New Catalog #2: Bugs and small issues -- CONTINUED

This thread is continued from http://www.librarything.com/topic/62606

Chris and I are not a little inundated with issues around the catalog. It didn't help that both of us had some family commitments. We are back on the case fully again.

Let me give a brief summary:

1. The "power bar" (tool bar at the top, with the icons) was being rendered strangely, particularly on Firefox. It has not been either fixed or nearly so. There is a discussion about it here http://www.librarything.com/topic/62704

2. Discussion of the removal of the tags tab, and changing "Your library" to "Your books" is here, http://www.librarything.com/topic/62700

3. "Large issues"--by which is meant overall philosophy and look--are being discussed here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/62605#1213391

A number of bugs remain or have just been fixed:

1. The new "reviews" page should not work. I apologize for its defects—mistiming reviews and giving you the wrong book if you had more than one book for the work. The reviews code was done by someone else and, frankly, was completely unacceptable. I spent much of the day redoing it. It may not be perfect now, but it's at least clear enough for me to fix problems.

2. There are some lingering issues with the form "I changed X and it switched to the beginning of the library, or to my library," etc. Simple restatements of any remaining problems would not go amiss.

Note: "When you use the new sort button you loose your search parameters"

3. The "you-reviewed-it" icon needs to be more conspicuous. Perhaps the other right-hand icons need to be darker/higher-contrast.

4. Chris and I are planning to have a fallback version of the "power bar" without words, for users who have small screens.

5. We need to bring back the text-sizing in the "Organize" page.

Re-stating as requested:

How curious. I just noticed that one instance of an author had his surname fully capitalised. The view I was on was first, last so it looked like Piers ANTHONY. I double clicked and changed the caps so it looked like Anthony, Piers in edit mode and clicked save. It stayed Anthony, Piers until I went off the page and came back, then it displayed as expected as Piers Anthony.

Not a sleep stopper, but I thought I'd mention it.

re-listing a problem (i think)

under power edit: misc powers, when i click to show duplicates, it says i have none. but i have at least 4. ex: the secret garden should show as isbn #0141321067 and #0590433466.

also, when no results are show, it should say 0-0 of 0 instead of 1-0 of 0. this is less important, but it is incorrect.

The "you-reviewed-it" icon needs to be more conspicuous

Made them bright yellow. Better?

>2 justjim:

Ah. I was confused by the caps thing. The essence of your bug isn't anything to do with that, but that when you changed the last-first field, it echoed it back in first-last format. But it did it correctly on refresh, right?

>3 leahbird:

Undealt with.

You want small issues? How's this:
I have a style with the Stopped column showing. When I click on Stopped (column header) it sorts by Stopped date. So far so good. If I then click the Sort button, it shows that the current sort is by "date read".

(I haven't checked any other field names to see if there are others that don't match.)

Now, here's a big issue:
Thank you for the explicit multi-level sort, which works perfectly by the way!

(Now, if that could only be saved with the Style I'd be content. Well, except for collections. And author roles. And other authors fo TRANSMISSION ENDS.

>5 r.orrison:

I'm leaving date started/stopped/reading/throwing-in-garbage issues to Chris. Chris? (Points)

5/6> Same thing with the change display style page - it's shown as 'date started'/'date read'

>6 timspalding:

Nods, points.

Another small (ish) one, though I think this has probably been around forever: Click Organize on the power bar, pick a tag, click Sort power bar button, change the sort order, click Sort. The sort is right, but the tag filter has disappeared and it's showing all books.

Restating: sorting in another person's library brings up your own library instead.

v

>9 r.orrison:, 10

Thanks. I'll fix it tomorrow. Going to bed.

>4 timspalding:
Yes, sorry for the confusion there. After the save (no matter what the changes are) it comes back with the Last, First format until the page is re-loaded or refreshed.

Not sure if this is intentional:
When I look at My Library, the icons for #Members and #Reviews are aligned next to each other, when I look at another person's library, they are aligned on top of each other. This has probably to do because the edit function is not available in other people's libraries (and quite so).

Restate:
Something new
1. In "Your books" using any Style, Hit Print - the pop-up appears.
2. Back to "Your books" view
3. Select a different Style - I get the correct Style but am thrown into Power Edit mode.

#1 timspalding
Unless I'm misunderstanding, you say "not" a couple of times but mean "now": 1. It has not been either fixed or nearly so 2. The new "reviews" page should not work.

The new reviews page and editing in it works for me. I really like that I can easily spot and fix typos and minor formatting errors just by scrolling up and down in the same page.

#4: timspalding " 'The "you-reviewed-it" icon needs to be more conspicuous' "Made them bright yellow. Better?"

Thank you, yes.
Though for me, the main problem wasn't seeing what I've reviewed, but what the owner of the books I'm looking at has reviewed.

The yellow bubble on the review icon is more noticeable, thank you. But, the icons are still really small and overall rather faint.

Problem with Show All - has changed, but still not right or the same as it was:

If you click on Show All (pages) at the top of Your Books, it now freezes the screen (you can move the scroll bar thingy on the right, and it moves, but the screen doesn't) and the 'all page' listing of page numbers covers the whole screen, no books/catalog show.

No way to get out except go to another page - can't click back to the page you were on (#), or you have to use back button. Last line of page numbers is under bottom horizontal scroll page, can't click on them.

I noticed for the actual new review box that it seems to eat spaces between paragraphs.

I had a single space to set them off - works well in talk. When I copied it to the review box (using the new review link) and saved, it took them out. I had to go in and edit - used old edit book link, not the new review link, and put in double spaces which edit kept when I saved it.

When I went in to the new Review Link and saved it (to see if it would save or eat the double spaces), it took out the double spaces. Seems to still have them, but doesn't display them.

Can someone fix the new review box that you get from the new review link, so that it doesn't eat spaces.

I am at home on FF2.X XP

I noticed for the actual new review box that it seems to eat spaces between paragraphs.

This isn't new. This has been happening for ages. (I'm not saying it shouldn't be fixed, I would like it to be fixed too, I'm just saying it isn't caused by the new changes.)

# 17 technically not correct.

The old one (Edit link on the book page) works fine, and the new one (review link - new save button) has only been around a few days so it can't be an old problem.

The old problem, as near as I can tell is using the review box in the catalog I think. Perhaps the person who coded the new review link, copied the code from the catalog review rather than the edit book link. Both should be fixed though.

My apologies. Having paragraph breaks removed from reviews has been happening to me for so long, I assumed it was the same issue.

For entering partial ("fuzzy") dates as a start date, am I doing something wrong?

I initially entered 12/2008 and got an error message (couldn't covert date format), so I simply typed December, 2008 and it converted the date to Dec 19, 2009.

At this point, I'm going to leave these blank, but I'm not sure if this is a bug, or if I misunderstood the initial development shots - I haven't tried "In College" as of yet...

Tim, the yellow looks much better, thanks.

And I think I'll be in the minority here, but I don't find the icons or numbers to be too small. They look just right to me.

There's also a separate thread about Date Stopped here.

The yellow review bubble is better, but I'm still not a fan of the new icons overall. They're just not as visible as the old ones. It's not that I have vision problems, I just think icons should stand out. These ones don't.

12> Jim said, >4 timspalding:
Yes, sorry for the confusion there. After the save (no matter what the changes are) it comes back with the Last, First format until the page is re-loaded or refreshed.

Pardon me for stepping in, but I don't think that's quite right. You said that you edited the name in the First Last column (Tim said Last, First), but you put the name in Last, First order (which I believe is the correct way to do it), and it stayed in Last, First order until you refreshed the page.

Here's another bug (I mentioned it elsewhere but not, I think, in the new catalogue threads) - the member/reviews icons don't always line up with the work that they belong to.

In MY catalogue view the icons are arranged horozontally - initially they don't always line up but if I wait a bit they jump into position (I think when the covers finish loading)

HOWEVER when I am looking at other people's catalogues, the icons are arranged vertically (this is not the bug) - INITIALLY they line up correctly but if I navigate away from the page (say by clicking on one of the books in their library) and then use my browser "back" button to get back to their catalogue the members/reviews icons are no longer aligned with the works they belong to - there will be one or two sets above where the books list starts and the icons space themselves without regard to the toolpad.

IE6/XP

ETA - I can generally replicate this multiple times, but not every single time. Refreshing the page usually, but not always, realigns the icons.

>24 PortiaLong:
That problem does not show in FF3/Vista

I do like the new sort button if I want a completely different sort than what I have on my books at the moment. I tried to do one as Entry Date (down/descending) + Author Name (up/ascending).

And found that the Author Name subsort didn't make any difference at all.

