TopVault: BlogCollecting
Deep dive research into collectibles, usually focusing on variants and identification techniques.
Pokémon Ex-generation serial variant rarity
Explore the rarity factor of serial variants in Pokémon ex-era cards, uncovering new insights and collecting challenges
Database of Pokemon Booster Pack Artwork and Variants
TopVault has a mission to become the most complete database for collectibles with a focus on "full complete" sets with large histories and diverse variations. The Pokemon Trading Card Game (TCG) is a great example of this type of collectible. There a...
Technology
Deep dives into the technology behind the TopVault application.
Deploy Ionic app to subfolder with Firebase
The TopVault mobile app is built with Ionic. It is also accessible via a web application using Ionic's built-in web deployment features. This allows users to have the same experience on mobile and on the web. The original deployment used a subdomain,...
OpenGraph and JSON-LD for Ionic apps
One of the primary features of TopVault is to be a library of collectibles. This means indexing all variants and maintaining descriptions, historic pricing information, and links to other resources related to special rare collectibles. This experienc...
Load large lists smoothly with Ionic, React, and Intersection Observer
TopVault allows collectors to see their entire collection on a single page. Collectors can also create large checklists or goals of collectibles and these can grow to over tens of thousands of entries. This is a classic situation where a paginated re...
Use AI models on-device with Ionic, React, and ONNX Runtime
This is a short recap of how the TopVault iOS, Android, and web (SPA, PWA) applications use AI models locally, also known as using them on-device. The examples included in this post are pseudocode abstracted from the actual application to help with d...
Hiding URL bar with Ionic and Mobile Safari
This article describes an alternative approach to hiding the URL bar in Ionic app on Mobile Safari. The end solutions looks like the following demo: What is the problem On Mobile Safari, the URL (or address) bar does not shrink when scrolling conten...
Building TopVault: Reflections on using Ionic
TL;DR, the Ionic UI Framework was a good choice! If I had to choose again, I’d pick Ionic again. Intro and context The context is that TopVault is a mobile-first experience that should also be available in-browser. This makes sharing content with oth...