Some look-and-feel tweaks

Something's a little different. Did you cut your hair? New eyeglasses? Lose weight?

Old version:
http://www.librarything.com/pics/blog/uitweaks2.png

Non-English (with more stuff at top):
http://www.librarything.com/pics/blog/uitweaks3.png

It's a very minor change, and by no means intended to be the major redesign (I think) we need.

Fifteen minutes without a comment. I win. It stays.

Hey, where's the beta?

I know. I know. I just figured I'd jettison it for now. It's still the philosophy.

It's your site, mate, you can call it "Fred" if you want to!

Don't tempt me. I still have an April Fools up my sleeve.

It'd make a great T-shirt. "Fred - What's on your shelf?" Huge WTF factor right there.

Passed a guy with a t-shirt today that read "Thank God I'm Fred." Yes, his name was Fred.

I liked the very slight dropshadow on the old logo. The box around the username looks kinda odd, maybe because the header is solid against solid instead of the former gradient.

The no beta is fine with me. :)

Edit: Minor - I just noticed that the link on the username (right corner) changed from /profile/ to /home/

That duplicates the link for the logo, so I'd prefer it be switched back for less redundancy. What happens when you get a new comment, does the profile link come back?

Top right corner looks okay, lot more visible than the old one was. :)

Thanks. I agree... :)

Looks good, minor tweaks keep us all alert. Glad to see the beta gone :)

I think the logo should be a bit bigger, the empty space above it feels uncomfortably large.

I agree with infiniteletters (#9).
Apart from that, great stuff. I really like the changes to the top right corner. Very eye-catching (in a good way).

Cleaner! Smarter! Faster?

Like it but miss the shadow on the logo ... glad I found this thread because I was looking at LT and thinking 'Is it me or is something not quite as it was' but couldn't work out exactly what had changed. Very pretty!

I like it.

I wasn't going to mention the missing 'beta' in case it wasn't intentionally lost! :) I'm glad it has gone.

The shadow was nice on the logo though; otherwise it seems much cleaner - err.. you know what I mean hopefully..

I miss the shadow, too; it looks richer. However, this way it looks embossed, like what you'd do to paper, and that's kinda nice.

What's Disconnecting Distraction?

I prefer the shadowed logo much better. Now it's too plain and looks a bit amateurish. Sorry! I like the top right better.

Did you change the font on the tabs? Again, looks too plain - like it's a beginner's site.

It's the weirdest thing. It looks fine in FF2, but IE6/XP has no title (i.e. LibraryThing) at all! I couldn't tell where I was! :)

I also noticed that FF2 has no help button on the top right while it's there in IE6/XP. Even weirder. I guess FF users are more intuitive than IE users? :)

ETA: These things happen just on the home, groups, local, and profile pages. The other pages seem okay.

I see the Help button on FF3, but do you really want the tail of the g in the logo to be hidden behind the Add Books tab?

I don't have a 'Help' button anywhere ...

... plus the rounding on the bottom left-hand corner of the user name on the top right is a different colour to the banner background colour so it just looks like someone's coloured in the corner ...

What do you see in the upper-right corner? I see my username, "Sign out", and "Help" with vertical bars separating them, and an i-in-a-circle icon before Help.

I only have username and sign out and the funny corner klarusu reported.

v

No 'Help' button, just user name and sign out.

I don't remember having a help button before the change, but then I can't remember having my user name up there either.

That's funny, I don't have a Help button on the Living Room computer but I did on the Bedroom Computer and they are both running the same level of FF. Is the Help feature turned on for everyone or does it only show for those in the BETA group who have activated it?

I don't have a help button either, on FF3 OSX 10.5

No help button here but I don't actually remember seeing one before.

#28, jjwilson61, good catch. I forgot that I clear all cookies on my work computer and have to re-enable BETA on sign on. Once I did that, 'Help' came back (the corner is still off colour though).

I don't have a help button either in IE8. The only time I've ever seen one is in the screenshot in #1. Also have the bottom of the g cut off in LibraryThing.

#9 What happens when you get a new comment, does the profile link come back?

If you've got a comment it shows the usual text next to the right of your name.

#9 I just got a new comment. It was in a different place, to the right of my name and clicking on it lead to my profile.

Your missing help buttons are cookie related. You will have separate cookies for different browsers and different PCs. The help button will come back if you turn on collections beta!

(Edit: deleted link to BETA feature after seeing Tim's next post.)

I also noticed that FF2 has no help button on the top right while it's there in IE6/XP. Even weirder. I guess FF users are more intuitive than IE users? :)

It's a BETA group feature, not exposed to the uninitiated. (But join the BETA group to get it.) The BETA group has directions for getting it, which involves a cookie. So it can differ between browser and computers.

Did you change the font on the tabs? Again, looks too plain - like it's a beginner's site.

No. I've been thinking I'd make the tab font smaller, but I'm not committed to it.

I see the Help button on FF3, but do you really want the tail of the g in the logo to be hidden behind the Add Books tab?

Yeah. I like the look. Also, the presence of a descender like that requires the logo to be really small to avoid contact with anything.

... plus the rounding on the bottom left-hand corner of the user name on the top right is a different colour to the banner background colour so it just looks like someone's coloured in the corner ...

Will look at.

What's Disconnecting Distraction?

