I'm also downloading all of my purchases here for later use with backed up DIM in case Daz decides to force Central on us once and for all. It's a slow and tedious process doing it manually even with a modest (58 page) library, and Daz is sending everything incredibly slowly. 

I hear ya. My external hard drive broke (my fault, knocked it off the table) and I have been downloading all my products from the very beginning, doing it since the beginning of last month.   I have the same concerns about the future of DIM (And obviously, going to do Cloud storage too.)  It's apparent they are shoving DazCentral down our throats.

So I'm sending my ticket to Tech Support.

I'll likewise send a discrete ticket to Tech Support, though I'm considering one to Customer Service as well. They'll be the ones getting to deal with floods of surprise DazCentral-only returns. The whole "it was totally an accident that all this new stuff was listed for DazCentral only" line seems sus in the wake of this library redesign, complete with a download link for it that's suspiciously easy to accidentally click (basically where the product page link used to be). And of course, the new bridges they're advertising heavily are DazCentral only...

Cloud storage is a good idea, I might back up some of my most important purchases and project files there. I wish I'd started the backup a month ago when I first got a bad feeling, because the slow downloads are killing me. I'm just finishing up page two and I'd guess my average file size has been 400-500MB. Sometimes I'll get a nice utility or script at a couple megs, but then I'll get a 2.5GB set of HDRIs or a 3.5GB set of terrain, or just some 800MB hair. With Daz serving things at less than ten MB/s on average through the site, it hurts. Plus I'm half expecting to hear from my ISP, wondering what on earth I'm doing.

...cloud storage means you have to be online. I am not fond of having to be online when working as it is dependent on your connection and takes up additional system resoruces as well.

There's no reason you'd have to be, and I don't think anyone is suggesting using cloud storage as anything more than a backup for our data in case the worst happens. We all seem to appreciate at least some degree of disconnect between Studio and the internet, preferring manual installation or DIM.

I'm not a fan of using the cloud in lieu of local storage, but I'm a big fan of using it to back select things up for subsequent retrieval. I'd never trust cloud storage in situations where you have to read/write to it constantly. In general I hate remote read/write stuff, ever since college when they disabled all local saving and forced us to read from and write directly to a university server. Unsurprisingly, a whole bunch of our major projects got corrupted in the process. But I'm happy to pay Apple a buck a month for the space to keep copies my pictures and documents (I maintain all of the data locally as well and all access is local), and $10/mo to Dropbox for everything else (uploaded on my schedule).

Any version of Studio that starts requiring us to use DazCentral or have an always-on connection is the version I will refuse to install, ever, no matter how many attractive upgrades it brings.

The version of DIM I'm using on my offline computer is close to two years old now.  It hasn't phoned home since two holiday seasons ago.  Somehow, it's still able to work just fine in offline mode, as is my Daz install which was last updated around that time.

As to how I'm somehow able to still use an older version of DIM has been explained by others, but essentially I manually place the product packages that I manually download from the Daz3D website into the DIM Install folder, then run DIM in offline mode and it does it's thing just fine.  Of course, I'm probably missing out on a few product updates, but as long as the product works well enough already this isn't really a significant issue for me.

DIM also hasn't 'glitched' in almost two years now.  Knock on wood, but my theory is that since I don't have things being changed under the hood in my system by allowing Daz Studio to connect to the internet, well this reduces the risk of the DIM database unintentionally being disrupted by an update, be it on the Daz Studio end or the Windows Update end.  Or via some virus or overzealous anti-malware or something.

There's a few things that my 'Daily Driver' Daz Studio install currently can't handle, namely hairs that take advantage of the latest hair functionality that was added in 4.11/4.12, but my plan has been to not worry about that until my next rendering computer is built.  I have a newer Daz install ready to go on an external drive, but I haven't accessed that install for a few months now.  Gotta luv COVID disrupting income streams...  I could update my Daz Studio install on that computer, but I'm a fan of leaving well enough alone, and the recent changes haven't all been good IMHO.

