A shelves toggle in LibraryThing

Blog post: http://www.librarything.com/blogs/librarything/2010/08/a-shelves-toggle-in-libra...



If you have problems, please give me as much information as you can about your browser and OS.

cool!

I really don't like way the toggle works. I'd much rather have something you can see and use without having to know where to hunt for it. Well, maybe now that I am back to titles it will stay that way.

The grey box extends over into the sidebar column showing Related Tags, etc.

I'm at work, so again it's XP Professional and the creaky IE 6.x, so I'm not surprised at all.

Styling idea: make the count label look like a little gold plaque or even a white label stuck on the bookshelf. The goal of a thing like this shelf view is to trick the brain into associating it with a real object. I feel like the label as it is just doesn't flush with reality and brings me out of the illusion.

In a similar vein, I'd prefer the checkmarks show up either on the shelf as another label next to count, or in the bottom-right corner of the book cover. Really snazzy would be if you got rid of the white box background and made it transparent, with only a white circle around the colored circle to help it not blend in completely.

But otherwise, very cool!

Yikes, please make the grey bar *visible* by default instead of an on-mouse-over effect.

* Safari 5.0.1, Mac 10.5.8
* Firefox 3.6.3, Mac 10.5.8

My styling idea: add the "tags" icon to the label of number of tags, because it just took me a while to figure out what the heck that number meant. Of course I'm seriously short on sleep but then so are most Americans.

Oh, and something to be aware of but it'd probably be a lot of trouble to fix - if you resize your browser window after it displays the shelves, it never resizes them and page layout gets overlappy.

Snazzy!

I can definitely see the 'hidden' toggle being a problem.

And I was surprised that green checkmarks mean that I use the tag rather than that I own the book.

But new visualizers are always a good thing overall.

Love it. I'd love to see it extended to "Your Books" cover view some day.

Thanks.

green checkmarks mean that I use the tag rather than that I own the book??

the check marks certainly coincide with my collections.

>10 readafew: Looking at the first page for the tag "whitework", I got the green checkmark on four books, only two of which are tagged "whitework" in my collection. I don't own the other two, IIRC. (checking)

On Windows XP Professional/IE7, the left edge of the gray bar lines up with the right edge of the third book from the left, and covers any part of "most often tagged {whatever}" that extends beyond that point.

This occurs in all three views: title, shelf, and cover.

ETA: I am seeing the toggle. No mouse-over.

Seconding the request to have the grey bar with the titles/shelf switch permanently visible rather than on a mouse-over.

Changing from covers to titles on the art history tag produced this error, but I can't reproduce it:

Warning: join(): Bad arguments. in /var/www/html/inc_tagtobook.php on line 84

Some sort of error just happened. The error was logged and Tim has been alerted. If problems persist, email timspaldingAT SIGNlibrarything.com

In most cases, the problem can be fixed by using this link.

The reported error was:

Problem with the concurrent query manager in the LibraryThing Bureau of Garbage Collections.

We have an entire room of trained monkeys working to solve the problem..

Firefox 3.6.8 and Windows 7.

same here. I clicked on a tag I don't use, got the shelf and found the right checkmarks where they should be (green = own, blue = RNO etc).

>11 staffordcastle:
After looking again more closely, I find that the problem is that on my browser (IE6, more's the pity), the checkmarks are below the shelf, so they look like they belong to the next book down. This explains why it was attributing books to me that I do not own. I'll have to check tonight at home to see if it's better on Safari.

I agree with the others here that the toggle shouldn't be hidden/mouse-over but readily apparent that it exists.

Also, is the only difference between the shelf and the covers simply that there's a "shelf"?

#13: I'm getting the same message erratically but repeatedly.

16> Also, is the only difference between the shelf and the covers simply that there's a "shelf"?

Yes.

From the blog entry: It also has a “covers” mode, like a shelf without the shelf.

It occurs to me that you could get around the resize problem I brought up in in #7 by calling you loadNewShelf() function after resizing. The trickiest part will be determining when to consider the resize "done".

Sorry not to be replying a the moment. I've got to push out feature #2.

