New "My Downloads" layout

Hi,

I like the fact that you can now download the names of all the downloads that you have made, all in one hit. Thank you for that.

I'm not so happy that the rows now download as three rows if you copy/paste them into Excel - to me, that's a backward step, but i can live with it.

What has upset me (and I suspect many others) is that there is now no link between the Title of the download, and the File that has been downloaded (How is it possible to tie "vNeCmbqdUyDx.zip", for instance, easily to the model of the"Three Mile Island - Pennsylvania USA", and this is but one example of many).

I actually use a couple of items that have now been discontinued from this page on a regular basis:

• The actual Link (to go back and read the description, make comments, etc)
• The Name of the addon (see above)
• The current filename (as a search tool to identify the name)
• The category
• The author (not very often)

I would ideally also like to know the country, when this is known, but can live without that. The two Versions are not of much interest - the current filename supplies all I need to know about that - if I haven't downloaded the current version, the "Update Needed" view tells me about those that need updating. I invariable download all this as a CSV file, to load into Excel (and this would be the ideal solution for me, but I've already been told that it isn't possible, so I won't press the issue - copy/paste will work for me OK). Bottom line is that this change to the My Downloads page has turned it into an extremely useful addon management tool into a marginally useful indicator of what needs updating. Can something please be done to return the useful aspects of this page to general use. Thanking you in anticipation.

What I’ve written below should in no way be taken as negative criticism. It is meant as constructive criticism, and is offered freely, without malice, or any particular expectation that you will be able to act on any or all of it, or if you do decide to do so, that you can do it very quickly. It is feedback, and should be treated as encouragement rather than any sort of put down.

I’ve today downloaded my data from the new layout of My Downloads, and while generally, I can understand these tags (I’m not sure about “General”):

Aircraft Addition, Applications, Bridges, Bush Trips, Checklist, Cities, Civil Aircraft, Custom Views, Flight Plans, General, General Aviation, Helipad, International Airport, Landmarks, Landscapes, libraries, Military Aircraft, Mountains, Paintkits, Regional Airports, Stadiums, Toolkits, and Tweaks

The tags below don’t make much sense to me, because as tags they suck. Each of the aircraft should belong under the tags Civil Aircraft, Military Aircraft, or General Aviation (with the exception of the H135, which should, I suspect, be under the tag “Helicopters”)

Aerosoft CRJ 700, Airbus A320neo, Airbus H135, Beechcraft King Air, Cessna 172, Cessna Citation CJ4, Cub Crafter X-Cub, Diamond DA62, FBW A32NX, ICON A5, Misc., Other Aircraft, Others, Regional Bundle, and TheSkyLounge.TV.

As for “Other Aircraft”, “Others” Miscellaneous” and “The SkyLounge TV”, I really am not sure of what to make of these as tags – they mostly just repeat the information from the rest of the data, and I’d really like a definition of what to expect of a “Regional Bundle”

Now, my list of downloads is obviously just a small portion of what is available on the site, but I think that it’s a big enough selection to perhaps give you an idea of just how chaotic the data is for anyone trying to use it sensibly.

The field “Downloaded xx minutes/hours/days ago” is rather redundant – the last Downloaded DATE is already shown, and I’d expect that most users could work out from that just when they last downloaded the mod – and as the total view is of “up to date” mods, there should be no problem about any of the mods listed being out of date.

I can certainly live with all of the above – I just won’t use some of it, but there is one piece of information that is missing that would really help me, and that is Country, (and/or Continent.) If I have the country, I can easily work out the Continent, and if the mod isn’t for a country, that field being empty would not be a problem to me (Perhaps for the mods that put scenery in all countries (the airport lighting one, for instance) could be marked with the country “World”

What you’ve done is a great step forward, but another step to address these issues would make the result even better – for me, and others who use the data in Excel – in particular.

There is just one other comment that I’ll make, then I’ll call it a day. Currently, if I copy/paste the data held here into Excel, or Word, each field is listed on a separate row. Ideally, data for one mod would work better if it was separated by commas, or tab characters, with a return after the last field for the record. With that, importing the whole data into excel, or Word, would be a snap.

Thank you VERY much for what you've already done.

John