I think I recall Tim explaining that behind the scenes, the date fields are storing a full timestamp, down to the minute or even second. For most of the date fields, I suspect this wouldn't matter, because it would just use a default time of day (like 12:00 a.m. or some such). But for all practical purposes, no subsort is going to be effective once an Entry Date primary sort is established because the system has recorded the actual time of entry including a time of day.

Would it be possible to ignore the time of day when Entry Date is used in a sort?

Fuzzy dates for currently reading are not yet being implemented. We didn't release the new currently reading code...it's part of collections.

That's also why some currently reading/stopped/date read labels don't agree with each other. They all mean the "same" thing but the labels were caught between revisions. That will all be tidy soon.

When I look at My Library, the icons for #Members and #Reviews are aligned next to each other, when I look at another person's library, they are aligned on top of each other. This has probably to do because the edit function is not available in other people's libraries (and quite so).

Yes. There isn't enough horizontal room when it's not your library. This will change when collections are added.

1. In "Your books" using any Style, Hit Print - the pop-up appears.

That's not a bug. Let me explain:

1. The button is a printable version, not a print button.
2. LibraryThing can't actually make your browser print. Well, it can on some browser, but not on all.
3. The printable version is subtly different, attempting to remove all colors, for example, because they don't print well.
4. "Printable version" is a long title. So we used "print."

Unless I'm misunderstanding, you say "not" a couple of times but mean "now"

I am not sorry! :)

Though for me, the main problem wasn't seeing what I've reviewed, but what the owner of the books I'm looking at has reviewed.

That's how it works.

And I think I'll be in the minority here, but I don't find the icons or numbers to be too small. They look just right to me.

I don't know if you're in the minority. I always have to weigh the dynamics of a bug thread. The people who are happy about it, aren't posting, mostly. They aren't even reading. It's not by accident that such threads get more and more negative as problems are fixed and the content leave.

Would it be possible to ignore the time of day when Entry Date is used in a sort?

I don't think that's a good idea. Or maybe I could have both "Entry date" and "Entry order." I could do that, but I think it's fiddly and not worth it. Meh. What do you think?

My eyes aren't great, but the icons are ok. (I have a Lenovo laptop with a fair sized screen, but not huge.) Just checking in since those not unhappy don't usually speak up. I am not unhappy.

Anxiously awaiting phase II

I am having a problem with editing tags in my catalog. I had tags on a book, and when I clicked the box to open, it did so, but typing new tags into the box bounced me out. I ended up on the profile page, when I tried it again it went to a sort in the catalog of some of the tags already listed. It did this twice with different tag sorts. I finally got the new tags in and saved them. Now it says saving, but the tags have also popped up in my date started column. I had put a start date in, but never entered the tags in that column.

book is Snake Stone I searched to find it in my catalog.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=FicusFan&deepsearch=snake+stone

FF2.X XP

>29 MerryMary:

i'm with you MerryMary. i'm pretty blind but have no problems. can't wait for more new fun things!

>28 timspalding: Would it be possible to ignore the time of day when Entry Date is used in a sort?

I don't think that's a good idea. Or maybe I could have both "Entry date" and "Entry order." I could do that, but I think it's fiddly and not worth it. Meh. What do you think?

Maybe an example would make my concern clearer. I added three books to my catalog yesterday, April 18th. I most often have my catalog sorted by Entry Date, descending, so those three are at the top of the list. Then I thought I wanted to see the books entered on a single date sorted another way, like by author name. But because the (hidden) time-of-day timestamps are on those Entry Dates, no other sort can override that within a single date. I end up seeing my three new authors for that date as Murphy, Marks and Kosel regardless of any sub-sort field used.

conceptDawg answered my question, I think, in #27. Sounds like I just have to wait for Collections for this one to "sort itself out".

>28 timspalding: You say
1. In "Your books" using any Style, Hit Print - the pop-up appears.

That's not a bug. Let me explain:

1. The button is a printable version, not a print button.
...
4. "Printable version" is a long title. So we used "print."

==========================================
Understood - but that wasn't my point. See the next 2 lines from me.

2. Back to "Your books" view
3. Select a different Style - I get the correct Style but am thrown into Power Edit mode.

>32 Suncat: I'd say the solution is to use Date Acquired instead ;)

(apologies if this has been mentioned in the threads already, I haven't been able to read every post)

The (new, I think?) search bar at the top of my library defaults to searching title/author, instead of all fields. Yet, when I search, the results are clearly searching all field, and not just title/author.

I just posted a review (using the Edit Book link from the book/work page, not the new Review Link/ Save button, and not from in my catalog).

The date for the review is Dec 31, 1969

http://www.librarything.com/work/914719/reviews/40821372

The Fugitive. When I clicked on the permanent link icon to get the URL above, it takes me to the open editing box for my review - it has the new Save Button, so it must be the new Review link. It used to just show your completed review.

ETA:

I also find that there is no notice to read review with the book on the Profile page in the Recent Activity Box. The book is listed with the star rating but does not have (read review).

I just noticed that the link to the wiki search help is gone from the catalogue. I really think this needs to come back; the search syntax isn't exactly intuitive.

reposting this from the "I killed the tags tab..." thread.

When I exported my books as a tab delimited text, my tags are showing up in the review column...is this intentional? Not a huge issue for me in the short term if this is part of the process but I thought I would mention it in case it is an unknown problem.

>32 Suncat:

No, I understand your point. As I said, I could distinguish between entry *date* and entry *order*. But I'm just not convinced many people would want that, and an extra feature like that isn't free.

The (new, I think?) search bar at the top of my library defaults to searching title/author, instead of all fields. Yet, when I search, the results are clearly searching all field, and not just title/author.

Chris: I'm letting you at this one, okay? Confirm?

I just noticed that the link to the wiki search help is gone from the catalogue. I really think this needs to come back; the search syntax isn't exactly intuitive.

It's perfectly intuitive. You put words in a box and hit search. The question is whether the advanced search ability--things like "title:x author:y" are commonly used enough to take up space. How about if the menu added a link "Search tips..." that went there?

The question is whether the advanced search ability--things like "title:x author:y" are commonly used enough to take up space.

Well, the real question is whether the basic search works well enough that advanced search isn't necessary. See, for example, this thread, especially #7.

I remember it used to be a big hassle to search for multiple tags or exclude certain tags, but that seems to be a bit better now. I'd like it even more if searching tags for fiction didn't bring up books with the tag non-fiction as well.

Anyway, I'd think a question mark linking to a help page would be a much better use of screen space than the word "print" beside an icon of a printer. But adding a completely different thing to the menu seems too weird.

41>

You'll have to drag advanced search out of my cold dead hands. The dropdown is slow and clunky. I really don't understand why you, and lquilter in that thread, are so against it that not only do you not want to use it (which is fine) but you don't want anyone else to use it, either. Some people are just wired for text, and it's not as though keeping the advanced option is hurting you, so why complain about its presence?

I don't see the point of arguing this. Adding a fourth UI element to the box, drop-down and search box doesn't strike me a good use of space, and a question-mark could easily seem like a help for the entire bar.

A menu item seems like a good solution; it's different but I don't think that's going to kill anyone.

FYI: Users whose tags page died have got it back now.

Technical: It turned out to be a timeout not a memory error. The page took more than 30 seconds to generate—30 seconds in PHP, not the database. The new code used some collections logic that employed the PHP array_intersect function. Kaboom—that function is a few orders of magnitude slower than other, simpler methods of doing the same thing. Lesson learned!

I understood every word of that explanation. Not any of the actual sentences though... :)

But hey, as long as you understand it, that's fine by me.

Yes. I'm on the search thing not searching what it is supposed to be searching. If you could understand that sentence then more power to you.

If not, good luck in your search.

Just for fun, I googled "search thing not searching what it is supposed to be searching" and the top return was to 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know. Pshaw, I said (but not out loud because only specially trained stunt linguists can do that), there's more than 50 things that I don't know!

edited to fix mismatched touchstone brackets.

</i>Looking at someone else's library:

The Reviews icon appears underneath the members icon instead of alongside it.

XP IE7

Also the Yellow "! you share x books" is a horrible colour and doesn't need highlighting anyway - and it takes up vertical space. Why not place it next to the users name.

My one terms search by Tag works again. Thanks to who ever fixed it.

Any update on the review issues ? I still have the last (#37) which the system dated 12/31/1969 ?

>42 lorax: Where the hell did this come from? I have nothing against advanced search. I never said anyone should take it away from you. I said that if people need to use it, because, say, the basic search doesn't work well enough, then there should be an explanation of the syntax in an easily-accessible place.

Take a deep breath. We're not all against you. lquilter didn't even say anything in that other thread; I think you mean lilithcat. You should probably check the names before you start with the accusations.

a question-mark could easily seem like a help for the entire bar

Now that you mention it, I'd much rather have one help link for the entire bar than a word of explanation beside every icon. The words are mostly just a waste of space.

