🏛️ Library - New and Improved
Hello all!
Library looks a little different, and we want to know what you think. 👀
We have released a set of updates to Library which we hope make it easier to add games to your collections and open those games in the places you need. Leading with a new Add Games modal, we've refreshed the Quick Links sidebar, introduced a new pagination style, organized the lists of collections and games into sortable columns, and much more.. go check it out!
There are a lot of small touches in this update to Library, so to keep this post readable I will mostly focus on the new Add Games modal, but please comment below with any questions or comments and I'll see if I can add helpful detail to these changes.
🏛️ Creating a New Collection
To add a game to a collection in this updated version of Library, you will first need to create a new collection by visiting chess.com/library then selecting the big green [+ Create New Collection] button on the top right of your page.
📚 Adding Games to a Collection
After giving your collection a name and pressing the [ Create ] button, you should see an empty collection in your browser. Now that you have created a space to store your games you can start adding games! To start, select the [ + Add Games ] button on the top right of the page which will open the Add Games modal. ✨
If this modal looks a little familiar, you might be familiar with Classroom! With this new Add Games flow, we are trying to unify the experience of adding games to different products across the site like Library, Analysis, Classroom, and the Diagram Editor - so please share your feedback, it will go a long way!
In the Add Games modal there are 6 sources from which you can add games to your collection:
1. Set Up Position: Here you can drag and drop pieces on the board to create a custom position.
2. Load From FEN/PGN(s): While you can still copy/paste in the text from a PGN, we've upgraded this option to allow you to drag & drop, or click to browse and upload, PGN files from your computer.
3. Load From Library: Library can help you navigate your organized games, so in the case that you want a game to be stored in two collections, you can load the copy of that game from another library collection. In Load From Library you are able to search through Your Collections, Shared Collections, Bookmarked Collections, and Community Collections for a game to add. Each collection is expandable along with the games inside, and if you aren't seeing all of the games in a collection that you might expect, be sure to look out for the multiple pages.
4.Load From Archive: Loading from the archive allows you to filter, search and preview your games and games others have played on chess.com. When loading from archive be sure to check out the advanced filters which can help you gather the games you played with a particular piece color or opening.
5. Load From Explorer: Loading from Explorer is crazy powerful. It allows you filter games played by you, chess masters, or anyone else on chess.com by position. When searching through your games or others' you can also filter by result, piece color, and opening to create a collection of games that will help you take your play to the next level.
6. Import Study: Finally, we know you have a choice where you play chess, and we thank you for choosing chess.com. With the Import Study option we make it as easy as possible for you to gather all of the games that are important to you in one convenient location.
⚡ Additional Features
Game Info Summaries
If you expand a game within a collection that was played on the site, you may notice some extra information about the game. We've created a summary of game details to minimize the number of clicks needed to access the information about the game that may be important to you.
Multiselect Actions
When you've found the game that you are looking for in a Library Collection, you probably want to do something with it! So we've introduced some additional multiselect options that allow you to select, or deselect, multiple games at a time and then open those games in Classroom, open them in Analysis, download them, or delete them. We have also added a counter column to help keep track of how many games you've selected when navigating multiple pages within a collection. Clicking the "x" on the right of the counter will clear all of the boxes you've selected.
Open Collection In...
Sometimes you may just want to open the entire collection in either Analysis or Classroom so we've tried to make that as seamless as possible by adding the "Open Collection In..." menu, found on the right side of any collection page.
That's all folks! As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback and suggestions you have to improve Chess.com. Thank you! 🙌 *These Library changes are only available for web.
I want to give a huge-shout out and THANK YOU!! To the guys who actually built Library, if you love it, reach out and let them know - @martynchamberlin, @toddbryant, @ericoSoares, @aidan, @nollaversioit, @7Zy1R, @scottbedard, and @yneves