My biggest issue ATM is that there's only about 30GB of storage space left on the drive that currently hosts my Daz install, so now I have a backlog of products that I haven't installed as there's not enough space left on that drive.  Almost all of the 1.81 TB on that drive is dedicated to Daz stuff, except for Windows and a few other programs = probably less than 150 GB in total is used by other programs.  Most of the other stuff I do using those other programs (mainly Photoshop) is saved on other drives.  Even my relatively tiny game library is being hosted on a separate drive.  So in short, I'm shopping for a 4TB NVME drive ATM... Sabrent makes those.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand.  As others have pointed out, the functionality that used to be in the store where you could see the purchase date of a product on the product library page, as well as the order number, can be important sometimes, as explained by @3Diva and others. 

I THINK I can see what the Daz3D store software developers may be going for with changing a few things.  The Manual Download and Install Manager buttons are a bit larger and more prominent now, with more white space around them.  I'm guessing this is for touch screen functionality, where fat fingers and buttons that are packed more tightly together may not play well with each other.  And as long as the 'Daz Central' paragraph is just a temporary placeholder, and as long as that text eventually gets replaced by the previous product description text that used to be there, as long as that other text is restored soon...

That being said, I prefer the old layout, and think that a happy medium could be achieved here very easily.  If the goal was to make it more tablet/touchscreen user friendly, there are ways to increase the space around objects and make them more readable that wouldn't require a top to bottom redesign of the page.  Anyone that has designed their own web pages knows what I'm talking about here, not specifically but in general web design terms.

I'm not a fan of change for the sake of change.  I get that some people have to justify their jobs, and changing things makes it look like they are doing stuff, but there's a lot of wisdom in 'Leave Well Enough Alone'...  No doubt the Daz3D store software is in need of a long overdue update, but the way things were done product library wise were working just fine for a lot of us, so hopefully the backlash towards the latest changes are sinking in.

I keep a seperate database for purchases that I built from the info in the Library. That way I can keep notes and search that text. I would appreciate the return of that data plus the order numer and date (which I also keep in the database).

As for DAZ Central in its current form it is not useful since I install by categories. (Pre-Gen, Genesis+, Past/Fantasy, Modern/Timeless, Future/SciFi, Environment/Utilities, Animals/Singles) If Central supported there I would reconsider using it.

I'm also downloading all of my purchases here for later use with backed up DIM in case Daz decides to force Central on us once and for all. It's a slow and tedious process doing it manually even with a modest (58 page) library, and Daz is sending everything incredibly slowly. 

I hear ya. My external hard drive broke (my fault, knocked it off the table) and I have been downloading all my products from the very beginning, doing it since the beginning of last month.   I have the same concerns about the future of DIM (And obviously, going to do Cloud storage too.)  It's apparent they are shoving DazCentral down our throats.

So I'm sending my ticket to Tech Support.

I'll likewise send a discrete ticket to Tech Support, though I'm considering one to Customer Service as well. They'll be the ones getting to deal with floods of surprise DazCentral-only returns. The whole "it was totally an accident that all this new stuff was listed for DazCentral only" line seems sus in the wake of this library redesign, complete with a download link for it that's suspiciously easy to accidentally click (basically where the product page link used to be). And of course, the new bridges they're advertising heavily are DazCentral only...

Cloud storage is a good idea, I might back up some of my most important purchases and project files there. I wish I'd started the backup a month ago when I first got a bad feeling, because the slow downloads are killing me. I'm just finishing up page two and I'd guess my average file size has been 400-500MB. Sometimes I'll get a nice utility or script at a couple megs, but then I'll get a 2.5GB set of HDRIs or a 3.5GB set of terrain, or just some 800MB hair. With Daz serving things at less than ten MB/s on average through the site, it hurts. Plus I'm half expecting to hear from my ISP, wondering what on earth I'm doing.

...cloud storage means you have to be online. I am not fond of having to be online when working as it is dependent on your connection and takes up additional system resoruces as well.

The Product Page WAS a useful tool for several reasons stated above. Now it's simply a misguided advert for Daz Central. What a poor exchange for the customer. It feels like someone at Daz has decided we should all use Daz Central and they're using any way they can to push it. I'm quite fed up now. That doesn't encourage to stay and spend.

I (curious, optimistic, foolish) tried out Daz Central when it first came out and was still called 'beta'. After I realised that it couldn't cope with custom directories or outside content, and it kept insisting on installing Studio, I uninstalled it and found out it had screwed up my DIM install paths (I install by hand, but use DIM to keep track of updates). It turned out that it had not just messed up DIM, and I ended up having to uninstall Studio and remove any reference to DAZ from the registry, before I could get Studio and DIM working again. At least my content directories were intact and I didn't have to reinstall those.