> 28 4. "Printable version" is a long title. So we used "print."

I saw someone somewhere else suggest 'print view' to be clearer about what lives there - and I think this is fairly common on other websites. Is that a possibility?

I find a 'print' button to be problematic because it doesn't do what it says - more importantly, what it says is something I often want to AVOID AVOID. That is, I don't want a button to print something until I can look at it and do things like see how many pages it will be, etc, and just the 'print' is kind of unclear as to whether or not it will do that. I think that in this case, the slight mislabeling kind of hurts functionality. On the other hand, a print /view/ is very useful to me.

#52, that's why it took me so long to realise what it did. I'm always loathed to click on buttons that just say 'Print' in case that's what it does ...

Issue on Main Page for a work. On the collapsible bar for Tags, Show All and Numbers have shifted to the left-hand side making the collapse arrow-thingy for Tags sit out of line with the others on the page. Things like 'All Members' and 'History' still sit on the right hand side so everything else lines up.

>52 Aerrin99:, 53, 54 AND now 56. Agree, agree. If it says "print", it ought to mean "print". If that's not what it means, it should say something else. "Print view" works for me. As Mark Twain said, "the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

laytonwoman3rd, one of my favourite quotes!

I agree with you, laytonwoman (are there really 3 of you?), strictly for the sake of accuracy, "print view" works better.

However, print buttons don't panic me, because my printer never starts immediately on hitting a button like this. I always get a printer window that lets me set number of copies, etc. and lets me hit cancel if printing is not what I want to do. Is this unusual?

So, I've mentioned this a couple of times, but I haven't noticed anyone who can fix it acknowledge the bug.

When I click the Your Books' tab in a style without covers (A in my personal library) most, but not all, of the fields where the members and reviews data should be are completely blank --- there are no icons nor numbers in them. This is happening at home and at work. If I switch to a style with covers, the fields are populated appropriately with both icons and data. Since without covers is the style I prefer, it is starting to bug me a little having to keep changing if I'm interested in the social data.

XP Prof / IE 6.0 at work
XP / IE 7.0 at home

In reply to cD. Fine; however, it could be argued to be a feature!

What is a bug though, is that pressing <ENTER> or inputting a soft enter (SHIFT+<ENTER>) in the private comments field (on the Your Books page) now saves the field, instead of the expected behaviour (cf. comments field) of resulting in a line break...

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.8) Gecko/2009032711 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.8 GTB5

51>

Oh, now I see.

You meant "isn't necessary" as "individual people don't have to use it to get the desired result", not "isn't necessary on the site as a whole, and can be eliminated."

Sorry for the confusion.

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere, but when I use the Sort pop-up, ".php" is appended to the back of the reloaded URL, so if I'm using any search terms, ".php" shows up at the end of my search terms (which breaks the search.)

Here's an example URL after Sorting: http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=saltmanz&deepsearch=tag%3A%22co...

edit-"search terms", not "search times"

The search field seems too big:



Also, it is impossible to change the type of search (All fields, Authors/titles, Tags, etc.) before the page has finished loading. That is seriously annoying.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.8) Gecko/2009032711 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.8 GTB5

>62 lorax: Yes, sorry for the lack of clarity.

38, 40> Yes, please do put a search help back - as a menu item would be fine. I don't use it often, but when I do it's very handy. But another, related bug - I also don't have the bottom-of-the-page links in my catalog (so I couldn't even get to it through Help/FAQs). Had to change pages to find the links.

FF3.0.8/WinXP

The Reviews icon appears underneath the members icon instead of alongside it.

That's intentional. We don't have the horizontal space when it's not your book. There are fewer icons--no edit or delete.

Also the Yellow "! you share x books" is a horrible colour and doesn't need highlighting anyway - and it takes up vertical space. Why not place it next to the users name.

There's no pleasing anyone. The former color was nice, but it wasn't arresting enough for many users.

Place it next to the member's name? What name?

The words are mostly just a waste of space.

After you know them, they are. Otherwise, they aren't. Think of these things as if you weren't familiar with site.

Print view

It's extra words. I'd be more inclined to drop the words, but the inconsistency bothers me.

When I click the Your Books' tab in a style without covers (A in my personal library) most, but not all, of the fields where the members and reviews data should be are completely blank --- there are no icons nor numbers in them. This is happening at home and at work. If I switch to a style with covers, the fields are populated appropriately with both icons and data. Since without covers is the style I prefer, it is starting to bug me a little having to keep changing if I'm interested in the social data.

Chris: Have you looked at this? Want me to?

After you know them, they are. Otherwise, they aren't. Think of these things as if you weren't familiar with site.

Two points:

1) The word "print" doesn't explain the function any better than the icon without the text would
2) If I weren't familar with the site, I'd want a help button. Even with all the words you've added, I still don't know what the cog by the display styles does. And what's the difference between Organize and Sort? Adding single words doesn't explain how the site works.

How about "printer friendly version" for the print button?

>69 jmnlman: Too long to appear all the time, but it does say that on mouseover.

Oh ok.

Right. It says "Show printable catalog."

> 67

Dropping the words is as bad as having 'print' there, because the icon means a thing that is not what the link does - you say that we should look at this as if we are unfamiliar with the site. I think there's a pretty strong case for 'print' being confusing to those unfamiliar (and those familiar!) with the site, because what it says is not what it does.

I did a search of my catalogue, limited to 'Subject', with different terms.

Virtually every search term produced a page of errors. Reproduced this many times.

However, a search for 'hello' never produced an error.

I am sober.

FF3 and IE8 (w/ XP).

messpots: :-D

I get errors with "hello" as well as with other things. All fields with search term subject:xxx is OK though.
(FF2, Linux)

For the record, the "print" button behaves exactly the way I'd expect it to based on my experience with the rest of the internet. The same way as every news site, for example, where it's common to just replace the word "print" with an icon of a printer.

#77

I would agree but I would also note that some newspaper sites try and print the page automatically (if you have the right browser and let it). However there are enough sites that use print - to mean an unadorned print view (and have been for the past decade) that it should be ingrained into everybody's mind.

just a small thought, what if you replaced the word 'print' with 'view'? the Icon would still mean print with the word view for 'print view' and view is one character less! (felt I had to add something to the conversation...)

Has anyone addressed at the new/old issue of spaces getting stripped from reviews if they're entered from anywhere other than the edit book page?

I think there is a date issue also with the Edit book link (date: 12/31/69), unless it has been fixed since yesterday.

64: I'm now seeing the catalogue search field as smaller than the search and dropdown buttons. The search field on the home page recently struck me as too tall, but I don't know if anything had changed about it.

It looks fine to me now.

v

More detail: all the words in the power bar seem to be placed a bit too high on the buttons, though the icons seem to be pretty much in the middle, except for the "edit view styles" icon. I don't get any of the distortions other people are talking about. I think I'll have a look at that thread later.

ETA: And I'm directed right back here!

84> I see it too. I don't think the problem is that the Search box is smaller, as you mentioned in #82; I think the rest of the buttons all got slightly taller.

I have FF 2.X and XP at home, and safari 2.X and OSX at work.

The contrast on the icons seems to be better on the mac. In fact there seems to be a couple of differently shaded boxes around them. I can't see that on the PC.

I also noticed that the shading for private comments on your profile is almost missing on the PC. I got a comment last night at home and thought it was public.

When I got another comment this morning at work and I went in to look at the new one, I realized the old one was also private, but the shading seemed missing on the PC. I will double check it when I go home tonight.

This has been a feature even before the new catalog: when I want to sort my books by entry date, the first books on top will be - in my case - those entered in July 22. Only when I click the title column "entry date" a second time do I really get the newest entries on top. Bug or feature?

And just in the hope of not being forgotten in the end: there still are no column titles with Opera/Linux.

Kind regards Christian

>87 cnrenner:: Feature (in line with sorting on dozens of other applications, smallest first)

>87 cnrenner:, 88 No, I think it's a bug. All the other dates sort in the opposite order first.

ETA: I also think it's a bug because it used to sort in the opposite order, and changed without comment from LT staff, breaking the Recently Added link on the homepage in the process.

I've rather lost track of which thread contains which discussion, so I'll throw this out here.

I see that the in-catalog search function has been fixed, or at least much improved since yesterday. Thank you!

However, shouldn't the order be this?

Search Box -> Drop Down with Choices -> Search Button

This way, you enter the search term, choose your type of search, then search - which would seem to be the logical order of things. Also, those of us who use the keyboard rather than the mouse can then tab through the choices rather than having to use the mouse to "back up" to the Search Button.

