Minor: Design of Book Edit and Book Details pages

I've tweaked the design of Book Edit and Book Details pages, to make the look nicer and have slightly more space.

We're adding some new functionality to these pages soon, so if you have any burning user-interface requests, let us know.

Click on the example images below.

>1 timspalding: I don't see any difference on my screen with my books. Perhaps the difference is too slight for my notice.

But while I'm commenting, I would like to tell you how much I like the "custom" option for editing.

>1 timspalding: Exciting! Throwing my hat in the ring with two issues around the behaviour of tag completion I once posted about. I don't like how the cursor jumps to the end of the input box after completion; in my mind it should remain just after the inserted tag.

Another visualisation, vertical bar represents the cursor
$ completing foo to foobar
fiction, foo|, book
$ cursor jumps to end
fiction, foobar, book|
$ I'd expect cursor to end up after foobar
fiction, foobar, |book

There's also a potential for tags getting eaten while completing. This issue is perhaps less clear cut, and can be worked around, but it still trips me up sometimes.
$ inserting fantasy after foobar
fiction, foobar, |book
$ typing some letters and a space
fiction, foobar, fant |book
$ completing fantasy results in book being eaten
fiction, foobar, fantasy|
$ it could be argued that the expected result is
fiction, foobar, fantasy, |book

I'd love if the tag input box auto-expanded (at least more than currently) for larger lists of tags (at page load, not dynamically).

And, while I don't use it, I also noticed that out of all the expandable text input fields, tag input is the only one without the "(more space)" button.

You're not, by chance, putting member contributed descriptions back where they belong?

There's been an interface oddity with the floating Save or Add button since the redo. If it's above an input box, sometimes instead of the tap activating the button, it moves the cursor into the box. It used to be worse with links underneath.

I'm not even sure if it's fixable, but I always end up scrolling to the bottom, which defeats the purpose of having a floating button.

(Android Firefox and Vivaldi/Chromium)

Wasn't one of the bigger complaints the last time you guys made adjustments to the Book Details and Edit pages that there was too much blank space?

>4 Bookmarque: I'm glad they're gone, because too many people copied from Amazon instead of creating their own.

>6 gilroy: But there is a Publisher designation that would work for that IMO. Is that an issue? I copy and paste from there and Audible quite frequently. At least I did when the description tab included all of them. Now, I don't bother if there isn't a library record of one, which are all Publisher descriptions anyway.

>7 Bookmarque: Uh, yeah, there is a problem copying from Amazon or Audible. Especially when the member description field said "In your own words."
Copying from another source, the back flap, etc, is not your own words unless you are the author, and even then it gets tweaked.

Uh, no, not if you choose the Publisher Description from the dropdown. That's a totally different thing.

See -

That's the new interface, not the old one I was saying I was glad was gone.
But I don't even know where that interface is any more.

See, that's the issue. It isn't where any logical person would look for it as it's buried in the Community tab.

I'm good with where it hides.

I guess for those of us with less popular titles, it makes more of a difference. A lot of what I am interested in isn't held by libraries very often and it's a pain not to have all the descriptions in one place.

>6 gilroy:

Wasn't one of the bigger complaints the last time you guys made adjustments to the Book Details and Edit pages that there was too much blank space?

Yes, and still is.

>1 timspalding: There's also an issue with the alignment of the UPC and LCCN fields when the viewport is small enough. I'd expect all 6 Identifier text boxes to go in a single aligned column, but the alignment is wonky (see screenshot). This was on my list to check if it had been reported before.

>5 keristars: @conceptdawg: Read this one.

>6 gilroy: Wasn't one of the bigger complaints the last time you guys made adjustments to the Book Details and Edit pages that there was too much blank space?

Yes. Now that people have had a little time to adjust, we're making it less cramped. There's a trade-off.

>15 ianreads: @conceptdawg

>14 lilithcat: Agreed. This new change makes it even worse. I don't understand why the lines of text can't be closer together? What's wrong with that as a design choice (for book records, in particular)?

>3 ianreads:

I echo the second issue here, with the cursor jumping to end and autocomplete sometimes eating the trailing tag.

Re editing, I've noticed that even if you put a comma at the end of the tag list, it doesn't save. So adding a tag at the end, you have to put one in otherwise the appended tag is treated as an addition to the last tag and creates a new tag. Any chance of making the end comma save?

>19 Maddz: Perhaps that's what caused the blank tag bug, which over time sucked in random tags as combined with it? We haven’t seen it some time now *knocks on wood*, but for a while it was a black hole for tags

>14 lilithcat:, >17 JacobHolt:

Webpage designers generally love white space, but LT is the only website I routinely view at 90% size.

I'll look into giving you a compact option. It looks terrible and imposing without some white space, but… if you want it :)

>22 timspalding: Can I help it that I have terrible taste? :-)

When I compare the two images in >1 timspalding: I see 8 sections on the old book page vs. 5 sections on the new book page, with nothing but white space added. For me, that's a 37.5% loss of information on screen for no gain. It's no clearer (IMHO) because the section bars do a fine job of organizing and delineating the information.

So, yes please on the compact option!

I have to enlarge the screen quite a bit to be able to read it, and dislike scrolling through areas of white space. So yes, please to a more compact version.

I agree with >24 r.orrison:
I really hate decreasing information density. Information density is WHY I use LibraryThing.

Okay, I've made it so you can change how the Edit Book page looks…

https://www.librarything.com/topic/379777

I wish this had made it into the State of the Thing, but it wasn't quite ready.

>27 timspalding: Information density is WHY I use LibraryThing.

Thisfeelsalittlextreme ;)

>27 timspalding: Just thought of another small QOL improvement. A sentence case / title case button to change the capitalization of titles. It wouldn't get everything right for everyone, but could be useful!

See attachments for an implementation of a "guess case" button on musicbrainz.org

>28 ianreads: I'd use it!

>28 ianreads: I would use it too!!!

>28 ianreads: I like this idea. It’s not usually a problem for me, but it’d help in some cases. And especially having the option of capitalising either (almost) all words or just the first - I have to make that adjustment a lot as I have books in different languages with different capitalisation rules.

Since I have books mostly in English and German which have totally different rules about capitalization, I would want the option of turning such a feature off.

I see that it might be useful for those who deal mostly with English, but it could make big problems if hit by mistake in other languages.

>32 MarthaJeanne:

Well, I think the theory would be a button, so you wouldn't need to use it.

Right, one click instead of manually changing a bunch of initials. Either direction.

The trick with things like this is that a button adds complexity. "This is the title. You can edit it." is a clear message. Adding a button for an edge case adds cognitive load. The only way to do it would be to have it be a hidden option. Maybe if we had an "Advanced" mode in the pop-up. But it gets confusing fast. The more you say, the more options you give, the more you confuse people who just want to edit the basics.

>35 timspalding: mostly i would like the button because of how much i like to avoid using the virtual keyboard. But I just found https://convertcase.net/ and it should do the job for me. An extra step to fix any capslock titles, but it will do the job fine.

Someone should add it to the wiki page for Edit Book, perhaps.

>4 Bookmarque: Seconded.

All Descriptions together please.

>37 kleh: Yay! Thanks for agreeing. It's nonsensical. I added one yesterday out of the goodness of my heart, but no one will see it.

Wondering if this bug is related to the minor edits:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/383833

>38 Bookmarque: I now tend to use disambiguation as a substitute.