Site does not function for me because I keep on getting timed out by the black popup (which BTW has been blanked out by the adblocker). What is the use of this?

Are you talking about the big page covering icon when you first come to the home page? Can you click on the x in the upper right corner and close it?

The takeover ad is controlled by cookies, you should see it once per day. Do all that cookie-fixing stuff - logging out, logging back in clicking Remember Me, etc.

If you could find a way to opt out of the tag cloud, that would be awesome. Or to put it in one of the collapsible boxes like the quick reply is so those who dislike them can not have to look at them.

This might be difficult, but I realized it might fulfill some of the search functions people seem to be wanting, and I know I would use this. I think it is called boolean search? Anyway, in Google, if I searched on pet -dog, I would get hits that are about pets but excluding dogs. Some search engines still use the term not instead of a - but I think Google's - is probably more familiar to the majority by now. Here in download search, a query on on pet -dog results in a few files, most of them dogs and all dog-related. A search on pet not dog did not display any results. In the Google search, if I typed "pet dogs" it would only show me hits that have that exact term, and it would be nice if here I could type, say, "fairy wings" in quotes and get only files that have that exact term in the title. That almost works here, but when I tried it, I got 4 files that had the exact term fairy wings in the title, and one file that is called Whisper the Faerie. She has wings, but neither "fairy" nor "wings" are in the title, so as a user I am confused how the search here works. If it's using an intelligent synonym system I am truly impressed, but there are times I might be trying to find a very specific thing and spelling might be important to me. Also, on many search engines, you can use or. A search on "Seasons or Uni" without quotes here turns up no files, but I suspect some of the people asking for new types of filtering would be really happy if it turned up a list of files that contained either Seasons or Uni (or both).

See Google's tips mouseovers on the advanced search here:http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en

Another advantage of adding this if possible is that many users are probably already used to how Google advanced search works, so learning curve would be pretty gentle, and it would not change how the existing search works for people who don't want or care about these features.

I recognize Google has a ton of money to throw at search features that you do not, and that there may be technical limits, but I have wished for this lately, and would much rather use the Download search than search this site via Google. I love the download search, and I often wish there existed an internet search portal with a similar interface and accuracy. Am guessing there might be some open source boolean search code out there you could tweak, if this site can support that feature. It would probably reduce bandwidth a bit as a plus, since it mostly narrows searches, hence fewer thumbnails.

Anyway, I suppose you probably would have done this by now if it were possible, but figured I would ask.

Jaedle, just so you know, the reason that Whisper the Faerie comes up in a search for Fairy Wings is becuase of this:



The tags contain both of the search words you typed in, hence it will match. The Download search searches both the title of the download and also the tags too.

Oh thanks. I wondered if you had a huge list of synonyms and common misspellings or something. Silly me. Keywords. That particular result would probably have been welcomed by anyone searching on fairy wings, actually, so it's not really the best example. It was probably an unrealistic suggestion. You can tell I spend way too much time using search engines. There are so many files here nowadays that sometimes the number of hits can be intimidating, but the interface is brilliant, really sleek, and the results always sensible. It's just that we users sometimes have difficulty translating what we are looking for from natural language into good search terms.

Here's a much better example, this time using Google. Pretend you're a crafts teacher and you need to buy a lot of cheap sponges for your class. Type the word "sponge" into Google. Immediately I had the urge to redo my search and type something like "buy sponge -Bob -band -contraception." You can drill down, but it's sort of frustrating when there are tons of results and most of them aren't what you are seeking.

Anyway, thanks for replying to everyone's posts. It's really awesome that you are asking us for suggestions.

Jaedle, in case you are interested MTS2 just uses the mySQL FULLTEXT server IN BOOLEAN MODE.

Also, sawcat and others: The Tag Cloud box is now collapsible using the toggle arrow.

I don't know if this is somewhere on the site, but I've never been able to find it: a list of creators. When I'm using the search function to find a specific creator that I haven't added to my favorites list, it's almost impossible to remember if there's a number after the name or a random letter is capitalized or if there are spaces between the words. A simple list of names would be so useful and save a lot of frustration!! Thanks!!

Thanks for the suggestions (re the ad), but just now, after following your instructions, I got the ad three times with timeouts each time. The problem isn't so much the ad itself, which i can click off, but the fact that I get timed out by it and that makes the site unusable.

Other people have complained about this, too. What's going on?

amnesiac, I have absolutely no idea what you mean by "timed out". Occasionally the ad server itself does not respond and you get a "Request Timed Out" inside the ad box - but this is totally outside my control, since it's an external server.

edejan, the thing with MTS2 is that unlike some other sites that are organised by creator (think Insim), ours is more focused on the downloads themselves (and the sections thereof) with the creators profile being the central point to see all thier specific downloads.

Due to the way the site is thus organised, it makes it much less intuitive to actually have a list of creators.

However your query is focused around the search function, and here I am confused. Why not just type into the search the first few letters of the creators name? Then you'll get back a list of names that match and you can then see which one matches what you remember.

Also, don't forget the memberlist where you can show members who have names starting with a particular letter - creators have seperately coloured names so you can easily pick them out (although the list is quite large).