I'm certainly not letting Daz Central anywhere near my system again, and as I said before in the days of encrypted connect, if this is the way forward for DAZ I'll be saving a lot of money.

I'm not defending the change, but what are some of you doing with your product library that this is such a problem? I almost never look at mine.

I could list 20 reasons but here is one. Some purchases really need to have 4.12 to work, like Face Transfer Unlimited, but others don't, yet as Daz releases a new version it repopulates compatible software to be whatever the latest version is, and lo an behold runtime poser needs 4.12. Until one week ago we knew that was not always the case. If I bought headshop 11 and screenshot the date, I could calculate when the versions were released and know what version worked with it and know it works for Daz 4.10 and if I needed to utilize my plug in purchased with my hard cold cash, because I wanted to use it,  I would what versions to retain on certain PC. As I mentioned in an earlier post the store credit for return policies are time stamped for 30 days. Timestamps are essentials for most humans regarless of vocation (especially DAZ SUPPORT HELP). I refuse to accept DAZ Central. Renderosity may become my new go-to.

One thing to note: even if you hit all the same points, you should find a way to phrase it in your own words if you can. A lot of places, when they realize something is a concerted campaign using all the same forms and words, tend to discount it, no matter how sincere all the people sending it may be.

If you haven't seen the fiasco of the new Product Library, get ready to see one big advertisement for DazCentral, and ALL useful information stripped away. Everyone PLEASE SEND A TICKET TO COMPLAIN.  I'm sending to Technical Support (not sales)  Here's a few key points, feel free to copy/paste or reword. Here's a link to submit a request,  (to Technical Support) hopefully we'll do this en masse.  For the Tech Ticket Tracker, I chose "Locate Product."  (L'Adair also suggested Website Issue. Either will get the message across.)

BTW, if you are required to do the Captcha thing, you are not signed in. Click the sign in button on the top right. Here's the blurb:

The changes to the Product Library are unacceptable. This information needs to be restored:
The order number and date of the order.

I have numerous products that have been pulled from the store. Put back the details. When the product library no longer displays the details of those products,having only a single image is worthless.
And remove the Daz Central advertising. It is NOT THE FOCUS of the Product Library.  

Please consider adding the SKU, so I don't have to open the product page to find it. It would be nice to have the artist's name on the page, too, or at least a link to a working Read Me that will give the artist's name.
The Product Library has now stopped being useful.  Please restore it to what it was meant to be- finding information on PRODUCTS, not Daz Central. 
 

 

Done

Hi.

This is a great development but I cannot see any of the bridges inside DAZ Central. 

Please advise.

Thank you.

One thing to note: even if you hit all the same points, you should find a way to phrase it in your own words if you can. A lot of places, when they realize something is a concerted campaign using all the same forms and words, tend to discount it, no matter how sincere all the people sending it may be.

If you haven't seen the fiasco of the new Product Library, get ready to see one big advertisement for DazCentral, and ALL useful information stripped away. Everyone PLEASE SEND A TICKET TO COMPLAIN.  I'm sending to Technical Support (not sales)  Here's a few key points, feel free to copy/paste or reword. Here's a link to submit a request,  (to Technical Support) hopefully we'll do this en masse.  For the Tech Ticket Tracker, I chose "Locate Product."  (L'Adair also suggested Website Issue. Either will get the message across.)

BTW, if you are required to do the Captcha thing, you are not signed in. Click the sign in button on the top right. Here's the blurb:

The changes to the Product Library are unacceptable. This information needs to be restored:
The order number and date of the order.

I have numerous products that have been pulled from the store. Put back the details. When the product library no longer displays the details of those products,having only a single image is worthless.
And remove the Daz Central advertising. It is NOT THE FOCUS of the Product Library.  

Please consider adding the SKU, so I don't have to open the product page to find it. It would be nice to have the artist's name on the page, too, or at least a link to a working Read Me that will give the artist's name.
The Product Library has now stopped being useful.  Please restore it to what it was meant to be- finding information on PRODUCTS, not Daz Central. 
 

