A suggestion for WotC re: DDi

[Zinovia]

Perhaps implementing it as a search option in the Compendium is the best option. Make a new search tab (or button) for "Find an Article in Dragon/Dungeon". Have that pull up stuff based on key words, so that it would be easy to find the skill challenge articles, or genasi articles, or new traps or whatever.

A compiled PDF of a regular feature (especially the Skill Challenge articles) would be lovely, but would take continual updating to keep adding onto it. There's no way of automating the layout that I'm aware of (but I'm only an amateur graphic artist).

It can be tough to find the exact articles you're looking for in Dragon or Dungeon, so improving search capabilities and adding keywords to those would rock.

 

[Scribble]

One thing that'd be very useful to me, and I'm sure to other DDi subscribers, would be to collect Dragon articles of the same series/column in their own PDF files. Like:

- "Ruling Skill Challenges" <--- specially this!
- "Creature Incarnations"
- "Ecologies"
- "Playing...", grouping together the MM races expanded in Dragon.
- "Bestiary"
- Optionally, there could be PDFs grouped by race: "Dragonborn" would feature the Ecology of the Dragonborn, the article on Io'vanthor and maybe the article on Tiamat's followers; "Tiefling" would include Vor Kragal, "Class Acts: Warlord" that focused on tiefling warlord/locks and maybe the tiefling-based Domain of Dread.

It'd sure make it easier to reference/print similar articles.

I have adobe pro at work so I've been collecting the skill challenge pdfs into one big one myself, but I agree- your suggestion would be a nice feature.

At the very least I think they need to give the mags a much better search function. Something that searches just the articles and not the entire wizards site.

They could also use a "favorites" function where we could place links to our favorite articles.

 

[kenmarable]

While I'm no type-setting expert, I strongly suspect that type-setting is not the sort of process which is easily automatable. At the very least, you'd want someone to review every single change and make sure nothing broke (e.g. text running into images, bad paragraph breaks, etc).

Perhaps a more usable idea would be a fan-run database with a list of all articles, tags for each, links to the direct articles on DDI, and a link to and page reference for the compiled (and updated) issue.

Actually, I might just try to do something like that.

Hey, if you could use a hand, just holler. I've given some thought to that as well, but right now am focusing on an adventure index database (going beyond just Dungeon mag).

If you get something together, I know I'd certainly use it. Right now I just navigate recent articles through the Editorial Calendar, but for past stuff, I use the Search which is far from ideal.

 

[Asmor]

It's a work in progress... But it's in progress.

Dragon & Dungeon Article Index

 

[Ktulu]

Nice - bookmarked.

 

[Agamon]

It's a work in progress... But it's in progress.

Dragon & Dungeon Article Index

Sheesh, Asmor, maybe WotC should hire you...or at the very least, steal your awesome ideas.

 

[mudbunny]

This is a great idea, I will poke some people at WotC about this.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Sheesh, Asmor, maybe WotC should hire you...or at the very least, steal your awesome ideas.

yeah great work, bookmarked as well....
EDIT: that is not enough....an AWESOME resource thanks, now that I have played with it.... keep it up.

 

[darjr]

Nice!

Did you know that you can have a url that refers to a page in a PDF?

To go to page 4 just end the url with '#page=4'. Though I'd consider it a bit rude if it was done a lot, especially without asking first.

See Jump to a PDF page or section via a URL request [bluedragon.blog-city.com]

 

[Asmor]

Sheesh, Asmor, maybe WotC should hire you...or at the very least, steal your awesome ideas.

Well, here's hoping someone from WotC's reading this thread and hears me say that I just graduated in May and am actively seeking a job. Sigh... a guy can dream, eh?

Nice!

Did you know that you can have a url that refers to a page in a PDF?

To go to page 4 just end the url with '#page=4'. Though I'd consider it a bit rude if it was done a lot, especially without asking first.

See Jump to a PDF page or section via a URL request [bluedragon.blog-city.com]

Funny, I was actually thinking about that myself as I was making the program, e.g. "Self, wouldn't it be cool if you could just use an anchor to jump to a page in a PDF url? Nah, it'd never work..."

In my case, it probably wouldn't work since I have it configured to open PDFs externally, but good to know. Thanks!