90>

How would people use what people are calling "advanced" (i.e. the text-only syntax, like "tag:" with this scheme? It seems like it jamming the drop-down as a required step effectively ruins the greater speed of the text-only version by turning it into an afterthought.

>91 lorax: - Hit Tab twice.

>87 cnrenner::
"Only when I click the title column "entry date" a second time do I really get the newest entries on top" - SORRY, I was worng about that. This works correctly.

"And just in the hope of not being forgotten in the end: there still are no column titles with Opera/Linux." - THIS is still a major wish of mine :-)

Kind regards Christian

92>

So, in other words, you want to deprecate it. Thanks a lot.

Subject searching is fixed.

87, 93: What version of opera are you using? The column heads show up fine in my opera.

>94 lorax: lorax. No, not at all. I just figured that many/most users who use the text-only syntax would probably know that the Tab key moves them from button to button, and that hitting it twice would get them to the Search button pretty darn quick. It was meant more as a respect for knowledge, actually. No deprecation intended at all.

Another option is to put the drop down /before/ the search box. Many library catalogs do this - so you select your type of search (or not), input text, then hit search.

96 > Version 9.64 Build 2480
Platform Open SuSE Linux System i686, 2.6.27.21-0.1-default, SuSE Linux 11.1
Qt library 3.3.8b
Java Java Runtime Environment installed
Browser identification Opera/9.64 (X11; Linux i686; U; en) Presto/2.1.1

Kind regards Christian
I cannot see the (clickable) titles of the columns on the Your books page any longer.

97>

I know perfectly well that the Tab button will move from field to field. My question was more along the lines of "why do you want to require us to jump through a lot more hoops, just so you can click your buttons in a different order?"

"Only when I click the title column "entry date" a second time do I really get the newest entries on top" - SORRY, I was worng about that. This works correctly.

Are you saying that the first click now shows most recent at the top? I'm still seeing the opposite.

100 > probably because most people use the dropdown filter instead of the 'advanced' search and the simple search should be as simple as possible. Also, there appears to be no need to 'go' to the search button. just hit enter and it will go search, so this is another reason to reverse for those that want the drop down.

Error in dropdown menu when adding 'another author'.

I've just added a book manually.

http://www.librarything.com/work/edit/44362333?referpage=addbooks.php

The first 'another author' was fine but when I added a third name the dropdown menu has a list of numbers rather than the expected list of roles.

Can I also add a huge sigh of relief? Until today, after the new arrangements, the site became so slow that I really could not use it. I got a message "We are unable to set cookies properly, apparently because your system clock is wrong. Double check your computer's system time, restart your browser and try again." I did as asked - the message was not repeated but everything remained very, very slow. I use IE7 and XP. I was having no problems with other websites, but I did try yesterday with a 'clean' laptop (IE7 and Vista) and got the cookies message again. Today all seems back to normal speed ~touching wood~ Praise the Lord, or more likely Tim & team.

ETA book URL

102>

Also, there appears to be no need to 'go' to the search button. just hit enter and it will go search, so this is another reason to reverse for those that want the drop down.

That's how it works now, yes.

My understanding of the proposal would that there would be a FORCED dropdown, so that you couldn't just hit enter anymore.

104 > well that would suck. I assumed it would only change the tab order, hitting enter should still send the search, that is the expected behavior.

103> I had started a thread (not sure if it was related to the New Catalog) for the "Other Author" problem here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/63052

103:

I couldn't get to the site for hours yesterday. When I lost contact again today, I closed and re-started my browser - that worked. But I really thought the site was down earlier. (I'd been fiddling with Favorite Authors, in case that means anything.)

I had that cookie/clock warning some time (days? weeks?) ago. I can't remember what I did to get rid of it - perhaps just reload the page - but I do know it was nonsense.

Hmm, I see the bug I came here to mention has already been reported in this thread, so I'll just add that I'm seeing the same error as the person in post 63 (.php being appended to a search term after using "sort").

When I select search tips in the drop-down menu accompanying search it opens in the lower frame and not in the whole browser window (IE6/XP).

#109, I got a duplicate header when I did it (2 Librarythings, stacked one under the other) (Safari 2.X / OSX)

109: Thanks. Will look at it.

We need to keep topics separate. Bugs with the other-author edit system aren't about the catalog at all.

Fixed the Search Tips bug. I'll push the fix in a little bit.

In power edit mode (in my style B), there is an x at the end of the row with column headings which isn't above a column (FF3/XP and IE6/XP)

>114 koffieyahoo:

Nice. I saw the x once and never again.

>104 lorax: lorax: "My understanding of the proposal would that there would be a FORCED dropdown, so that you couldn't just hit enter anymore.

I'm not sure if you're talking about my original comment in #90, but if you are, please read more carefully - I just suggested that the order of the buttons that I saw at 2:26 pm EDT be changed - I never once suggested that the current functionality be changed. I would assume that hitting Enter would still trigger the search function.

Here's a minor, but annoying quirk: when I edit Common Knowledge (I've tried Original Publication Date and Series) it accepts the change, but I have to refresh the page to see the updated version. This is on the Your books page.

Mac OSX 10.5.6 and Safari 3.2.1

I tweaked it slightly. Card is a little darker. The review is now that horrid green. Background color is slightly lighter.

Original


Changed

You are so right, that is a horrid green. The rest of it looks good (to me), though.

Tim - I assume you are showing us the changed contrast on the index card border (very nice) and not a changed color of the filled in review bubble? (or are you showing us both?)

Now do the cogwheel for editing styles...

I agree it's a horrid green, but on the other thread I had a half-dozen people tell me it HAD to be bright green, and nobody saying "that's a dumb idea." Argh.

Oops -- I just went to look at it in my catalog & got this:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '}' in /var/www/html/inc_powerbar.php on line 902

What PhaedreaB wrote. Can't get to any of my books unless I have a direct link.

Should be good.

Looks good now - pesky little curly beggars!

1. I can get to KRs library from the profile
2. Horrid green - Soylent Green
3. Did I say "That's a dumb idea?" No but I did say "this looks fine" for the FIRST color and so did many other people.

I don't think it's the colour that's horrid, but the fact that the border isn't clearly defined.

Its still yellow for me, and still too faint. The green isn't bad, its better than the old green. It pops. I am at home on the PC FF 2.X and XP.

The first toolpad seems darker than those under it. It gets lighter as it goes down. It is darker on the mac at work. I also find that the coloring of the private comment on the PC is also almost non-existent, where it was noticeable on the mac. I haven't changed any of the settings on my PC. Everything else looks OK except for the sprocket on style, the toolpad, and the privacy coloring on profile messages.

The colour on the details and work buttons has not changed, to me. Still too faint.

128: FicusFan are you using a flat screen? It could be the toolpad as a whole appears darker near the top of the screen due to the way the flat screen is oriented. If you lower your head and look at it again it might get darker further down. Raise your head and it gets lighter further up. But again, depends on your screen.

#129, Yes I am on a flat screen, and I have moved the screen which doesn't help.

If I move my head down it does make all the toolpads darker (doing so also brings my head closer to the screen), but - thats not a reasonable way to use the computer. I didn't have to do any bobbing and weaving before the change to see the icons.

Please don't tell me I need a tinfoil hat and to be hopping on one foot in the hall to get the best view.

I agree, not a way I want to view the screen either. I look at it straight on. Who wants a cricked neck? It was just a possible reason for the darkness variation but obviously not from what you say. Personally I'd prefer darker contrast between the first two icons and the background colour (ie. dark black edging, and darker lines internally if possible).

I think I'm seeing the darker lines - there's less of a difference between the pencil and the other two, now. Very nice. However, I'm still getting clear and yellow bubbles, no green (that does look a rather nasty green - was that really what we had before? I thought it was darker and less blue).

Also, the numbers are off for most of them. In my catalog (or my Your Books, or whatever), sorted by Started (most recent first): the first five, which I have not reviewed yet, have the correct numbers (7,7,0,1,0). The sixth, which I also haven't reviewed (Bloodhound) has 2 next to the bubble, but when I click through there are 4. The next lot have:
0 (one review, mine)
2 (one review, mine)
0 (one review, mine)
2 (3 reviews including mine)
2 (one review, mine)
6 (7 reviews, including mine)
...etc.
Something's miscounting somewhere. I hadn't noticed this before, which doesn't mean it's actually new (that is, with the color changes - it is new with the catalog change).

>132 Collectorator:

Did you make those yourself? They're cute. they're not much larger. Shall I try them out?

>eta: I included a little LTer, too. :)

She's wearing a necklace?

>133 jjmcgaffey:

Will look into. The colors are probably a caching issue.

> The first toolpad seems darker than those under it. It gets lighter as it goes down

Believe me, it's not changing. It's your screen, the angle of your screen, a caliginous substance wafting between you and the screen, or your eyes.