I'm just not sure that having a list would really be that helpful - especially since we have nearly 9,000 creators here.

Delphy, nice! But why is Boolean searching not working for me in the download search? I must be using it wrong. Is there a FAQ somewhere? *excited*

Did I say something stupid, or you didn't notice my post, Delphy? :-3

Today I have just found a wonderful example of what I want to see in the download search, but it wouldn't appear if I looked for it.

Game mod:CAS history available for any non-playable sim Newest. It has several EPs signed to it as required. So I go "advance search" check only seasons and it doesn't appear. Only those appear that have only Seasons signed as required. (What about the downloads that have more than one EP required, but it still concludes Seasons in them? Like The CAS history?)

I'd like to see every download that is compatible with the specific EP in the search window including the items that have several EPs assigned to it but conclude the specific EP I'm looking for.

Maybe I make sense now? If I don't I'll stop here :-D I can get tired of myself too.

Thanks Delphy for listening! And have I told you how much I love your Download organizer?! It's so cool, I don't know what would I do without it. And thank you for keeping this site running, and also for asking for suggestions as well.

Jaedle, boolean doesn't work in the download search, as far as I know.

Jaedle, I didn't say it did work - I was merely pointing out the technique. Due to the way the internal construction of the queries is done, it pretty much ignores any such extra boolean you add in.

Antira, I didn't miss it, but you basically want the same thing that we discussed earlier in the thread, hence why I didn't reply. Have a read back for a description of the difference between Compatible and Advanced.

As I have mentioned, you can control what you want by simply changing your EPs owned in your profile.

*blush* I can't believe I didn't notice that!

Don't worry - you wouldn't be the first to not notice stuff thats been there for ages.

I often get people going "Hey wouldn't it be cool if...." and I'm like "Err, thats been there for like a year....". Or something. :P

Thanks. I never tried typing in a partial names. I tried it out and it works fine for me. Thanks!!!

ummm...like me....so embarassing....

*grins sheepishly* I don't feel understood, so I'm grabbing everything I can while still trying to explain something
I see that you understand I'd like to see anything that is compatible with a specific EP. However I am still not sure that plastic box was talking about the same... He basically said to put the Compatible search in the advanced mode, which is not what I was explaining. Well, I told you, that I was confused this was the cause of it That is why I thought I will get reassured that I was heard, and that was enough of it/me.

In a shell: I want to see anything compatible to a specific EP BUT NOT THE REST of the downloads compatible with EPs that I own. That is not the same as changing the profile, because that shows absolutely everything. The advance as you said :-( doesn't show all of the downloads at all --looking for the middle way.

I feel like a little kid who can't talk computer, so I'll excuse myself and leave the playground for the big smarter guys

Antira,

I'm sorry you feel like I don't understand - I think I do, though. Let me try and explain.

If you change your profile to, say, only Seasons and Nightlife, then Compatible mode will show you only things that have those 2 EPs (and any others on that download) - it wont show you stuff thats Compatible with, say, Pets but not Seasons and Nightlife.

What I was talking about was offering 2 distinct ways to "Advanced" search - the first as it is now (with the meaning being required) and the second adding compatible. I know that the current Advanced search is not what you want, hence why I suggested a second type.

Maybe we just aren't explaining ourselves properly to each other, it seems, but your sentence of "Anything compatible to a specific EP but not the rest in my profile" is pretty much exactly what pb and I where talking about and what I have mentioned earlier in this post...

Hope this helps
Delphy

Could there be a space on myMTS2 where it shows where there are new uploads, like it does with the post.

For example I would know when the decorative objects section has got a new object or when the creator challenge has new objects(because of the new challenge :])

It'd be nice to know if anything I wanted in a particular section was new, it would make object browsing easier at least.

i don't know if this has been mentioned, or, if it has anything to do w/ the site itself, but, the mts2 homepage, could it be made less wide where it could be viewed without having to scroll over? It agrevates the heck out of me, and only the homepage does it, once i click to a new page, the pages fit my screen. I am using a screen resolution of 1024x768, text size medium, and normal zoom [100%].

but yeah, i guess it's a change in the homepage? because this never used to happen when i came here., but instead noticed it a couple of days ago, though, it could of been like this longer?

cill2007, I regularly test the pages at 1024x768 and haven't encountered any issues with standard browsers.

Delphy,

I think the issue here is that the Compatible and the Advanced modes work the same when searching. If you say you only want to look for Freetime, then both searches pull back only downloads that require only that one EP.

What would be nice is if you could select a single EP on the search, maybe via a new search option, and have it pull back all downloads that indclude that EP but are not limited to the EPs you own or that you check in the search.

For example, I have all of the EPs. If I search in compatible mode, I get some downloads that are for everything I own. (Which is what that mode is good for). However I want to search for all downloads that have just seasons in the requirements. If I use the advanced mode and only select seasons, I see downloads that only require seasons. If I change the EPs I own, then the display removes some items from the downloads. This is also not good. What would be nice is to have a new search that looks for a specific EP, but does not exclude the others. Something that either includes the other EPs I own, or inculdes all EPs so I can see everything that has seasons as a requirement even if I do not have all the EPs.

Maybe you could just have an Includes search that searches for any download with that EP?

Thanks!