1) I'm getting about two inches of blank space below the "You use" label and above the "Most often tagged" label.

2) Will this format be local to a couple of pages, or will it be extended throughout the site? Tagmash? Recommendations? etc. (never mind -- this is answered in the blog)

ETA: IE8 on XPsp2 (although I think you now can tell this without our saying, right?)

I also agree that the hidden commands are a problem. You aren't sure which empty space to mouse over.

When I tested with my tags the green check was for books that I owned.

I usually enjoy covers, but I don't see the point, especially on the tag* page.

The title list is so much faster since it lists everything, unlike the generic covers**, and it is not limited to 20 books per page. The only use would be if you knew a cover but not a title. But since there are multiple covers per book, you might never find the cover (and the book) you were looking for.

* I know you are only starting here, but I just don't see it anywhere else (where it would actually be useful) and while pretty, it seems to be pointless.

** Yes I know you said you still have to put the titles on the books.

It would also be more useful to have the title on generic cover function for books on your home page when you have added books with no cover, and in the light box when you are browsing an off-site book seller other than Amazon, and there are no non-Amazon covers.

Rather surprised that we're falling back to Amazon for the covers though. Wouldn;t most used be a better choice? I know with some tags, many of the covers are blank but yet folks have uploaded covers for these works.

Example: http://www.librarything.com/tag/dragon+magazine

"I also agree that the hidden commands are a problem."

"the toggle shouldn't be hidden/mouse-over but readily apparent that it exists."

"Seconding the request to have the grey bar with the titles/shelf switch permanently visible rather than on a mouse-over. "

"Yikes, please make the grey bar *visible* by default instead of an on-mouse-over effect. "

This is so weird, because I can see the grey bar. It's not only visible, it's obtrusive, because it overlaps the ""most often tagged" line and hides some of the text.

> 22

I usually enjoy covers, but I don't see the point, especially on the tag* page.

Not a big covers fan, but I can see why others like it. What I don't understand is the need for a "shelf" view and a "covers" view. They look almost exactly the same to me, and I am afraid I'm missing whatever value there is in the minimal difference.

#23
That's a disappointment for me too. For example the Folio Society tag http://www.librarything.com/tag/folio+society has a few blank covers - the very ones which are exclusive Folio Society editions and therefore only have member-uploaded covers.

Well, I think it's still useful for tags. Covers give you a quick glance of something in a different way. Often you recognize titles there at a glance. It's like a display at a bookstore—"check out our graphic novels!"—versus a list at the bookstore.

For what it's worth, IE6 will not be supported for the cover view. IE6 is currently at 4.1% of our visitors and 3.1% of our member visits. The browser has widely been declared dead, and major websites no longer support it. For LibraryThing it's reached the point where the effort doesn't justify the work—IE6 is very different from other browsers.

Rather surprised that we're falling back to Amazon for the covers though

We're not. Many come from LT. They're the most used as of the last cache, which was on Sunday.

This is so weird, because I can see the grey bar. It's not only visible, it's obtrusive, because it overlaps the ""most often tagged" line and hides some of the text.

The gray bar is shown by default in Intenet Explorer. Do you know what size screen/window you have?

What I don't understand is the need for a "shelf" view and a "covers" view. They look almost exactly the same to me, and I am afraid I'm missing whatever value there is in the minimal difference.

The "covers" lacks the wooden shelf thingy. They're for people who think the shelf is a gimmick, which, well, it is.

I have a lot of white space between "You use. . ." and "Most often tagged . . ." (or "Tag and its aliases . . " if I do not use the tag). A lot of white space.

For example, see this picture here:

(picture used previously to show missing books, the same white space issue appears currently, though)

I am using some version of Internet Explorer, though I cannot figure out how to tell which version. I know it isn't IE6 because Tim above says that it will not show covers, and I can see covers.

> 28

I think it's 15".

The "covers" lacks the wooden shelf thingy.

I see that, though I don't see that it makes much difference, other than providing a nice flat surface on which the virtual library cats can curl up.

27>

Covers give you a quick glance of something in a different way. Often you recognize titles there at a glance.