>Hasn't changed

Wait a sec. I need to make sure it's pushed and non-archived.

113> Still not fixed/pushed?

Made some changes. If you can't see them, hit this URL a few times, until it changes

http://www.librarything.com/pics/c.png

Tim

You're not seeing yellow in the review?

Right.

Icons look nice, mind you I thought the old ones did too so maybe I'm just not fussy. Glad the green review bubble bit the dust though. Contrast on the icons does make them clearer.

Tim,

The toolpad does seem more defined, and more visible. The bubble is still yellow however. Is it supposed to be yellow or the green ? I hit refresh several times.

# 135,

Believe me, it's not changing. It's your screen, the angle of your screen, a caliginous substance wafting between you and the screen, or your eyes.

Well the thing is, nothing has changed since the new stuff appeared. I didn't have the issue with the old icons. I don't believe my eyes have dramatically deteriorated in the past week or so. And there is nothing in the air between me and the screen.

Perhaps that column is just too faint and doesn't refract well ? In any event, its now just the two boxes around the toolpad that I can't really see and seem to get lighter as they go down the screen.

The Sort button stopped working; no matter what I select (and now this is the only way to sort on the number of members) it's sorting by title, and when I hit the button again it has entry date set.

Now the search field in catalogue view is larger then the others (vertically) for me - used to be just fine at introduction.

XP (SP3) / FF 3.0.8

My little review bubble is bigger and yellow, I think it looks very nice right now. I didn't think the green was so very terrible though either.

I think it looks a lot better now. I much prefer the person as a silhouette. I'd still prefer green to yellow inside the bubble, though, and I'd rather have the colour fill the whole bubble.

yes, personally the yellow does not have enough contrast from the background, if at least ONE of the bubble colors were bright (bright blue, red, anything) it would be much nicer. switch the blue and yellow, and make the blue brighter would be my suggestion, since you don't like the green. I have to lean into the screen to easily tell the difference. I don't really care what colors you use just as long as they are different and OBVIOUS. I could tell with the green, all the other color combos I've seen blend in with the background.

96, 99 > The sort button worked correctly for me yesterday, but does not today. Sorting by entry date does not seem possible.
As for the titles of the columns or top of the columns on the Your books page nothing seems to have changed (with my Opera browser).

Kind regards Christian

It seems that the members and reviews icons have become somewhat larger and simpler. I like the change.

The color used to indicate my reviews still seems a little off (ugly and lacking sufficient contrast with the standard icon). Perhaps the contrast could be improved by making the standard review icon straight white.

Still, headed in the right direction as far as I'm concerned.

Sort button doesn't work here neither (FF3/Vista)
Clicking the top of the columns does work

i was pretty happy with the first round of new icons, but i agree that the new speech bubble is better. i don't really understand the move to a members icon that is a shell, but it doesn't bother me (did the other one bother some people?).

i for one, like the yellow. green is my fav color, but both the original green and the green from yesterday were eyesores. i vote for sticking to yellow. if a change MUST be made, how about a nice plum?

Haven't seen this yet, and honestly have lost track of where to post this stuff. Hope this is the right thread.

Anywho, I'm getting weird behavior when I mouseover the search box:



It looks as if the search box becomes transparent (allowing the ratings below to show through) but that's not actually the case, as the topmost 4.5-star review in my catalog in this view is the second from the bottom in this screencap.

edit - I'm on Vista/IE7

^ I should also add that I don't get this behavior when I'm scrolled up to the very top of my catalog page.

>154 saltmanz:
Cannot reproduce that bug on IE7/XP.

156> I'm still getting it. I'll try at home on XP/IE7.

New works with no reviews are showing 65,535 reviews on the new catalog display (by the bubble).

158: And on the author page as well.

> 158, 159

Not just new works, either-- my copy of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore just shot to the top of the list.

Number of reviews has been wrong for a while now for some books; the system seems to count the number of edits made in some cases, which leads to a hugely inflated review count both in the catalogue and on the author page.

If both wrong-review-number birds can't be (or aren't) killed with the same stone, I'll bring it up again in Bug Collectors after the New Catalogue stuff is over.

Re: 154-157>

I'm getting the same glitch at home with XP/IE7.

^ Continuing my investigations, I can still produce this glitch, but inconsistently. What I've not been able to do is get this behavior in Cover View -- it only seems to happen in List View. (Cover View has an entirely different problem, though possibly related: and that is that the "Search your library" text in the search box never greys out; it remains selectable.)

Love the new print view - really, really nice!

158-161> It has to be a new bug. 65,535 is 2^16 - 1 which is the number you get when you subtract one from a 0 from a 16 bit unsigned integer.

164> new print view

It looks lovely, but is there any way to make the typeface smaller? I print lists to pack in book boxes. They were already 3 pages long; now the same list will be 5 pages.

166>

What browser are you using? The standard in-browser ways of changing the font size (Ctrl-+ and Ctrl-- in FF) work just fine for me on the the print view.

167>

That changes the browser display, but the print function picks up the original font size, not the current display. I can make the browser font look teeny tiny, but the printer goes back to the default, which still makes a 5-page list.

168>

Huh, I didn't know that, having never actually printed from the print view (if I want to print something, I've used the downloaded tab-delimited file, suitably massaged to include only the relevant columns.)

#168, When you go to print, do you get a menu from the printer ?

They often have something called options or advanced options that lets you change the printer set up, which on my PC I think includes fonts.

If you do that, I would test print just one page to make sure its OK so you don't get stuck with either pages that don't give you clear information, or some how end up printing a line per page kind of thing. You may also need to set it back to get it to print non-LT stuff as you want it to look.

Firefox has a Page setup option (under File) that allows you to scale your printing

170-171>

The printer options won't change fonts from the browser; however reducing the scale under Page setup does the trick.

How did you know I had FF? (all the best people do ;-)

Luckily, I can do a print preview so I can see what I'll be getting without wasting paper.

I'll reduce the font size. It was set to 12 point. I'll set it to 10 point.

Thanks!

Sorry if my points are all mentioned above--I don't have time to read everything!

1. Most important to me: I regret the vanishing of "Tags" from the tabs at the top of the page. I use and reference the tags page very frequently and used to navigate to it directly from everywhere, especially my library page. Now I can't--I have to return to my profile first. I would like that tab to come back or for some other prominent link to my tags page to appear on every librarything page.

2. I find the translation of "Date Read" to "Stopped" (this is a column I display in my library, since I use librarything to track my reading) somewhat jarring. I am sure there are many people who for some reason prefer "Stopped" but would it be possible for users to select or edit the name of this column?

3. This was a (purely stylistic) problem for me before the change happened, too, but it seems that the Small size setting for the tags page has enlarged (maybe I'm imagining this) and this heightens the effect in my view: the way the individual tags get larger when the cursor moves over them, displacing all the tags below. Is this necessary? When I'm reading a list I find it slightly disconcerting to have all the entries jump about just because I've jogged the mouse with my elbow! Again, I'm sure lots of people like this effect, but perhaps there could be an opt-out button.

>175 dorothean: There's a separate discussion of Stopped here, if you're interested.

175> You can still get to your tags in one click from your library: try pressing the Organize button in the bar near the top.

>175 dorothean:

Tags should be correctly sized again.

I don't mind the 'stopped' thing particularly, but i would quite like the ability to put dates in 'euro format' back. its quite distracting having to think backwards just to put in the date i finished a book.

Why not stick a link to tags in the footer?

>179 Kickstart2: It should work if you enter something like "24 April 2009" in the catalogue.

Yes, but even if you enter it in the UK format ("24 April 2009"), it displays it in the US format ("Apr 24, 2009").

There used to be a box for Euro format. When entering the date if you checked it, I guess it displayed it in that format. I have no use for it, so I never checked it, but I did see it. Its not there now.

yep - that's what i want back, i finished a book yestreday and typed in "23/04/09" and got an error message.

>182 r.orrison: This is repeating from another thread, but that's not a bug, it's just a design decision. I always entered dates in European format, and it always displayed in US format. No one was complaining about it before.

Personally, I don't care whether the date is displayed in US or European format, as long as it continues to show the month in words so that there's no ambiguity.

What we need is a user preference for it. I'll get Mike on it.

186> thank you. I just checked and indeed entering dates from the catalog is broken, not only that the resulting error message "Error converting date format. Please try again." seems to be stuck and the entry cannot be cancelled.

>187 kathrynnd: Do you mean entering dates in DD/MM/YYYY format?

187> The standard YYYY-MM-DD still works perfectly fine.

The error message didn't stick, so that's ok. It was a surprise more than anything, which was why I posted.

188> yes DD/MM/YYYY, having this option is the reason I usually enter dates from the catalog instead of the edit page.

