December 2024 Updates: Enhanced Airport Bias System & Discovery Notes
We're excited to announce major improvements to how you manage your favorite airports and view discovery insights.
🎉 What's New
This update brings a completely redesigned airport bias system with visual emoji indicators, instant auto-save functionality, and a powerful new discovery notes system to help you understand your flight search results better.
✨ Enhanced Airport Bias System
Visual Emoji Indicators
Airport codes in your flight results now display colorful emoji indicators that instantly show your bias level:
- ⭐ Highly Preferred (bias > 15) - Your absolute favorite airports
- 👍 Preferred (bias > 0) - Airports you like to fly to/from
- 👎 Avoided (bias < 0) - Airports you'd rather skip
- 🚫 Strongly Avoided (bias < -15) - Airports you definitely want to avoid
- ➖ Neutral (bias = 0) - No preference
These emojis are sized at 70% of the airport code text for perfect visual balance, making them noticeable without overwhelming the interface.
Instant Auto-Save
Say goodbye to clicking "Update" buttons! The bias system now features intelligent auto-save with debouncing:
- Hover over any airport code to see its current bias
- Click to open the bias adjustment popover
- Drag the slider to your preferred bias value
- Changes automatically save after 500ms of inactivity
- No buttons needed - just adjust and close!
The system intelligently tracks your changes and only saves when values actually change, preventing unnecessary database updates and ensuring a smooth, responsive experience.
Streamlined Interface
We've removed the "Update Airport" and "Cancel" buttons from the bias form. With auto-save, these buttons were redundant. Now you'll see a simple "Saving changes..." indicator when your preferences are being saved, resulting in a cleaner, more intuitive interface.
📊 Discovery Notes System Overhaul
Structured JSONB Storage
We've completely redesigned how discovery notes are stored and displayed:
- Database Migration: Replaced the old TEXT notes column with a new JSONB discovery_notes column
- Structured Data: Notes are now stored as structured objects with type, message, timestamp, and optional data fields
- Rich Metadata: Each discovery now includes airports_checked, total_pairs_checked, filters_applied, original_count, and filtered_count
- Real-time Collection: Discovery messages are collected during the search process and stored for later review
Enhanced Display
The discovery results page now features a beautiful collapsible notes card that displays:
- Color-coded message types (success, error, warning, info, progress, stats, filter)
- Icon indicators for each message type
- Detailed analytics about your search (airports analyzed, pairs checked, filtering results)
- Backward compatibility with legacy text-based notes
🛠️ Technical Improvements
Code Quality Improvements
Behind the scenes, we've made significant improvements to code organization:
- Extracted common logic into reusable utility functions
- Improved consistency in styling and behavior across the application
- Better code organization for easier maintenance
- Foundation for future enhancements and features
State Management
The bias form now properly tracks initial values and resets correctly when reopening, ensuring you always see the latest saved bias values. The debounce hook prevents excessive API calls while providing instant visual feedback.
🚀 What's Next?
We're constantly working to improve findsim.flights. Here's what's on our roadmap:
- Enhanced filtering options for discovery searches
- More detailed ATC analysis and scoring
- Integration with additional flight data sources
- Improved mobile experience
- Community features and flight sharing