. If the "geocaches found" list was actually a search all along you should create a different function that displays your found geocaches somewhere. Super weird not to have that function at all.

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This is the worst 'improvement' ever seen on GC.com. Even worse than the uninspired 'integration' of Adventure Labs.

How about e.g. if I want to see to my very first geocache find? Do I have to scroll endlessly to the the bottom of the list? The new search is impossible to use. That's no fun any more.

 

Well, geocaching has in fact become less and less important to me. The point might have come to say good bye to geocaching now. So I just canceled my recurring premium membership. And I'm thinking about archiving all my own remaining geocache listings.

 

Or might there by a chance to rollback this absolutely useless change?

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32 minutes ago, mustakorppi said:

You click once on the Found on title to change the sort order to ascending.

Ok, that's true. But what if I want to see my finds from my summer vacation in 2012 or any other finds somewhere in my caching history? At least, the old search results gave me the chance to jump by 10 pages with a single click. By that means I was able to jump fairly quickly to any point of my chronology or those of my cache buddies. And that's not the only feature that I'm missing. Many others have already been mentioned in other posts here.

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7 minutes ago, SDBH-R said:

Ok, that's true. But what if I want to see my finds from my summer vacation in 2012 or any other finds somewhere in my caching history? At least, the old search results gave me the chance to jump by 10 pages with a single click. By that means I was able to jump fairly quickly to any point of my chronology or those of my cache buddies. And that's not the only feature that I'm missing. Many others have already been mentioned in other posts here.

There's still one link alive, where you can see your caching history, by going "Your Geocaching Logs" and clicking All Logs (hope they now do not remove that also...)

 

https://www.geocaching.com/my/logs.aspx?s=1

 

Better than the new "All Geocaching finds" "search"

 

We really miss the old way to see cache history, who visited a cache after us etc.  used that feature almost daily. Really cannot understand why make user experience worse in such great manner.

 

image.png.06aff6f1f9a9a03f9a6becfd38e645ad.png

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2 hours ago, SDBH-R said:

How about e.g. if I want to see to my very first geocache find? Do I have to scroll endlessly to the the bottom of the list? 

You wouldn't see it anyway, regardless how far you scroll. The new search is limited to 1000 finds.

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26 minutes ago, werla said:

You wouldn't see it anyway, regardless how far you scroll. The new search is limited to 1000 finds.

 

Yes, I didn't check that previously.

What do I expect if I click on a link like 'All Gecocache Finds'? It's a least me who expects to see all geocache finds. Not only a list that ends after 1000 entries. No matter if that list is sorted by found date, distance, or anything else. Hey guys at GC, that's just really bad software design. Doesn't seem to be based on a deliberate concept. Any student trainee would have done better. Please review your changes once again and bring back those features that the community needs. Currently, GC is not a service worth spending money for.

 

image.png.0177c3f8b7796d6a32f2d04f863ea700.png

 

image.thumb.png.ebfc59fda191f5ae46d46ebfbeafd77f.png

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26 minutes ago, SDBH-R said:

What do I expect if I click on a link like 'All Gecocache Finds'? It's a least me who expects to see all geocache finds. Not only a list that ends after 1000 entries. No matter if that list is sorted by found date, distance, or anything else. 

You can bookmark the old search with this URL:

 

https://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?ul=SDBH-R

 

However, nobody knows how long this will work.

Edited by werla
typo
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44 minutes ago, werla said:

You can bookmark the old search with this URL:

 

https://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?ul=SDBH-R

 

However, nobody knows how long this will work.

 

Ok, that's also true. But it shouldn't be my job to remember some URLs that might be outdated in the future to get by. If a service says 'all' it really shoud mean 'all' and not only a part of it. Once again, this issue and many others are proof of a poor concept and design. Just like the missing integration of Adventure Labs, no concept, no design behind them all.

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Hello,

 

I don't know if it a known bug, but I don't want to read all 199 posts.:

The usernames of cachers with special characters are incorrectly encoded in the profile, so no results can be found.

e.g.:

In Profile (incorrectly): https://www.geocaching.com/play/search?owner[0]=Per %2b Marc&a=0&sort=PlaceDate&asc=False

In Cache Listing (correct): https://www.geocaching.com/play/search?owner[0]=Per + Marc&a=0&sort=PlaceDate&asc=False

It looks like the link is encoded on the profile page and then encoded in on the search page a second time.

 

I also dont like the change. The old page was much better and more usefull.

Why are most of the changes not improvements?

Stick to the phrase "Never change a running system" ;)

Edited by capoaira
Typo
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for me the biggest issue is, that the trackable are not shown on the list. Its my main interest in geocaching to search caches with trackable in, but I dont have a chance anymore.

In past I rook the nearest caches list from home coordinates, as well as nearest caches from other caches in areas I like to visit.

In the new list: nothing and that is very sad (for me)

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