Covers: Better, Bigger, Blanks, Defaults and Statistics

See blog post:

http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/04/covers-better-bigger-blanks-defaults.ph...

I don't use Cover View, I don't even have a cover column in my catalog styles, but I get why this is such a big draw for most users. Looks like you've done a great job with these features.

(Mouse over covers to see user) on the choose your default cover page does nothing for me with FF3/Vista.

Yeah, I noticed that too. I'm using alt text. I should add "title," since some use that. On the list now.

Regarding the bigger-sized covers, what is the optimal image size? I tried poking around the wiki, but didn't find anything. I'd like to make sure I have the best scans uploaded for myself and everybody else who share my books.

What is now recommended as far as file size, height, width, and dpi for images?

There's no point in going past about 600 pixels in either direction. We'll never use an image larger than that. At present, we're saving originals of almost any size. We may start downsampling to something like 1000x1000 just to prevent hard-drive meltdown.

DPI has no meaning on the web, it's all about pixes-by-pixes.

Any chance of getting a green outline around the best-guess member-uploaded covers?

Is it possible to divide the count for user supplied covers into covers supplied by me, and those by others?

I don't mean everone should see
Covers supplied by ringman
Covers supplied by other users (including yourself if you're not ringman)
though why not?

>7 infiniteletters:
I just noticed that on the Profile>Statistics>Book Covers page Tim has put a link that will bring up all the best-guess member-uploaded covers -- so if I decided to turn best-guess covers back on I'd still have a way to know which ones hadn't been 'vetted' and accepted by me -- and while it's off (so the list is there, those covers actually show up blank in my catalog), I still have a list of those covers where there's a best-guess option, reminding me to check if a good cover has been uploaded for those books since last I checked a few months ago...

IMHO that's better than a green outline since I don't have to scan through my whole catalogue (not enormous, but still a bit of a job) to find (in my case) those 24 books.

(I also like the link to the Amazon covers since, if I can, I prefer to replace them with user-uploaded ones (less liable to change at the whim of some Amazon employee, or when the publisher switches the cover to something new).)

In other words, I love this new feature set -- makes it even easier to indulge my obsessive-compulsive personality!

>8 ringman:

I too would like to see user-supplied covers broken up into those supplied by me and those supplied by others.

I have spent hundreds of hours scanning, photoshopping and uploading covers at precisely the size that they would (previously) display. Of course, my desire to view sharp, well-saturated covers (that are not tied to amazon) could only be fulfilled on monitors that use nearly the same, relatively high resolution of mine. Now, I suspect that I will want to upload larger cover files for pretty much every book in my library -- including rescanning a couple of thousand books (I really don't know how many -- is there a way to find out how many or, better yet, which covers I've personally uploaded?)

Of course, the new changes to covers really don't mess up my current viewing approach (I had already resigned myself to "zoomed out"/high resolution viewing). The only covers that I "must" rescan in order to maintain viewing resolution are those that were shorter than the default hight (because they were wider than the default width). ...But the idea of viewing user-supplied covers at different sizes is very, very attractive.

Before I begin rescanning all my covers, however, I really need to decide the best upload size for the new cover systtem. Since both downsizing and upsizing often results in a noticeable lack of sharpness/saturation, I want to pick dimensions that will look best at the most likely viewing sizes. For me, that is the small default size in cover view and the somewhat larger size that appears on the book/work/edit pages--I really don't care that much about sharpness or saturation on larger viewing sizes). I'm worried that this may have to be decided on a book-by-book basis. Do you have any suggestions? Also, what are the dimensions (in pixels) of the resized covers that display on the book/work/edit pages?

That said, I think that, all in all, this set of new features really adds value to cover viewing (my preferred method of viewing catalogs, if you couldn't guess). I also think that the new cover stats page is extremely useful (although, it would definitely be nice if my own cover uploads were broken out from those of other members' uploads).

Thanks for a great upgrade, Tim. I'm looking forward to any help you can offer in deciding the best cover size/resolution for me to upload (as a starting point, if not a rule) so that I can maintain some degree of control over sharpness and saturation at my preferred viewing sizes.

I definitely like this new feature. Two suggestions:

(1) I'd like to know how many/which covers I have uploaded.
(2) I want to be able to 'confirm' a cover which as been guessed at. Currently nothing happens when to choose a cover that has been guessed at.

I agree with everyone who would like to know which covers we ourselves have uploaded.

But I also want to say that I think you guys rock!

>Any chance of getting a green outline around the best-guess member-uploaded covers?

No. You can find them now—from the cover statistics page.

>Is it possible to divide the count for user supplied covers into covers supplied by me, and those by others?

I'm going to look into it, but I think that, no, we won't be able to do that. Unfortunately, we lost the cover-user connection. Basically, we had it before because the covers used the id of the book you uploaded them to. But that meant that if your book was #12 and you uploaded a cover, and someone else used that cover, if you uploaded a new cover for #12, you would change the cover they were using too. Members didn't like that so I made it an autoincrementing key. I don't think it has other metadata at present. I can start adding it and use the old info too, such that I get some of the assignments.

>I want to be able to 'confirm' a cover which as been guessed at. Currently nothing happens when to choose a cover that has been guessed at.

Well, you can select the cover and it will change it in the database. You'll also see the guesses count go down by one.

>Thanks for a great upgrade, Tim. I'm looking forward to any help you can offer in deciding the best cover size/resolution for me to upload (as a starting point, if not a rule) so that I can maintain some degree of control over sharpness and saturation at my preferred viewing sizes.

There is no best, only better and better. As a practical matter, if you go above, say, 600x600 or 1000x1000, we're unlikely to ever use that extra resolution. But fundamentally we're going to be resizing any cover you give us--to any one of the 7? sizes.

