Hide/disable/toggle certain features

[Pricelessbrewing]

This isn't the first time it's come up, and we understand the desire, and frustration for those that prefer more minimal interfaces with less cluttering.

More and more we're seeing that we have distinct groups of users; there are professionals, pro-sumers, and homebrewers. There are analytical note takers, and ad-lib creative brewers who don't care for some of the specific details.


There are a few things we're pursuing to meet and provide the best solution to as many users as possible. Please use the poll here to provide feedback in which feature you're interested in using, all of these will be optional if and when they're released.

1) Show zero values as blank.

This will reduce clutter and streamline things for those that don't use certain features, such as cost, or hop storage index. Other secondary properties are blank when not filled in, like location, note, etc. Want to stay consistent as much as possible while still showing the primary distinguishing properties at all times (PPG, Lovi for fermentables, AA for hops etc).

2) Toggle and/or move table columns on a per table basis.

We understand not every use is interested in certain things, so you'll be able to hide any column you're not interested in. This puts the user in more control over their interface, and allows you to only show the things you want. It's also a possibility that you may be able to rearrange the table to suit your preferences.

3) User setting to disable specific features site wide.

A more robust form of #2 would be to hide or disable a small list of specific features from all of their relevant pages. IE if you disable cost, it will be toggled off for the corresponding pages, recipe editor, recipe view, inventory, shopping list, etc.


In order to support these features, we will need to introduce a reset button just like for searches or filtering.

 

[GFHomebrew]

Thanks for listening i hope you get the feedback that reflects our sentiments.

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

If anybody would like to request an alternative or additional approach to this topic, or an optional feature they're interested in including in these settings, please comment as well and I will do my best to include them in the poll.

 

[Head First]

If anybody would like to request an alternative or additional approach to this topic, or an optional feature they're interested in including in these settings, please comment as well and I will do my best to include them in the poll.

I can't really speak for people who want to know their costs but it would seem to me you would want to know cost or not want to know cost. I don't use inventory or shopping so none of it would be useful for me. I'm sure that's the opposite for some people.

 

[Craigerrr]

Why don''t you just split it out?
Why don't you just have two platforms?
You have home brewers, you have pro brewers.
Each has their need, and each has their need...

 

[Mark Farrall]

Why don''t you just split it out?
Why don't you just have two platforms?
You have home brewers, you have pro brewers.
Each has their need, and each has their need...

For me it's feature toggles. The different plans have default settings for the features that are enabled or disabled, but if it's available to your plan you can turn it on. So home brewers who like to count the coins can turn on the cost feature, but it would probably be disabled by default for the rest of us who prefer blissful ignorance.

I do like the customisable tables approach, but honestly, I doubt I'd use it.

I don't think I understand the hide it if it's not being used approach, feels like it's going to be hard to do without the user interface jumping around recipe to recipe with some features missing in some, but not others.

The only other approach that has made sense to me before is the simple mode vs complex mode for the key pages, like recipe builder and the brew session. And if we're doing future proofing, how about the other extreme to responsive design from mobile? Using some of that extra width we have on modern screens.

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

Why don''t you just split it out?
Why don't you just have two platforms?
You have home brewers, you have pro brewers.
Each has their need, and each has their need...

There is a separate pro website, pro.brewersfriend.com. As far as I know they're identical now apart from the homepage, and header color.

While some features may be more popular amongst pros, it doesn't mean no homebrewer is using or interested in those features, and vice versa. If there is something that is only useful to pros, we may only use that feature on the pro site but only if it is exclusively useful to pros.

What I don't want to do is restrict what features we offer to anyone beyond the membership levels (premium vs premium plus vs pro/lifetime).

The middle ground I see is to offer all features to all users, but allow those users to ignore whatever optional feature they're not interested in.

 

[GFHomebrew]

I can totally understand hombrewers nerding out and wanting to know the cost of everything per brew.

Like is stated quite often on the forums here this hombrewing thing is a rabbit hole its up to you how far down you want to go.

 

[AHarper]

For my input.
Keep the forms fixed but have all non-completed fields auto filled with something like N/A.
This means that there will be no Blank fields so that any printout will have at least something in the field.
Any export or Print to Default/Text print out will have something for every field.
I must admit to being selfish here - I export / print a lot of my data into a spreadsheet application and reading in variable length sets of data is a pain in the butt.

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

For my input.
Keep the forms fixed but have all non-completed fields auto filled with something like N/A.
This means that there will be no Blank fields so that any printout will have at least something in the field.
Any export or Print to Default/Text print out will have something for every field.
I must admit to being selfish here - I export / print a lot of my data into a spreadsheet application and reading in variable length sets of data is a pain in the butt.

Why not parse the XML export?

 

[Chaos home brewing]

As more equipment is gathered these features become more important. I recently aquired a mill so now the inventory and cost feature makes sence. I used to make a trip to the LHBS for each brew and the cost was very apparent. Now with bulk purchases the inventory and cost features may be nice to try. If they end up being unused it would be nice to hide them.