Covers page revamped

See blog http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/08/cover-page-changes.php

I've revamped each work's "covers" page—a.k.a. "change cover"—in a few ways:

1. The images are bigger, so you can see quality, and because covers are so beautiful.
2. The algorithm now sorts larger covers higher, so that members are more likely to pick higher-quality versions of their cover. The existing sort order was reinforcing the use of low-quality images, even when LT had high-quality ones.
3. High-quality images now say "high quality" and list the original dimensions.

I'm working on #3 being automatic when you upload the picture. Right now it's cached.

Here are some examples: The Odyssey, Pnin...

Excellent! I love that you can now tell whether the cover is high quality, rather than guessing!

Tim, I know I'm probably the only one who cares, but do you think there will ever be a way to turn off the display of covers sitewide?

This is wonderful - especially as it seems the covers I went to a lot of trouble to download ARE high quality! Which is what I wanted -and hoped to share - because covers ARE so beautiful!
(Sorry fleela)

Thank you very much. And my covers, which were not showing on the work page (were in my library though) now appear.

Er, why are you apologizing to me?

I thought that perhaps me gushing about loving covers - and you wanted to turn them off! Sorry, meant to add some humour - missed the mark.

Oh! I LIKE book covers, heck I read several blogs just about book cover design, but here at LT I like to see as much data (text) as possible as quickly as possible. Decreasing the amount of graphics that have to load helps me do that.

I love this! Especially not having to guess again and again on the best version of an uploaded cover.

I think half the reason I work on series so much is because the covers look so cool on the series pages. Combine an art degree with a smidge of OCD and see what you get ;-)

The changing bug should be fixed now. Sorry about that guys. Testing at 3am isn't my strong-suit.

Looks great - I changed a few covers before I saw this message, and was oh-so-pleasantly surprised to see the "high quality" message with the dimensions. I love it!

Great feature, Tim! Though I do have a question about what constitutes "high quality". For example, Timeline has a "high quality" cover with original dimensions of 95x151.

>11 saltmanz:

It's more than 142 high, which is what LT used to downsample to. I agree, 95x151 is not very high...

>12 timspalding:

Might I humbly suggest a minimum height of 250 to qualify as "high quality"? That appears to be the largest size currently displayable on LT, and it's been my standard for determining whether or not I need to upload my own covers.

Well, at 142 we start to get differences—and you can see the quality and the numbers. There's a difference between 142 and 250, so we might as well show it when we can.

It seems to take a long time for a cover to be marked as "High Quality". Ones that I uploaded as long ago as August 28th still (all 600 pixels high, varying widths) don't have that designation. Not a vitally important point, but a faster process might be helpful to some users.

7: fleela if you're using Mozilla Firefox internet browser you can go into Tools, Options, Content, untick Load images automatically and it won't load images ... or keep it ticked and mark whatever site you don't want images for as an "Exception", which I assume can be removed at any time.

I haven't tried that, though. I like seeing the cover pics! I noticed random covers had changed in my library, did someone say that was a bug and was fixed?

I noticed random covers had changed in my library, did someone say that was a bug and was fixed?

Depends what you mean. If your own covers changed, that's a problem.

Amazon images are housed externally, so they can change.
Books without Amazon images, but with ISBNs, can pick up a member cover. The cover becomes the "dominant" cover for the ISBN. If Amazon subsequently adds a cover, or a new cover becomes dominant, that can change.

>15 TomVeal:

Sorry. It's on my list.

Tim, any update as to when new high quality covers will be marked?

Bump.

I've just checked, and at least one cover that I uploaded as long ago as 3 Sep 2008 hasn't been marked as high quality: http://www.librarything.com/work/2097141/covers/35512903. The single member-uploaded cover is mine, and is 887x1024.

I can find more examples if you want.

I'm a bit confused. How do I access a "High Quality" cover on a book's page? Just seeing the dimensions doesn't really help. Am I missing something? Thanks.

If you click on one of the covers, that will be selected as your cover for the book. The only way to see it at a higher resolution than on the book's page is to use Cover view in your catalog and increase the size as far as it will go. (The largest size you can currently get to is 250 pixels high, but that's not to say that they won't come up with some way of seeing them larger in the future.)

20> A high quality cover gets a label 'High Quality' across it in the thumbnail on the Choose Cover page. That's what people are talking about with it getting (or not getting) 'marked'.