I just want to echo the comment that having the statistics on the covers is wonderful! Now I can go through the best guesses and check them all (at a quick glance at the first page of "best guesses," I found one wrong one -- with the correct version unavailable, so I reverted to my default cover). And then, in my "free time," I can go back to the Amazon-provided ones and see if I can change them to user-supplied. Without these statistics, I would have had to turn off the "best guess" feature, so I really appreciate this. Thanks, Tim.

Yes, new covers and access to the stats are wonderful.

Small bug - I changed my default cover, then went to a Change Cover page and the old default was showing as the thumbnail for 'Your default cover'. When I clicked on it I in fact got the new one, so it's just the thumbnail. But rather disconcerting (I just changed that!).

Hey Tim, just wanted to say thanks as this is WONDERFUL.

>15 jjmcgaffey:

I'm thinking the page was cached and you used the back button. Possible?

T

Woohoo!

Finally I can go weeding out all the Amazon covers, like I've wanted to pretty much since I started!

(...is there any chance that we could get non-Amazon covers to show up on LJ-style graphical blog widgets ...?)

18: Seriously, I wish I'd known this feature was coming! The statistics that show all the Amazon covers I have, I mean. I have spent soooo many hours going through my catalogue and tagging all the books that have Amazon covers only.

But I'm loving this! Yay!

Tim,

I'm having a problem seeing all the blank covers. When I click on "see all 51 covers", nothing happens. (This is at home on my iMac - OSX/Safari.)

Thanks, Tim. The having control over little details like this is a big part of what makes LT so great for all us obsessive-compulsives.

Lilithcat. I'm seeing no 51. When you do it, what's the URL that it shows? WHat then?

>15 jjmcgaffey:, 17

I have the same issue, and I changed mine last night.

This is great! Thanks for putting up with all of the abuse on the involuntary covers.

>20 lilithcat:, 22

I had the same problem the first time I clicked on "see all xx covers". Next time I tried it, it was fine.

> 22

I'll go to the "Change Covers" page, for instance: http://www.librarything.com/work/16971/covers/942068

Under each set of covers, there is a link to see all the covers in each group. In this case, there are more covers in each group than show on the page initially. If I click on "see all xx covers" for member-uploaded or amazon covers, additional covers will show. However, under the blank covers, clicking "(show all 51 covers)" doesn't give me the additional ones (which is a pity, because I really liked some of the ones not showing).

The URL doesn't change. I do see at the bottom of my screen "javascript:showallcovers('memberuploaded')" or ('amazoncovers').

AHA! I just realized that a mouseover of "(show all 51 covers)" shows "javascript:showallcovers('memberuploaded') and opens up those additional covers! Should this be changed to ('blankcovers') or something like that maybe?

(Note that this behavior is the same on my work computer which is Windows XP Professional/IE6.)

>17 timspalding:, 23
Of course it could be a caching issue - but like MarthaJeanne, it's still on the standard default cover when I changed it pretty close to 24 hours ago. I actually went back and forth several times to different books (clicking Change Cover from a rightclick on the cover in my catalog mostly, occasionally clicking the link on the left of the book page) and it never changed - still the same now.

22: I'm reproducing lilithcat's (show all 51 covers) link problem

The link URL says

javascript:showallcovers('memberuploaded')

but it doesn't do anything, even after reloading the page (25) or mouseover (26). I cleared cache too.

I could see and use all the blank covers yesterday (XP, Firefox).

Sorry about the other-blank cover issue. They're all working now.

29: Yay! The show all 51 covers link works now. :)

I am working on the Covers Page from Your Profile, Statistics.

I have clicked on the link for Best Guess covers. I have 21 books and it is 2 pages. When I click on the link, Next Page at the top or bottom, nothing happens. It shows something in the URL box at the bottom, but nothing happens. To get to the 2nd page I have to click on the number 2 up top to the right.

I then went into the No Covers Link and I have 44 books, and 3 pages. The next page there also doesn't work. I had to click on the small number.

Edit:

After posting this message I went back and now have only 20 books as a Best Guess, and that is one page. Not sure where the other book went or why.

The No Covers though is still 44, and 3 pages and the Next Page doesn't work. I am going through them to add covers, because some had covers before the new cover changes were made. I am putting them back, so I imagine my total with No Covers will go down, though I think it will still be at least 2 pages.

I tried the link for 'Blank covers chosen by you' which has 0 books, and got this error:

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /var/www/html/profile_stats_covers_link.php on line 39 Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /var/www/html/profile_stats_covers_link.php:39) in /var/www/html/profile_stats_covers_link.php on line 61

I also got 'No books cataloged' on the best-guess link, but then I went and gardened my tags and went back and tried it again and it works fine. No idea what the problem was.

Two comments/questions. No, three.

1) Thanks for working on this. It's a fun feature.

2) Did you address the blog comment where someone said he/she can no longer upload a more clear image if someone else has already provided that cover? This would be distressing to me as I occasionally find a member-uploaded cover to be pretty blurred, or to have remainder stickers on it, etc.

3) I chose a default blank cover, and the system puts the title of the book in very small, off-centered text, kind of ruining the look of the default cover. Do I have any control over the size of the title text, or how it's placed? Unfortunately, for a lot of the nice fancy designs, the text going over the fancy elements makes the title difficult to read, or ruins the look of the cover so that we might as well stay with very plain blanks.

You can certainly upload another cover. I'm not sure why that user had a problem.

At the present, there isn't control over the text. In theory, you should be able to choose whether it's there, the color and the size. Someday. :)