Cloud storage is a good idea, I might back up some of my most important purchases and project files there. I wish I'd started the backup a month ago when I first got a bad feeling, because the slow downloads are killing me. I'm just finishing up page two and I'd guess my average file size has been 400-500MB. Sometimes I'll get a nice utility or script at a couple megs, but then I'll get a 2.5GB set of HDRIs or a 3.5GB set ofW terrain, or just some 800MB hair. With Daz serving things at less than ten MB/s on average through the site, it hurts. Plus I'm half expecting to hear from my ISP, wondering what on earth I'm doing.

Cora, my downloads are still averaging 160- 200+ mbps on average and other than a 9mbps about four days ago, it hasn't slowed. I have found unplugging the modem and router (like what you do when you lose internet) and restarting the computer can sometimes bring a sluggish system back up to par. Try that and see if you are still getting slow speeds?  

For whatever reason, the Daz website is a perpetual thorn in my side. On both of my computers, I cannot use the Daz site specifically and any other page at the same time. Daz demands ALL of the bandwidth available, even just to browse, and will freeze up every single browser tab while it waits to resolve something. Admittedly I'm stuck using wifi upstairs and there's a lot of interference, but even with that taken into consideration I should still be able to get around 300Mbps (~38Mb/s) down over wifi. The thing is that even over that awful wifi, downloads through DIM usually happen significantly faster than ones through the site itself, which have been coming in at 80Mbps (10Mb/s) or less this evening. Sometimes they'll perk up a little, then go right back to downloading a 900MB file, 2MB at a time.

My system is due for a reboot, so I'll do that for thoroughness, but I'm currently getting around 900Mbps down at the box itself and 300Mbps up here. Part of it is that I need a better mesh network (they provided some dual-band units that are absolute garbage), but part of it is the site itself.

It's one more reason I want nothing to do with Central or anything that pushes Central.

I'm also downloading all of my purchases here for later use with backed up DIM in case Daz decides to force Central on us once and for all. It's a slow and tedious process doing it manually even with a modest (58 page) library, and Daz is sending everything incredibly slowly. 

I hear ya. My external hard drive broke (my fault, knocked it off the table) and I have been downloading all my products from the very beginning, doing it since the beginning of last month.   I have the same concerns about the future of DIM (And obviously, going to do Cloud storage too.)  It's apparent they are shoving DazCentral down our throats.

So I'm sending my ticket to Tech Support.  For the "Tech Ticket Tracker" I chose "Locate Product."  Edit- According to Richard's post, below. If you have to do the Captcha thing, you aren't signed in. (Go to top right and Sign In.) 

And here's an easy copy/paste or to-get-you-started that you can use or modify. Please, everyone send a ticket!!

I filed a ticket under Technical Support and, FWIW, I specified "Website Issue" for the Tech Ticket Tracker.

I download all my purchases—regardless of where I purchase from—to this computer on an external drive. I also store those files on an internal drive of my render machine. The idea of depending on a company's website to store items I've paid for has never seemed like a good idea to me. (Yeah, that includes cloud storage.)

I'm also downloading all of my purchases here for later use with backed up DIM in case Daz decides to force Central on us once and for all. It's a slow and tedious process doing it manually even with a modest (58 page) library, and Daz is sending everything incredibly slowly. 

I hear ya. My external hard drive broke (my fault, knocked it off the table) and I have been downloading all my products from the very beginning, doing it since the beginning of last month.   I have the same concerns about the future of DIM (And obviously, going to do Cloud storage too.)  It's apparent they are shoving DazCentral down our throats.

So I'm sending my ticket to Tech Support.

I'll likewise send a discrete ticket to Tech Support, though I'm considering one to Customer Service as well. They'll be the ones getting to deal with floods of surprise DazCentral-only returns. The whole "it was totally an accident that all this new stuff was listed for DazCentral only" line seems sus in the wake of this library redesign, complete with a download link for it that's suspiciously easy to accidentally click (basically where the product page link used to be). And of course, the new bridges they're advertising heavily are DazCentral only...

Cloud storage is a good idea, I might back up some of my most important purchases and project files there. I wish I'd started the backup a month ago when I first got a bad feeling, because the slow downloads are killing me. I'm just finishing up page two and I'd guess my average file size has been 400-500MB. Sometimes I'll get a nice utility or script at a couple megs, but then I'll get a 2.5GB set of HDRIs or a 3.5GB set of terrain, or just some 800MB hair. With Daz serving things at less than ten MB/s on average through the site, it hurts. Plus I'm half expecting to hear from my ISP, wondering what on earth I'm doing.