Sure, sometimes I recognize titles in the cover view at a glance. But I always recognize titles in a list view at a glance, and never have to squint at a dark or tiny font on the cover to be able to recognize it.

I can see that this is great for the sort of people who like this sort of thing, though, and since there's a toggle it's really the best of both worlds.

I think this is kind of cool on the tag page. It's sort of like browsing a bookstore. I'm often attracted by covers, sometimes to books I wouldn't find if I was just looking by author or title or subject. I think it's a nifty little feature.

25/30>

I get the impression that covers view was incidental. I'm guessing Tim coded shelf view, thought people might complain about the shelves, and added an option to leave the shelves out.

#28
We're not. Many come from LT. They're the most used as of the last cache, which was on Sunday.

In that case there's something buggy going on with the member-uploaded covers. Looking at 200 books using the Folio Society tag I mentioned above, http://www.librarything.com/tag/folio+society, there are 30 covers showing blank, which all show member-uploaded covers when I click on them. There's no way all 30 covers were uploaded since Sunday.

Edited to add:
here's the cover selection for the first ones showing as blank:
http://www.librarything.com/work/4818485/covers
http://www.librarything.com/work/103895/covers
http://www.librarything.com/work/652506/covers
http://www.librarything.com/work/1382842/covers

#28, 34 agree on "something's buggy" because those Dragon Magazines should all have covers now. (At least all the ones I;ve entered have them. Still have like 30 left.) I know when I view that page, all I see along the bottom are image.amazon.com urls going by.

>29 MikeBriggs:

That's the same thing I was describing in #21 (except that you've got it worse -- tee hee).

28/34/35>

Yeah, for example: http://www.librarything.com/tag/punisher+war+zone

I uploaded all of those covers well over a year ago.

27> For what it's worth, IE6 will not be supported for the cover view. IE6 is currently at 4.1% of our visitors and 3.1% of our member visits. The browser has widely been declared dead, and major websites no longer support it. For LibraryThing it's reached the point where the effort doesn't justify the work—IE6 is very different from other browsers.

Just curious - what percentage is Safari?

>38 brightcopy:

Safari 12%
Chrome 9%

So Webkit is 21% plus some mobile browsers.

I like the cover view, but I think I still prefer the title view. Is it possible to get the number of each title using the tag back into the title view? The numbers only show up for me in the shelf or cover views.

Is it possible to get the number of each title using the tag back into the title view?

Yes. Added. Thanks, Tim

Visible or not

Let's have a vote:My argument: It's cluttery. People will figure it out. Clutter is always bad.

Lilithcat: On Windows XP Professional/IE7, the left edge of the gray bar lines up with the right edge of the third book from the left, and covers any part of "most often tagged {whatever}" that extends beyond that point.

So basically, it's too long? Do you know how wide your window is?

resize problem

Lots of pages on LT will be strange when you resize. If you resize, reload. It avoids having nasty code that's always checking for something that is actually rare.

Covers: dragon magazine

Got it. At present, it only shows covers for ISBN items. I'll look into changing that, but it's a schema change, so it won't be immediate.

It's sort of like browsing a bookstore

Right. That's my feeling. But de gustibus...

I get the impression that covers view was incidental. I'm guessing Tim coded shelf view, thought people might complain about the shelves, and added an option to leave the shelves out.

You see into my soul. No really. Spot-on.

I'm not sure why, but I find this shelf view to be far more appealing than the old cover view. I haven't tried the cover view devoid of "shelves" yet, but since I suspect that the appeal is in the fixed distance between covers, the whole thing might be a huge plus. I like looking at covers when browsing, but I always felt that cover view was far too overwhelming to be useful before. This shelf view is much better.

I'm looking forward to having it implemented in our catalogues and on the series pages. (please!) :)

> 42

So basically, it's too long? Do you know how wide your window is?

I think it's 15".

Ditto lilithcat's problem. XP/IE8/1024x768

Could have sworn I had added in most of the Dragon's ISBNs but what I see that is many of the ones that didn;t have them. That makes sense. Thanks.

At the top of each tag page, there used to be a message/link when there were Combination Proposals at the bottom of the page. This useful message/link is missing from the new tag pages (example).

