Favourite variants in New game dialog dropdown

[darkronin]

As the number of variants grows, it takes time to scroll up and down the list to find the variant that one wishes to create the challenge for.

Suggestion: implement a Favourites category to be shown on top, before Chess Variants.

Favourite variants could be selected in one of the following ways:

• a favourite/star icon/button, next to each variant, from that same dropdown
• a dedicated section in the profile https://www.pychess.org/@/ or an additional setting in the settings/cog icon

[gbtami]

Thx for the suggestion.
Telling the truth I was thinking about this issue from long time as well. Maybe adding a setting dialog similar to lichess but not adding favorites on top of everything else in the dropdown but removing non favorites instead may be another solution.

[darkronin]

That could work!

Although arguably, Lichess user may be confused in terms of user experience - as there that type of dialog/setting works to filter existing challenges from the Lobby.

As per some barebone setting I thought even a simple Input field with the variant names separated by a slash, something like this, which should be straightforward to parse:

(if nothing is entered in the field, all variants are shown)

That might be less onerous than having an entire new setting dialog.

[gbtami]

I don't want to add more input fields to the new game dialog tbh.
It is already crowded enough.

[darkronin]

Agreed, but my idea was to have that Input field elsewhere though.
For example in the Settings, or in the Profile.

E.g. in the dropdown that opens with button#btn-settings that currently has the options: Log out / Language / Sound / Background / Board Settings / Zen Mode
Maybe before Zen Mode, so it would be: ... / Board Settings / Favourite variants / Zen Mode

And in the sub menu having the input field.

[gbtami]

This sound a bit better, but in general I'm not sure which UI design would be the best to implement this whole "favorites" idea. Or is it worth to start implement it at all...
Anyhow, I suggest to start a conversation about this issue on Discord first, to let the other devs involved in the discussion.

[gbtami]

What I really like to see (instead of adding favorites into the variant chooser dropdown) is an app level favorites stored in users profile (similar to language), with toggle switch similar to zen mode. When it is switched on, the whole site shows the favorite variants only everywhere. From variant chooser to leader board page. Everywhere. Except in the favorite variants settings of course :)

We are already handling disabled variants more or less on client and server side. That should be generalized to support "real" disabled variants and user specific disabled (= NOT favorite) variants.

We don't use disabledVariants atm, but should when we create variant selection dropdown in selectVariant(() from variantGroups
On server side there are VARIANTS and VARIANT_GROUPS in const.py They should be functions instead, filtered with favorites from user profile.

This whole stuff will touch lots of our code base of course, but filtering variant selection dropdown would be a good first step I think.

This way f.e. a Shogi player can turn the site similar to lishogi, showing Shogi variants only everywhere.