189> I'll try it. As far as I remember, the standard option YYYY/MM/DD was not offered entering dates in the catalog box, just the edit page.

The date fields on start/finished will be changed within the next (ahem) 2 weeks or so (cough) during the launch of collections. They'll be in YYYY/MM/DD format by default but can accept many other formats, including non-dates.

Are you saying they'll display in YYYY/MM/DD format?

As of right now they do/will but that's the bit that I'm currently working on so that could change.

>193 conceptDawg: I'm hoping it does change. I think any appeal to the "average" user that might have been gained by allowing partial dates will be lost by displaying the dates in a format that doesn't reflect everyday usage among non-tech people. A user preference like Tim suggested in #186 would be ideal, but otherwise I'd rather stick with the current display format.

As long as you're currently working on it, how about allowing "today" and "yesterday" and converting that to the correct date?

I don't mind if its allowed, but would hate for it to be the standard or required. Its an awful mac thing and icky-cutsie beyond belief.

Today and yesterday work, as does tomorrow and a few others. :)

"About two weeks ago on the Thursday, or maybe Friday"?

ok chris, that is almost creepy.... i tried "2 tuesdays from now" and got the correct date. weirdness.

(i know it's all mathematical and whatnot, but it still gives me the wobblies)

Did someone change the text colour in the search catalogue box on the Home page? It would be appreciated if the text that is typed in the search box there (and elsewhere) were a lot darker. I honestly don't understand this fetish for pale text on websites.

It's probably picking up a style from the new catalog. I'll check and see. It's supposed to be black text in that box.

Thanks for checking. It also seems a bit smaller than it was?

There is also a big bug concerning adding/displaying additional authors to a book. See http://www.librarything.com/topic/63052#1229519

Is there some reason why the column styles would display differently when I'm looking at someone else's catalog (assuming I'm not looking at their preferred style)?

In this catalog, for instance, I can only see 2 or 3 columns in most styles, and the pads on the right also look scrunched up. The first column takes up almost all of the screen, in most styles. Usually, the style settings are the ones from my catalog, even when I'm looking at someone else's (and it is for all other catalogs I've checked except this one).

150 > THANK YOU. The basic features (everything I tried so far) are back working with the Linux Opera browser. Thanks very much.

BTW I can only recommend Opera for use with librarything - to me it seems remarkably faster than FF. May be just my machine or my impression, but that is why I was so anxious (panicky?) to get my Opera back.

Kind regards Christian

>203 Papiervisje:

Fixed.

>204 rsterling:

No. Can't replicate or imaging how it's happening.

T

204, 206:

Here's what style C looks like in my catalog and when I look in most other catalogs:
http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Image:2009-04-25-003149.png

Here's what it looks like when I am looking at this one particular catalog:
http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Image:2009-04-25-003210.png

The other styles are also all missing fields/columns that should be viewable, though some do show a few more fields than this one.

PS, for comparison, here's what Tim's looks like when I look at it:
http://www.librarything.com/wiki/images/f/fe/2009-04-25-004025.png
I guess the scrunched-up or smaller pads on the right are normal when looking at someone else's catalog. Still, when I look at Tim's catalog, the selected style displays correctly and I see the same columns I have set for the style in my own catalog, whereas when I look at that other one, several columns are missing (in all the styles).

# 199:

ok chris, that is almost creepy.... i tried "2 tuesdays from now" and got the correct date. weirdness.

Okay, who else is tempted to put in "after collections" and see what it comes up with? ;-)

I can't replicate. Sorry. Can you try refreshing? Are you possible not signed in? (Some pages cache if you aren't.) Are you possible using LT from some far-off clime, where the caching is more aggressive. Australia, for example?

Oh, that's surely it. I'm not seeing it because my page/sort doesn't include that entry. But if someone puts something non-breaking into a field, well, there's little we can do.

Whew. Glad not to have to add another entry to the bug list ( http://etherpad.com/TMLWRW2RSs )

>209 timspalding:
Hey Tim, easy on the aggressive Australia bit mate! Otherwise I'll have to thump you.

eta: and on ANZAC Day too!

You Kiwis are all talk!

Thwack! Kiwis are NZ.

Yeah, I know. It annoys our sysadmin John to no end. Also, praising Fosters.

Today I am Brother-in-arms with any K1W1 (and any Johnny Turk as well). Canuks I can stand and Yanks I can drink with. Brits should use "the better part of valour" (and they were on our side!).

JustJim, LSGC, ASM, ARGB
(I only trot the medals out once a year)

>justjim

"Some of the straitlaced British officers considered the ANZACs an unruly lot, impatient of discipline, who didn't even know how to ride properly. Personally he would have preferred to have a whole troop of fox-hunting Englishmen after him than a few of these hard-bitten colonials." from Elizabeth Peters' The Golden One.

happy ANZAC day!

>217 leahbird:
My point exactly. Oh, and the fact the even the English have banned fox hunting.

Last post on this off topic here, thanks. For those of you Googling my postnominals;
LSGC: Long Service, Good Conduct (the undetected crime medal)
ASM: Australian Service Medal (it's a new one, I got it in the mail!)
ARGB: All Round Good Bloke (It's not really an medal, but I am!)

#218: (the undetected crime medal) LOL!

209, 210. Tried refreshing. Am signed in. Am connecting from Los Angeles.

It's the cover field that is way too wide, at least in this view, but there aren't any covers that wide that seem to be forcing it. There are also only 2 fields/columns showing (covers and titles), plus the pads on the right. I don't know if it's connected, but the page takes forever to load.

Perhaps it is displaying that user's style settings instead of my own? For instance, in Style E, my settings are:
Cover, Author, Title, Date, Comments, ISBN

When I look at this other catalog, I see:
Cover, Title, Author, LC Classification, Tags, Comments

There's no notice about a preferred style.

PS - Yeah, the style settings seem different for other styles too.
B for me is: Author, Title, Date, Tags, ISBN, Entry date
In this other library it's:
Cover, Title, Author, Publication

Happy ANZAC day!

Review counts should be fixed.

The (no tags) bug should be fixed. It was calculating them against the zero-collection, which is books not in the "Your library" collection. You don't have any of those, but I do, so it was hard to track.

My open catalog bugs list is empty! ( http://etherpad.com/TMLWRW2RSs ). Note, catalog bugs.

I don't think the Summary column is sorting properly. It does sort, but the order looks random:

The Sandman : Endless Nights by Neil Gaiman (2003)
The Sandman : The Kindly Ones by Neil Gaiman (1996)
The Sandman : World's End by Neil Gaiman (1994)
The Sandman : Brief Lives by Neil Gaiman (1994)
The Sandman : Fables and Reflections by Neil Gaiman (1994)
etc

All of these are green text.
eta: Latest Safari on latest OSX

>223 paulhurtley:

What do you mean it isn't working. It's sorting by the numerical value of the work id just fine! Oh, you want it to sort by the alphabetical value of the text? Picky picky! :)

Fixed! Thanks.

Argh. Oh, okay, it's working. It's messing up in my catalog on one green-text sample, I think because the work data has a space at the beginning. Meh.

My summary sort looks fine. Thanks.

226> What do you think is wrong with that sequence?

Oh! I just had a realization. I was thinking that the summary field took from the work level. But it takes from your OWN titles. (It shouldn't really be green at all.)

Okay, going again.

BTW: Why do you put your A and etc. after the title? LT can handle it at the start.

Fixed. Wheew!

Okay, now, at some point I need to note that summaries, while calculated (title/author), do not come from the work level at all.

Yipes, what a dog-chase-tail this was!

This may be a catalogue bug, I mentioned it somewhere but it isn't fixed yet. On the Home page when you type in the search field box, the text is pale and seems smaller than it was (and is aligned top left when you start to type). The text in the box should be black.

231 :P

The search box is still not lined up properly. It is at the top but not at the bottom. Other than the first FF2 disaster my icons have been stable. This has been reported on one of the threads somewhere.

Its minor and I don't know if you increased the size of the box or if its a bug.

This is only at home: FF2.x, XP. (work Safari 2.X , OSX) is fine.



I also have a small search problem. I have 97 tags that say 2008, It is listed in my top tags and when I click on it, it also says so. If I enter 2008 in the search box and search on tags it only returns 96 books. This has been a problem coming and going. I thought it was fixed.

It may be related to another problem on the tag page. My tags start with a en empty space and it says I have 3 of them. I don't know if they are spaces or nulls, but I can't see them, or find the book they are attached to. They have been coming and going. Sometimes they are gone and I think it has been fixed and sometimes they are back. See picture, click to make it larger.



These are all catalog related, and only started since the update.

Yeah, we're punting on FF2 bugs. It's 1.5-3% of visitors.