The next button for Cover View on tag pages works in Firefox 2.0, unlike the next button for Cover View in my catalog.

Here's hoping that this code will either migrate to the catalog or even just the next button portion of it.

The grey bar that you toggle over was fine at work on Safari, OSX.

I am now at home on my netbook, XP with FF 3.6 and the grey bar appears over the text "Most Often Tagged X"

One of the things I've always hated about Shelfari and hoped LT would never do.

*sigh* I'm not in the mood to debate, though. I'll switch it to list and never have to deal with it again. ..... Until it starts invading other areas, and I have to switch it back to lists/whatever.

Ok, on my laptop at home (also running IE8 on XP), the tag page has the same display issue descibed in message 21 and shown in message 29. On my computer at work, the problem was not as bad -- only about 2 inches of blank space, rather than the six inches or so that I'm seeing on my laptop. Is this an IE8 issue?

I would like the toggle to be global. I looked at the example tag pages and immediately turned the silly fake wooden visual clutter off. Then I saw the post about publishers pages and visited the Orbit Books page, where I had to turn it off again for Featured Titles. Then I scrolled down a bit and saw I had to turn it off separately for Current Titles, then again for Most Popular Titles. Then I saw the thing about publishers' members' pages and saw I would have to turn it off individually for dozens of Top Members and, well, you get the picture. If I don't want to see fake wooden shelves in one place, you can assume I don't want to see them anywhere, ever. Thanks.

52> I'm with you on this one, but I suspect some people won't be.

>52 mdkendall:-52

The toggle can't be global without taking away a useful feature for other users. (Others have, for example, already argued that they like it on the publisher pages, but not on tags.) You can, however, turn it off, and there aren't that many places you have to do it.

If I don't want to see fake wooden shelves in one place, you can assume I don't want to see them anywhere, ever

You'll note there is a "covers" mode that just turns off the shelves. There is some value in covers, though whether you want them is another question.

Fake

Actually, I raised an oak tree by hand, felled it, cut it, sanded it and stained it just to take a picture of it for this feature. Also, if you put your nose next to the screen you can still smell the resin.

Actually, I raised an oak tree by hand, felled it, cut it, sanded it and stained it just to take a picture of it for this feature. Also, if you put your nose next to the screen you can still smell the resin.

So this has been in the works longer than the usual 2 weeks?

I planted the seed back in 1974.

:)

So that would make young Tim 1, 2yo? What a greenthumb!

Like the feature by the way. Looking forward to some more publishers coming on board.

>54 timspalding:-56
Is this the first new feature on LT that needed an environmental impact assessment?

LT itself is a shrine to dead trees everywhere!

Ouch, a splinter!

I got rid of the annoying white space showing up in some browsers. -Mike

Well, you COULD put a global flag to turn them on/off in the user preferences...

54> You can, however, turn it off, and there aren't that many places you have to do it.

mdkendall said that he had to turn it off in multiple places on the publishers page, is that right? Surely you can make it only one toggle for each page.

>61 ltmike:

Excellent, thanks Mike

>63 jjwilson61:

We could, but it would be another big switch somewhere, to save a small percentage of users a few seconds of time. Time to program, maintenance, bugs—no point.

It makes a lot of sense to see some as a list and some as covers. For example, the default for the publisher tags is a list, but the default for current titles is covers.

#56 - planted the seed back in 1974.


Most of us call them acorns.

1. The message indicating that there are combination proposals for a given tag is still missing from the top of the tag page (see #47 above). Was this intentional?

2. The displayed covers are really small (especially at higher screen resolutions). For me, at least, they are too small -- and yet I need to run my monitor at a high resolution for other, work-related reasons. Are you planning to add + and - buttons (or some other mechanism) so members can select the display size that works best for them (and their eyesight)?

3. When you mouse over a book, a "tool tip" appears containing the name of the book. It would be useful if the author's name were there as well (as in cover view).

>67 SilentInAWay:

No. It'll come back.

Sizing

I don't know. We'll see. I don't want to clog it with options.

67 > have you tried 'Ctrl+' and 'Ctrl-' in your browser?