If you haven't seen the fiasco of the new Product Library, get ready to see one big advertisement for DazCentral, and ALL useful information stripped away. Everyone PLEASE SEND A TICKET TO COMPLAIN.  I'm sending to Technical Support (not sales)  Here's a few key points, feel free to copy/paste or reword. Here's a link to submit a request,  (to Technical Support) hopefully we'll do this en masse.  For the Tech Ticket Tracker, I chose "Locate Product."  (L'Adair also suggested Website Issue. Either will get the message across.)

BTW, if you are required to do the Captcha thing, you are not signed in. Click the sign in button on the top right. Here's the blurb:

The changes to the Product Library are unacceptable. This information needs to be restored:
The order number and date of the order.

I have numerous products that have been pulled from the store. Put back the details. When the product library no longer displays the details of those products,having only a single image is worthless.
And remove the Daz Central advertising. It is NOT THE FOCUS of the Product Library.  

Please consider adding the SKU, so I don't have to open the product page to find it. It would be nice to have the artist's name on the page, too, or at least a link to a working Read Me that will give the artist's name.
The Product Library has now stopped being useful.  Please restore it to what it was meant to be- finding information on PRODUCTS, not Daz Central. 
 

I'm also downloading all of my purchases here for later use with backed up DIM in case Daz decides to force Central on us once and for all. It's a slow and tedious process doing it manually even with a modest (58 page) library, and Daz is sending everything incredibly slowly. 

I hear ya. My external hard drive broke (my fault, knocked it off the table) and I have been downloading all my products from the very beginning, doing it since the beginning of last month.   I have the same concerns about the future of DIM (And obviously, going to do Cloud storage too.)  It's apparent they are shoving DazCentral down our throats.

So I'm sending my ticket to Tech Support.  For the "Tech Ticket Tracker" I chose "Locate Product."  Edit- According to Richard's post, below. If you have to do the Captcha thing, you aren't signed in. (Go to top right and Sign In.) 

And here's an easy copy/paste or to-get-you-started that you can use or modify. Please, everyone send a ticket!!

I have to submit a tech support ticket and because it feels like we need to put a bug in EVERYONE'S ear about this, I noted how bloody difficult the new lack of info makes submitting even tickets about issues with products that need fixing. I'd have been completely boned for finding what I needed if I hadn't just purchased the set only a few days ago.

It's still a big problem that deserves its own ticket. I know tickets were a pain in the butt to submit before and this change makes them that much worse, but I hope that everyone will take a few minutes and do it.

I'm also downloading all of my purchases here for later use in case Central gets forced on us. It's a slow and tedious process doing it manually even with a modest (58 page) library; I have lots of big items with multiple parts reaching up to 1GB each, and Daz is sending everything incredibly slowly. If there's a way to use DIM to download the archives of products I've already installed using it, basically say "download all of it" and then walk away, please let me know. Currently I can only download "new" stuff and don't want to have to try to sort out the rest.

I really dislike that layout.

In essence it is not a product library - it is a try to promote Daz Central (that not will get anywhere near my computer).

I don't ever intend to use DAZ Central and I sorta dislike DIM... and the product library changes are terrible.

Besides, my main computer is mostly offline now and I have no interest in changing that.

Please don't remove useful information... you add useful information to help customers.

So they removed useful info like SKU, order number and product description (very useful for inactive products which don't have a product page anymore) to put another advert for DazCentral?

Seriously, how could they think it's a good idea?

Especially since the library is sometimes the only way to track down an item you know you have that's no longer in the store

Actually, it's not the only way... You can also go through your orders one by one to see what you have bought with them 

Not very practical when you have 3700 orders. 

Same with me. I will never, ever, use DAZ Central. And I insist on getting useful information in my download library. If I can't get this any longer, I'll buy the must-haves of my wishlist and leave DAZ.
Edit: Not being a fan of the new layout is THE understatement of the century. I hate it. Useless DAZ Central advertising, no useful information. Crap!!!

Same. If DAZ permanently takes away the information that was in the product library descriptions then I won't be buying much here anymore.

Same with me. I will never, ever, use DAZ Central. And I insist on getting useful information in my download library. If I can't get this any longer, I'll buy the must-haves of my wishlist and leave DAZ.
Edit: Not being a fan of the new layout is THE understatement of the century. I hate it. Useless DAZ Central advertising, no useful information. Crap!!!