A talk/essay by Paul Graham. http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html

I like the hidden 'g' tail ... it was always hidden ... it's very 'LT' ;-)

I darkened the interior shadow on the logo, so it looks incised deeper and got rid of the corner-color on the "user pad."

rounding on the bottom left-hand corner

It appears to be a .GIF file. You could just render that corner as transparent using just about any .GIF image editor, and then you wouldn't ever have to change it if you decided to change the bg color ever so slightly in the future.

I guess I'm in the minority, since I generally think that plain links are cleaner looking than buttons (not to mention that they take up less visual real estate).

But if you're set on buttons, I think these ones stick out like sore thumbs and throw off the balance of the header (maybe raising the logo a bit would help?). The buttons seem as if they were just slapped on as an after-thought and don't harmonize with the rest of the page. Then again if everyone else seems to think they look great, maybe it’s just because I’m on IE6. :)

Hmm, rather odd, I just checked the French site and the buttons look a smidge better - shading/colour wise. (FYI, the far right button cuts off before the end of the words on the idl site. )

BTW, Tim, I know the personal home page is one of your enthusiasms, but having at least three links to it on every page is overkill. :)

38: The corner thingy is still there for me.

I'm not fond of the 'g' hitting the stuff below - to my eyes it looks sloppy although it's unimportant in the greater scheme of things. My real dream is to lose the sticking plaster flesh colour - perhaps if that full-blown re-design ever happens...

v

No ! The color is horrible, but shouldn't change. It says LT like nothing else. If it changes LT will be just another site. Its the color of an old book's endpapers.

Corner looks fine now.

v

I have the help button on FF3/Mac at home but not on FF3/PC at work.

38: The corner thingy is still there for me. ... Corner looks fine now.

Sorry. I should make clear that when I make small changes, I don't increment the version number on everything. So browser caching may persist an image.

45: Well I guess I should realise that too...

v

You know, LibraryThing may not look that great, but it's come a long way...

http://web.archive.org/web/20051025204021/http://www.librarything.com/profile/ti...

Tim, how could you have ditched the grey for the flesh-eating evil colour?!

v

In fact there are a few not bad things you could glean from that page - the LT logo is better too - fills the space better than the slightly shrunken current version.

v

Also I like the profile pic ;-)

No the old one was ugly, especially the grey. More like Zombiething.

I liked the drop shadow; it looked more sophisticated than the present version. Otherwise, I like the new look.

Hmm. That similars feature (internet archive) looks kinda cool. I suppose it duplicates mwyb though.

I liked that the beta was dropped! You're too modest Tim, this site hasn't been beta in a long time, I say it in a good way, because I know you're relentless in improving the site and will never settle.

The header... hummm it needs a little shuffling, come on Tim the name of the site with a button on top, it does look a little silly.

You know, I like the smaller font...

NO!!! Don't decrease the font size of the tabs! Leave that please!

55/56: I think it was about the logo font size?

Quote from 36: "No. I've been thinking I'd make the tab font smaller, but I'm not committed to it."

Yeah. The logo.

Decreasing font size of the logo is fine with me. Just leave the tabs alone. :) (Home, Profile, Your books, Add books, Search etc.)

The logo seems to be MIA on my home page and the groups page, and the first time I went to my profile just now, it was there then immediately winked out. After visiting other pages, it refused to reappear on the profile page. What gives? Did I catch it when you were working on it?

Also missing on the Add Books Manually page.

I think it's an IE6 problem. Will look into it.

Tim - Thanks for that archive link in 47 -- LT really *has* come a long way!!

And this comment on your profile from Oct. 2005 just gives me a chuckle:

"Dear Mr Spalding,

Do you think you are going to fix the author cloud any time soon?

Miss Drake"

We users are never satisfied, are we? ;-)

The Help button has appeared at the top of the page. When I clicked on it, it took me to the Wiki.

on this page:

http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/HelpThing:Home

Overview

Your Home page is your person launching pad and window into some of the features and data LibraryThing offers.

There is a mistake above. The word should be personal rather than person. I tried to edit it and change it, but I couldn't get the Overview part into the pane.

You can edit the whole page. (See top bar of wiki area.) I'm trying to figure out why it's always one section too low.

>65 FicusFan: person changed to personal by hitting the main edit link at the top of the page. >66 timspalding: - yes - the one off thing is weird.

#47 Tim You know, LibraryThing may not look that great

LT looks just lovely to me so "shush"!

It looks fine to me too. :)

I agree LT is fine.

I like having a "help" button at the top of every page, but when I click on it from my home page, it goes to the "HelpThing:HelpThing" page which is not helpful at all (because it just lists all the help that is not yet available). I expected it to go to the main page of the help (is that still the Wiki? or is this all being changed?).

I notice that if I click on it from THIS page, it will go to "HelpThing:Topic".

I would prefer the help button at the top of the page (next to the user name and signout buttons) to go to the main page of the Help information. More specific help diversions would be indicated by little question marks by a particular word on a page.

BTW--as usual, when I tried to use search to find where to post this point (or where it had already been discussed), nothing came up . . . Eventually I found this post . . . not sure if this is the correct place to post, but . . . . Is "improve search features" on the wishlist anywhere??

The idea of HelpThing is to have a page of help for every page.

>71 LucindaLibri:
Is "improve search features" on the wishlist anywhere??

My understanding is that Casey is currently overhauling the search functions, but I'm not sure if that is just catalogue searches or Talk as well.