69> But that's going to change the sizing of everything by zooming in on the page, not just increase the size of the covers, which is something I suspect SIAW doesn't want, or he'd have done it. (Or he might already do it as a workaround.)

67> I restored the combination proposal message. -Mike

54:You can, however, turn it off, and there aren't that many places you have to do it.

Not necessarily I'm using Safari on the iPhone OS 4 for some of my LT viewing. Since it's impossible to hover the shelves can't be shut off.

Good. Thanks for the reminded. We need to make them always on for iPhone the way we do for IE.

T

Thanks Tim

Mozilla Firefox 3.6.8. Windows Vista. Not using my own computer (ie. font size and resolution of computer itself unchanged and 'normal' size), the only text enlargement is in Mozilla Firefox itself (control button + scroll mouse wheel forwards). I preferred the format before the change (titles showing with ticks of what is in my LT). With the new change the left side with covers and titles and members (numbers) is too narrow (one cover showing at a time, and one member (number) showing at a time), with the right green box side too wide, dominating the screen. (Previously it was much better even with text enlarged, with the right green box keeping in proportion).

If text size is reduced so I can't read it, the right column decreases (why was it perfect before and stayed the correct proportion when enlarged, and does not now? I honestly don't understand the change when it was fine before...), and the book cover still shows one at a time. I only want titles to show and even if I click on titles, every time I come back on after signing out it shows covers again. (It may be stored in cookies instead of by account basis.)

> 54

I raised an oak tree by hand

I truly love your handmade oak shelves which are now gracing my tags page. They add a dimension of craftsmanship as well as a visual delight to that otherwise drab page. Thanks, Tim!

>75 bookel:

I'm a tad confused about your message. What's wrong with it in titles mode?

It is stored on a session basis. The session never expires, but it's separate from your user account, because you may start without being signed in, and we don't want to invalidate what you do then. It will expire if you have your browser set to remove cookies when you quit. That's a setting, I believe.

The green box on the right does not stay in the same proportion compared to the rest of the page when text is enlarged (it used to stay in proportion -- fixed width??? -- at least it did not take up as much room as it does now, and squash the text of the titles and members who have that tag on the left as it does now). The larger the text is made in Mozilla Firefox, the further to the left the border of the green box goes, squashing the left column of text to the left. This did not happen before the change.

The books on the shelves only display one book on a shelf at a time for me, no matter how reduced the text size is. It doesn't show the way it does in the picture in the first post above.

Titles view looks okay with reduced text size, but increase size in Mozilla Firefox and the green box at right takes over the space in the page, moving further to the LEFT. It takes up more than half the page, squashing the book titles and members who use it to the left, forcing (trying to explain this better) the individual words of each book/author to separate to one line each, or the title on one line and author on the other, or half the title on one line, the other half of the title on the second line, etc. depending on how big the text size is. Hope that helps. (Edited to fix typos.)

>78 bookel:

Ah. I see. Well, I'm afraid that has to be. The right used to be 30%, now it's a fixed width. The gain is that browsers can now layout the table more quickly—they don't need to think about it as much.

>79 bookel:

You're getting only one book per shelf at normal size? Are you using a very very tiny screen, like 640 x 480?

Let's start at the beginning. Is the problem that you need to make the size larger to read it, or are you trying to get bigger covers because you want bigger covers?

It is an ordinary widescreen flat monitor, around 18 or 21 inch (not sure which). As I said it is not my computer.

I need to make text size larger within the monitor in order to read it. I don't care about cover size, though it's interesting and they increase in size minimally when enlarging text, the titles list is more useful (to me) and a quicker way to glance at what books are tagged as such. I'm not commenting on cover size. I did notice as a point of interest in case it needs fixing, that even if the text size is reduced to the smallest possible (so that even you could not read it) there is still only one book cover on the brown shelf at a time in "shelf" view.

Sudden change noticed: Now showing two books at a time on the shelf with the same thing happening, reduce text size no matter how small it is, there is still only two. I assume you are editing...

