Owned Slowly stamps; Add mark in collection

A suggestion I have received :

Mark Stamps that are Owned by the user in their Stamp Collection page.

This came up at our subReddit dedicated to the wonderful Slowly app, which we use to contact people all over the world, sending letters and learning from each other.

Slowly also has this wonderful idea of 'digital stamps', which we can affix to our electronic letters, and makes them prettier and more meaningful.

Starting in 2017 with only a handful, the success of the app and the stamps popularity has lead to big growth — some of our top collections now hold over 550 Stamps.

Owned versus non-owned stamps, explained.

Some of those we receive when we join – one of more Location stamps, which everyone in that country gets. Others we get from achievements, like sending the first 100 letters (which comes in weeks for active users), or receiving 100 letters (same).

Those are 'Owned' stamps, which we can use in any letter, at any time. They never wear out or get cancelled.

Other stamps we buy in singles or sets, and those are Owned as well.

But for many users, a large portion of their collection is made up of 'received' stamps, which came in letters arriving from abroad. Those will show in our Stamp Collection, and fill the gaps nicely. But they cannot be reused by us. (as they are 'not owned'.)

And we get on the Case.

Working thru back-channel cooperation, the Northern Alliance is seeking to advance our understanding of less explored parts of our favourite programme.

My Russian friend sent me a Direct Message, fully written in Russian, so he could express his ideas more freely; with Bing Translator becoming the enabler of my comprehending the text.

And it is interesting. As mentioned in the first line, how about marking stamps that are owned outright (the ones we bought or achieved directly) and can be sent to others — in the bigger listing of a complete user's Stamp Collection. Text lightly edited for brevity.

Original, translated message :

Theses – 3 possible ways to handle this :

  1. There is a link to a user's stamp collection that accurately shows ALL of their stamps. But there is no marking in the collection of stamps “owned”, so we are allowed to send.

  2. The idea of changing the code of the Stamp Collection page itself with the general collection to mark there stamps into 2 groups: “owned” and “not owned”. Maybe you could write an article, how to instructions: . 2a. how to save a copy of the page on the computer, from a link to the stamp collection page. . 2b. how to edit the source code of the saved local page, so that Owned stamps received an additional mark. . 2c. how to upload the edited page on any free web host, which allows pictures or somewhere else. . 2d. when exchanging stamps will need to send 2 links : one link to the official collection and the second link – to the adjusted page- which includes the all the 'owned stamps' properly marked.

  3. Another Idea – similar to item 2 above, but maybe someone will write an easy to use script or plug-in for the browser. This script or plugin would do this 'fixing' of the code on a local copy of the Stamp Collection page. . And for this I again suggest sending letters to those Slowly users who have “coding” in their profile.

  4. Yet another Idea (#3): you could write a convincing letter to the developers about the need to add another button to the app – see “point 1” above (ie, clearly identify the Owned Stamps when desired by user.)

I could provide more detail, but will wait – until you confirm your interest in the topic.

All this you can translate into English and publish anywhere.

Interesting idea and Suggestions for implementation.

Having some marking in the full Stamp Collection page which identifies which ones we own and can send to others if desired is a nice one — and could help people who are looking for a particular stamp.

If a little red dot was added besides each owned stamp, very quickly we could see if this collection has something that we need, and most importantly, CAN send it out to other pen pals.

Sharing personal collection links is common in the Stamp Trading topics here on Reddit. Some of us even include the link in our own Slowly profiles, so our penpals can refer to it if needed.

Can it be Done? And How?

Yes, it can be done. If we look at the wonderful work already done in the app, which has so many nice and careful touches, it's clear this is possible.

The Best Method for achieving this? I would say it's the one with number 4 in the DM transcribed above. A Diplomacy mission to touch base and make a polite suggestion and request to the development team.

But what about doing it locally?

That got my curiosity too, so I went looking.

On Slowly WEB mode, there's a page :

https://web.getslowly.com/stamps

...which displays ALL of the user's Owned Stamps. And nicer yet, it has tabs in the Left side menu which allows quickly selecting only certain types of stamps to display.

Every stamp we have has a property attached to it — if owned or not. Owned ones can be used in letters. The rest, no, but they do fill the gaps in the user's full Album, which is displayed at their usual shareable Collection Page url.

A look at the short source code for this page and I found “ Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty.call” which seems to be the ownership tracking variable.

To make that pretty and clean My Stamps page in the image above, the short source code at:

view-source:https://web.getslowly.com/stamps calls some other JavaScript, which are hefty. ;)

view-source:https://web.getslowly.com/static/js/2.8c5ba2e4.chunk.js

Editing this is not easy

...so I think the sane thing to say is to approach the Slowly Team and make a request for this.

Full Collection Page source?

It is an interesting one. Some collections are now over 500 stamps, and that means loading the page will require making individual requests for all of those individual images. It's amazing how well it works, considering the complexity and the number of images to fetch, store locally and display to the user's screen.

An example of a small piece of code – from view-source: https://app.getslowly.com/p/collection/xN3NYrZO9y — an active Collector's Album.

On the user's browser, these will display neatly aligned — here are 3 of the 4 :

Comments ? Suggestions ? interested ? chime in, contact details below. Join us on the Reddit sub and add a comment ?

Big Thank you to my Russian Friend for this ! :)

Famous Last Words

Special thank you to all the folks behind the SLOWLY app.

Letters we share, with pen pals all over the world. A modern day take in the traditional penpal experience. Come and join us, using SLOWLY.

Follow Blog via your Fediverse/Mastodon account :

@friends-near-and-afar-letters-we-share@wordsmith.social

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