Are you trying to use spaces in tags. It shouldn't allow them, but if your'e using them I won't try to remove the problem.

I am not trying to use spaces as far as I know. I can't swear there isn't one entered by error. But the thing is this set of 3 empty tags has been listed, and then the next time I look they are gone, and then they are back.

Cool. I just want to make sure that you don't want em. 'Cause then I can kill 'em.

I think he means space as a tag ?

Tag1, spaceTag2

maybe as opposed to

Tag1, spacespace

Thank you Tim. Can you prevent them for being added back (by mistake) ?

It came and went—when you sorted by down, not across. It's fixed.

Going to work on "I also have a small search problem. I have 97 tags that say 2008, It is listed in my top tags and when I click on it, it also says so. If I enter 2008 in the search box and search on tags it only returns 96 books. This has been a problem coming and going. I thought it was fixed."

No, when I changed sort orientation I looked for it. I was hoping to make it go away (in the same session). It was there, then I would leave tags, come back days later and then it would be gone, then days later back, wash, rinse, repeat. It could have been me when entering new books, but being 3 instances every time makes me wonder.

I don't use the tags page all that much. Mostly every couple of months just to tidy up (vampire vs vampires). My use recently has been to check for the 3, and to test the changes.

Thanks for your help.

FicusFan: I have to investigate. Don't worry if your searches are a little wonky for a minute.

>241 FicusFan:

Well, if it comes back, tell me. It should be gone.

The 97/96 problem is fixed. It was the usual slight corruption in the search index file. I will ask Chris what's the deal with this—if he has a lead on it or if we need to start on it ab novo.

Thank you.

If it is any help, it seems that the reports of these index file corruptions has increased greatly since the changes to the catalog page.

No, I don't think so. I think people are noticing it more—the communication lines are more open or people are using the search more.

Another possible explanation, but one less hopeful for finally figuring out what has been corrupting catalog indexes for a long time.

205 > Has something been changed again? I am not seeing the texts for the buttons like sort or power edit mode any longer. (Opera, SuSE Linux). And the titles of the columns are a bit cut off at the upper end - I can read them but parts of the tops of the letters are missing.

Kind regards Christian

Yes. We removed the text from the buttons. It was done on purpose.

As for the column heads. I can't reproduce that on my Opera.

> 250: thanks for the information. The column heads problem may be due to my X-server, of course - it is not really a serious problem. Thanks for caring. Christian

Chris: want to post about the UI changes?

Was it a deliberate decision to remove the catalogue page links from the bottom of the catalogue? It's incredibly annoying having to move the mouse back up to the top every time.

It was a deliberate decision, because the top is fixed now. I don't like it much either, it's annoying and looks strange.

>254 Heather19: It was a deliberate decision, because the top is fixed now. I don't like it much either, it's annoying and looks strange.

... and adds extra length to the already irritating header.

253-255: Not sure I understand. There's a "permanent link" icon and link at the bottom of the catalog page wen I look like it. I don't see anything like this in the header or the top. Am I missing something?

We weren't talking about the permanent link thing, but the page numbers for the catalogue. It used to be in the bottom right-hand corner as well as the top, but they took it away when they fixed the header.

257 - Oh, got it. Thanks.

I'm not sure what the current state of this is, but...

I'm still seeing the blue-lines "filled bubble" icon for a written review; the messages from around April 22nd (#132-149 or so) seem to suggest this has been fixed so it's a clear yellow (or green), but no luck here. I've tried forcing a refresh, reloading the image source as mentioned in #138, logging out and logging in again, and even trying it on two very different machines (IE7/WinXP and Firefox 3/Ubuntu)

Has this been rolled back to the original design in the intervening couple of weeks, or is there a problem at my end somewhere?

Was it a deliberate decision to remove the catalogue page links from the bottom of the catalogue? It's incredibly annoying having to move the mouse back up to the top every time.

To the top of the screen? The links are on the screen at every moment now. If you had 100 books before, you'd need to go all the way to the top or all the way to the bottom to get a "next" link. Now you always have it. Surely the net effect is to radically increase the availability of the feature. It's never more than a few inches away from where your mouse is.

Bubble

Reviews you've written cause a filled blue bubble.

The links are on the screen at every moment now. If you had 100 books before, you'd need to go all the way to the top or all the way to the bottom to get a "next" link.

The thing is, this doesn't reflect how people actually use the catalogue. If I'm going through page-by-page rather than searching for a specific result, it's because I want to look at all the items on the page. If I only wanted to see the middle item out of 100, I wouldn't be moving on to the next page of the catalogue anyway.

So, the net effect is to radically increase the availability of the feature when I don't want to use it, and to radically decrease the availability of the feature when I actually want it. Overall, not an improvement.

I'm with Tim here. In my view it's a minor matter of mental adjustment but overall it improves ease of navigation.

v

To iron out some inconsistencies in the discussion here:
A. The book links were removed from the bottom of the screen because 1) we now utilize a fixed header with that info on it so they it is on screen all of the time. No need for duplicate UI. 2) Making the UI a little cleaner was a bonus of 1. 3) The fixed header was introduced a month or two ago and we just removed the bottom links this past week.

B. The points in A don't really apply if you are using IE6. The fixed header is turned off in that browser so those of you still hanging on will have to do an extra click of the "home" key to get back to the top. So I can see your frustration there.

Don't mind me. Continue the discussion . :)

There are two separate issues here: fixing the bar at the top and removing the bar from the bottom.

I'm pretty indifferent about fixing the bar at the top, though I do think it's sort of backwards at a time when smaller computers are increasing in popularity.

But what is possibly gained by removing the bar from the bottom? Is it really worth sacrificing functionality to avoid any hint of redundancy?

>264 _Zoe_:
At present, *everything* below the fixed bits at the top moves via the vertical scroll bar. If the vertical scroll bar started and ended in the the middle of the vertical plane (as it would if the redundancy were restored), it would look poor, and it would be more awkward to find and grasp the scroll bar. It would also use up precious real estate. It would also look like a web page ca. 1997. That's my take.

>265 messpots: I don't understand exactly what you're saying. Why can't the "next" link and numbers just come at the bottom of the list of books without impacting the scroll bar, like another book entry but consisting of navigation links rather than book data? I'm not saying they should be fixed at the bottom as well, just that they should be at the bottom of the page when you scroll there.

Another vote for book links fixed at the top and always visible - I don't miss them at the bottom at all.

Just so Zoe is not alone - I too greatly miss the link at the bottom (not 'stickied', just at the bottom of the text) and thought I'd gone insane til I found this thread. I miss them!

I miss them too. I mean, like everything else I complain about, I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually, but it's really annoying. And the fixed header does nothing to make it easier, because it's not about not having to scroll up, as much as having that easy page access right there where I am at the bottom of my catalogue. Wait, did that sentence even make sense? It's been a long day.

Well, I've decided to switch to 100 books per page so that I won't have to use those links as often. I've found that after two or three pages, I just want to stop browsing now.

>269 Heather19:

I'm not sure it did make sense. I'm not understanding the problem you're seeing. I go to my catalog, and go to the bottom of the page. My browser sees the fixed headers, so the link to the next page is *still right there on my screen*. *click*

I'm afraid I'm just not grasping the ease-of-access issue you're trying to express.

ETA: Is this because you have to work with IE 6? Because then of course the fixed headers don't operate and you're stuck. Except that, in IE 6 I'm still seeing the bottom-of-the-page links.

When we finish looking at a page, our eyes and our mouse are in the bottom right corner. If the link is there, getting to the next page is instant and mindless. If the link is up at the top--but not quite at the top, a little ways down--we have to first look around on the screen to find the link and then move the mouse to click on it. It's still not *hard*, but it's jarring and distracting. I want to focus on the list of books that I'm looking at, not on the process of getting to the next page.

> 272

Thank you! I understand now.

I do most of my time on LT on my Living Room computer that has a remote keyboard that has a joystick mouse. Using this mouse it takes a small but appreciable amount of time to move from one side of the screen to another (and, yes, I've already set it to maximum sensitivity). Not that the UI of the site should cater to me, but don't some people using laptops have the same issue?

I have a laptop, but I have plugged in a trackball. I don't use the horrible, horrible pad.

Yeah, and it has clicky buttons around it, but I am too spastic to be able to glide, hold and click all at the same time. End up as a knot on the floor.

So I have track ball instead. Better than a mouse for a lefty.

Ah, yes. The IBM nipple. I could never use one of those damned things. The Mac touchpads are pretty awesome, especially the new iteration with multi-touch. 2 fingers to scroll is the bees-knees. 3 fingers to do back/forward/home/end is just sublime.

> 280,281: Hey! I love my trackpoint. Though its funny, I often have one finger on that, and my thumb down on the trackpad for scrolling... clearly there's room for improvement on the interface there. If only laptop manufacturers were as willing to work with us as LibraryThing folks. Thanks guys!