I'm not sure if there is such a gain with the green box enlarging so it takes over the page (the purpose of viewing a tag is to look at the tag's statistics after all) but (shrug) be as it may be, that's your choice. It makes it less easy for me to view the tag's statistics that's all, as it used to be one of the enjoyable things about looking at tag pages, to see who also uses it.

>81 bookel:

Not editing. Maybe you're looking at different publisher? (Books are sized by aspect ratio, so thin books fit more.)

Checked another tag, now it is only showing one book per shelf again. All books viewed were taller than wide. No matter how the text size is changed, the books do not band together as if they are sitting on a shelf, as shown in your first post. I haven't a clue what is wrong. :)

If the green box on the right didn't take up so much room on the page now, then I would not care about the changes (apart from the titles view not being the standard as before).

bookel> Okay, so if I'm reading this correctly, you only need to make your font size bigger and the images are fine. The easiest solution might be for you to ONLY increase the font. Holding down ctrl+scrollwheel increases the font AND the image size.

First, reset everything by pressing ctrl+0 (zero).

Now, hold down ctrl+shift and twirl the scrollwheel. You should now see only the font increasing and the images staying the same size.

Does this work for you?

ctrl+shift and twirl the scrollwheel does nothing? (ie. text doesn't budge, stays the same size)

>54 timspalding:
I actually like the "covers" view; it's what I changed it all to when I turned off the shelf. There is definitely value in the covers images, especially if you are a visual thinker (I used to have some bookshelves arranged by colour, but that's another story). But the shelf is supposed to be a metaphor, right? Using a picture of an actual wooden shelf just seems a bit too _literal_. In the same way that my computer "desktop" is a convenient place to arrange tools and documents I am working on, but I would not set the background image to a picture of an actual desk.

86> Huh. Oh well, then go to View->Zoom->Text Zoom In. Do that until it's big enough. Did that work?

"Raised an oak tree by hand..."

But I wanted mahogany!

View>Zoom>ticked the box "Zoom text only" worked, and for some reason the covers are displaying as shown in the first post, all of a sudden. Zooming text only works, though (sniff) now the covers on the home page are insy winsy. Can't win! I prefer the covers bigger... Someone will probably turn off "zoom text only" though, just to be annoying, but that does work. So the green box is an image? Would be nice if the green box stayed in proportion with images being enlarged too. It was alright before the change!!! Thanks for your help anyway.

Ack... now the edit pencil is teeny weeny, and though viewing the library, wishlist etc. gives more room because the LT logo at the top is tiny instead of large, the Home, Profile etc. buttons are almost hidden. Bleh. This is on an ordinary computer mind you, not mine which has resolution changed. I may have to turn image enlarging back on just so it's easier to use for some things....

Well Tim, that seems to be what's happening. If you try in Mozilla Firefox, open the menu View, Zoom, and untick the box "Zoom text only", it shows only one book on the shelf in "shelf" view. Then tick the box "Zoom text only", and it shows books beside each other as shown in the image at top. It's the green box that is the annoyance. I can live with zooming text only since that's what I have on my computer, though the settings on this one seem to make the images a tad small, and the library/wishlist etc. view almost hides the Home, Profile, etc. buttons. Ah well. The mystery should be solved as to what's causing the problem.

I'd prefer the "default" view, when signing in, on the tags page to be the titles list, as it showed previously.

> 87

Using a picture of an actual wooden shelf just seems a bit too _literal_.

I don't agree. I find the picture of the bookshelf *very* appealing. It gives me more of the sense that I have when I walk into an actual bookstore, namely that of being attracted by a visually enticing display which I'd like to browse. I find that I'm much more tempted to want to explore individual books when they are displayed on this shelf view. I really, really like it.

Isn't it great we have the toggle option, mdkendall?

bookel>Ah, crud. I forgot that I had an addon that was changing those menu options. Get this addon for Firefox:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2592/

It will modify that menu so you have options for both Full Zoom and Text Zoom. You can Full Zoom a couple of notches, then Text Zoom the rest of the way. Hopefully, that should give you a little bigger images, but not so much that they screw up the page layout. It also has a feature so that it remembers your zoom levels on both a global and site-by-site basis.

