New Features Sept 27, 2017

We’ve got some new stuff for you to play with!

We’ve been spending a lot of time working on some back-end additions and improvements to allow more people to create and edit dances and while most of those features aren’t quite ready yet (getting close!), the work has allowed us to push up some features that regular users can start using today. Continue reading New Features Sept 27, 2017

New dances – Aherlow & Padeen O’Rafferty

The Aherlow Set is an Irish set that you don’t find danced too often but it’s got a good mix of tune types and is one that will keep you thinking.  Padeen O’Rafferty is an Irish ceili dance that’s an interesting mix of moves from several other dances (Walls of Limerick comes to mind).  They’re all easy moves and this would be a good choice if you want something just a little different.

Options overhaul

In preparation for a messaging system being added to DanceMinder, the user settings system has been overhauled.

Some settings you might not have been aware of are now collected into one place and a few new settings have been added that give you more control over what you see in DanceMinder.

A couple of settings in particular will be of interest to many of you.  The default display for a dance.  You can now set a sticky preference for seeing either the full or crib views for a dance without having to switch once you’re on a dance page.  Choose “None” means that you’ll get the old behavior.

Any time you click on a link with just the name of a dance, it will be displayed using your current default.  If you click on a link that takes you to a specific view, such as Show Crib View, you’ll get that view regardless of your preference.

You can also have DanceMinder save your latest choice as your new default whenever you view a dance using a specific view type.  With this option checked, any time you click on a link that takes you to a specific view type (such as this one, Show Crib View) your sticky preference will change to Crib.  This link Show Full View would change your preference to the Full view.  This option is experimental so let us know how you like it.

The top menu bar has also changed to contain a link to your profile and the dance search page.

Run over to https://danceminder.com/user/options (you’ll need to be logged in) and take a look at all the available settings.

New Feature – Favorite Dances

Hello everyone,

There’s a new feature in town!   You can now tag dances as one of your ‘favorites.’ when you’re viewing the dance either in full or crib views.

What does this mean?
Whenever you tag a dance as a favorite, using the new star icon next to the dance name, it’s added to a private collection called, appropriately, Favorites.  This collection is viewable only by you unless you share it with someone using the private link you’ll see when viewing your Favorites collection.  Most of the time you’ll likely just want to keep it private.

Your Favorite collection will always show up first in your collection lists and will be used for several upcoming features.  It also provides a way for you to very quickly get to the dances that are most important to you through the new Favorites menu link.

In the near future you’ll be able to enable notifications so that DanceMinder will tell you any time one of your favorite dances change.  This will include minor editing changes as well as when videos or comments are added or changed for one of your favorite dances.

Before that, we’ll be implementing a messaging system so that you’ll be able to choose between email notifications or web site notifications similar to what you may be used to in Facebook.

For the moment run over to DanceMinder, log in and start adding your favorite dances!

If you run into any problems please let us know through the contact page.

New Dance – The Old Philadelphia Set

This is an odd bird of a set in that it mixes reels and marches in the final figure.  Also, unlike most modern sets this one uses the elbow ceili hold (right hand in right with the right elbows bent and the hands in front with left hands cupping your partner’s right elbow).

If anyone has any video of this set being danced, let us know!

The Old Philadelphia Set

Feature update – Collection searching

A new feature has just been added to DanceMinder, the ability to search collections and control how the collection list is sorted.

As part of this update you can now:

  1. Sort by date, either when the collection was added, or last updated.
  2. Sort by name.
  3. Sort the final list either in ascending or descending or A-Z or Z-A so that you can see the newest or oldest first in the list.
  4. Filter the results based on text you enter.  At the moment this filter uses the collection name, description and location during the search.  Searching dances that are a part of a collection will be added in a future release.

Now you can easily return to a collection based on its age or if it was used for your favorite event.

Give it a try

DanceMinder-Collection-List