>274 jjwilson61:-283

So,

- if you use a trackball or a scroll wheel, the cursor is not necessarily at the bottom of the page when your're viewing the bottom of the catalogue;
-if you use a touchpad, this is not so often the case, and in any event it's nice to have links nearby because touchpads are fiddly.

So the problem we're discussing is confined to people who use touchpads, or the vertical scrollbar, to navigate their cataogues?

is anyone else losing books? i just uploaded... well, an obscene number of books from my amazon wishlist. one minute they were there and i was tagging away, the next a bunch were gone. i'm hesitating to retry them since i know sometimes these things are caused by work being done on the site... i can wait till tomorrow to finish up, i guess. i just want to make sure that they aren't just hiding somewhere waiting for me to reenter them, just to have to delete them all again.

update: so, i decided to check some things out. i searched my library for one of the books i thought was missing and got "no books found." so then i decided to import one of the short lists that a bunch of books were missing from. that told me "valid isbns:11, isbns already in your library: 11." now, out of those 11 that are supposedly there, i think i can find 3 actually in my library. the rest are... well, i don't know where.

2nd update: i signed out and signed back in and that seems to have taken care of the problem. i've never had to do that before. oh, well, that saved me a lot of time.

> 284

Not neccessarily - it has something to do with where the eyes are as well.

Honestly, I think a lot of the issue here is that in almost anything where you get a list of results that is split between two or more pages, there is a 'next' button at the bottom (google, amazon, flickr, etc). Whether there's one at the top as well or not seems to vary, but there is almost always one at the bottom. Not having it there is basically asking us to unlearn the UI we've learned on the rest of the internet - and it's jarring. When I'm done reading a list, my mouse goes to that bottom corner, because on the rest of the internet, /that/ is where the 'next' button is consistently located.

Not only that, but it's jarring without any real reason to be. The 'next page' links don't take up 'screen real estate' in the way that more columns or larger icons to, because they appear after the rest of the content. Although there may be many people who don't see the /need/ for a link there, I would suspect that there are very few who actively /don't want/ it for some reason.

284/286: Cognitive Dissonance.

>287 infiniteletters:
Huh?

What I tried to post yesterday that never went through was:

274, Yes I think this is a particular problem to laptop users, which computer users may not be used to. The touchpad is very cramped and the less movement you need to do on a screen the better, by far.

A comparable analogy for people who don't use the link at the bottom of the catalogue page would be to look at Talk. After you scroll down the page in Talk, there is a link at the bottom, where your mouse naturally already is, to move to the next page, as once you are at the bottom this is likely what you want to do. Having to go back up to the top of the page (even in a fixed header as in the catalogue) is simply not what one would naturally expect. By all means have the link there, but have it in the likely bottom place too, as it is in Talk.

Hmm my messages seem to be disappearing with greater frequency today.

I don't think this is a cursor problem as much as a mental/cognitive problem.

Something isn't where we expect, so we have to search for it, every time.

As I'm looking at this thread, every single post has a (top) link and also a flag abuse link. At the very bottom (which now as I type is down below the message input pane) is a (back to top) link.

#292, No not every post has a (Top) link at the bottom. If there are only a few posts the only thing there is the (Abuse) link, and I hit it all the time too.

I think if there are 3 or less posts the (back to top) does not show since you should effectively be at the top.

Well I like my keyboard so I always use the home and end keys,(FYI) since they work on all web pages on all sites. partly because I got tired of hitting the flag abuse link.

I feel an old lady rant coming on. Apologies in advance - I get this way now and then.

I get the yellow box too, sometimes, but I figure it's my problem, not the site's problem. If I am doing something mindlessly, I'm going to get caught out once in awhile. If I don't want this to keep happening, I'd better teach myself a new habit. I'm a big girl, and I can handle a little blame.

Now I'll take my Maalox, and totter off for a nap. You young whippersnappers can carry on. ;-)

#298: MerryMary "doing something mindlessly"
Things we need to do often, it should be possible to do mindlessly (automatically). People are asking for consistency: in long threads, some people like to click the (back to top) link rather than hit the home key — for people using a mouse with their right hand, I can understand that. It's then simply more efficient always to go for (back to top), even when it's not necessary because the thread is short.

I suffer with cognitive dissonance too (doesn't everyone?) and regularly produce yellow boxes but as long as you don't touch them again they go away by themselves. AFAIAC there are more important things to worry about.

Back from my nap

I get defensive sometimes. There are TONS of things that could be done to this site. I understand that some of those things might even make the site better. I get that. I really do.

But sometimes it seems that the criticisms are so small, and not that important. The staff of the site gets painted as arbitrary and nonresponsive. Everybody wants everything their own way - and they want it yesterday. (Seems, I said. Seems.)

Even small changes can take untold hours of programming fixes. This site didn't jump Athena-like complete and fully-grown out of Tim's aching head. It evolved over time, and changed functions many many times. And the staff isn't insensitive. They're really not - they're working their butts off and staying SO much more transparent than any other site I've ever known.

So I spend all day reading Bug Collectors, and New Features, and Recommended Site Improvements - and I start reverting to my stereotypical old lady mode. "You youngins are so spoiled. Appreciate what you have. Do something for yourself. Blah Blah Blah..."

I'll try to contain my old lady. *mutter, mutter*

Hug back atcha, Collectorator!

302: To be fair, the criticisms in a thread entitled Bugs and Small Issues are likely to be contained to well, small issues. Elsewhere, in threads not created by Tim specifically to deal with small complaints people are generally being happy and enjoying LT. Obviously RSI will be full of ideas for improvement, and Bug Collectors will be full of complaints about bugs... And I just have to add that the whole concept of complaining about complaining about small things makes me smile :)

It was the overdose of nits being picked that pushed me into curmudgeon mode.

And you must admit - I did warn you I was probably being unreasonable.

My counselor says I should stop taking everything personally, and just look at the chronic complainers as interesting components of the group dynamic. She's right.

just look at the chronic complainers as interesting components of the group dynamic.

Then slap 'em silly!

:-D

Actually the site DID jump Athena-like to the live servers (though certainly not all from Tim's brain...no offense to Tim). Our development server is named 'Athena.' :)

On that happy note cD (or Tim, since you're the OP) can we spring naked, dripping wet and smelling slightly of seaweed to another continuation thread? This one is getting kinda long. I'd do it (I just did it for the "I slaughtered the Tag Tab and et its kids" thread), but I'm not sure what the "#2" means in the title... the next one should be #3?.. but the last one was #2 also?!

Jim

justjim@309, the #2 is because initially there were two "New Catalog" threads: #1 for big issues, and #2 for "bugs and small issues". Then #2 got continued. If it needs to be continued again it should be "#2...part 3", or some such.

The two original threads created when the catalog changes were made were named

New Catalog #1: Larger issues
New Catalog #2: Bugs and small issues

The tags tab was offed at a different time.

ETA lorax beat me to it

So at least two of you knew the answer and neither of you split the thread. Sheesh!

Continued...here

Jim

>312 justjim:
Tart.

Tart? Tart! Of negotiable affection perhaps.

312> at least two of you knew the answer and neither of you split the thread. Sheesh!

Some members may be reluctant to create a new thread (even a continuation thread) in this particular group, since new topics should only be launched by those who have actually developed a new feature within (or around) LT.

It is, of course, arguable whether a new thread should always be considered a new topic... Technically, I suppose, threads and topics are one and the same, since "topic" is the term LT uses for a thread (each thread has a unique topic number, for instance). If, on the other hand, we take "topic" to mean "conversation," then the statement in the group header discouraging non-developers from creating their own topics need not apply to continuation threads.

I'm not trying to spark a debate (although use of the word "shoud" here in LT inevitably invites dispute, however trivial the issue) -- I'm just sheesing your sheesh!!

Sorry if this has already been discussed, I did try searching for it.

Editing the names does not work reliably (Vista 32 + Chrome). Sometimes double-clicking on the name field does let me change the name, but sometimes it just highlights words without starting the edit mode. Reloading the view fixes this problem.

A bigger issue is that sometimes the edit view shows the wrong information, such as the that of the book immediately after the one I want to edit. When I'm making formatting fixes to a long list of books, I may not realize what's happening until it's too late.

I was trying to use the edit book page to get rid of extra collections on a few books, and only one took on each save. (IE I had added the book to several collections: MJ, Owned fiction, Your books, to read. When I had read it, I realized that besides taking it out of 'To read', I needed to also remove it from Owned fiction, because it isn't fiction. But after unchecking both, it saved as MJ, Owned fiction, Your books. A second try got rid of owned fiction.) This happened on more than one book.