And FYI, I think it zooms the green box so much in Full Zoom because it has an image background (the nice shading in the corner).

93> bookel said way above that it isn't his own computer (a library computer?), so he may not have the option to install an addon.

94> He most likely can. Addons are installed in the same place all your other settings, cookies, passwords, etc. go in Firefox. They don't touch anything outside of normal userspace. So as long as he has his own account and unless someone has went to real lengths to lock it down, I think it's probably going to be fine.

94/95: It's a family computer.

The addon does work for the control+shift+scrollwheel, thanks. I figure it shouldn't affect this computer. As for the image border, is it really necessary? (ie. does it look that much different without? The green box was fine before the recent change...) Things should stay in proportion no matter what text zoom size it is, whether images zoom or not. Most people have never even heard of NoSquint, I for instance did not know. "Your collections" on the home page still overlaps the right hand column but it doesn't cover the collections I usually look at, so that's okay.

Library computers however are most definitely locked to tampering, and their zoom levels are only up to a certain fixed point. That doesn't matter as the only one I use there is the library catalogue, and it zooms enough. The catalogue computers block all other websites. I assume the Internet access computers prevent addon tampering and text enlargement as well (definitely control panel adjustment, and menu options are limited).

97> Most people don't know you can even change the zoom size at all, so that argument kind of falls apart. :D In general, most people either have the knack for solving their own computer problems or they have to ask someone else for how to solve even the most basic ones anyway. A similar thing is true for cars (unfortunately, I don't have the knack there).

There are other ways to solve this that don't involve NoSquint, but that just seemed the easiest way to get you there. One is changing your font size/minimum font size under Tools->Options->Content->Advanced. Another is using about:config and setting various user settings manually.

And yes, even these can be locked down. Hey, they could even force you to use IE6. There will always be some problem. And really, you're running into competing preferences here. I would most likely not like the way it looks on your screen if it was on my screen. HTML and CSS have huge limitations across browsers, and you really just have to do your best. I think the way it is works for most people and isn't horrible for the minority. Plus the minority, for the most part, has ways they can solve the problem if they just ask for help. This doesn't mean 100% of the problems can be solved for 100% of the people, though.

So, at the end of the day, you just have to do your best and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Hope you've finally arrived at "good." :)

View>Zoom is pretty easy to remember once people know about it, however it is least used by me in favour of the quicker control key + mouse scroll (which most people would not know about, yes). The addon should help reduce that need however. Oh, I'm pretty easy going, the addon solves things for me for the most part. The text overlap I have lived with since forever, and you can't please everyone as Murphy's Law says. Having a per site setting is good too (although this browser seemed to remember zoom settings before that was put on; I have no idea how). I was more thinking of others who use the site with similar requirements (using the browser zoom only) as many sites look terrible with text overlap when text is enlarged due to overlapping frames and so on, or images enlarged. I find some image enlargement is required on some sites for it to display properly without excessive white space at the border (eg. abebooksleuth). Sometimes I think modern advancements seem to make backward steps in some instances with regards to ease of readability and ability to enlarge text (eg. websites that have text that cannot be enlarged due to how they are programmed, as in not text nor images but something else, what is it, flash?) The abovementioned addon also helps keep this window to type a new comment wider than it otherwise would be without the image size limitation; maybe that indicates another image border somewhere... The addon also shows images on other sites that when enlarged make the page become too wide, but when the addon is implemented the image can be restricted to a certain width. Handy, though not always perfect for text enlargement (which is why I hope the text buttons at the top for Home, Profile, etc. are kept, as they can be enlarged enough and allow right click>new tab). Sorry I got rambly there! But yes, things display better with the addon, though it isn't a permanent solution without it.

I've added a feature that makes the "gray bar" shorter if you don't have very much room, ie.,



vs.



The area expands if you click "settings." In the end this seemed a better solution than what I proposed above--turning some of the links into graphics. Words are good graphics.

Thanks, Tim! :)

http://www.librarything.com/tag/disasterarea

Warning: Cannot use a scalar value as an array in /var/www/html/inc_newshelf.php on line 423
Showing 1–0 of 0 titles | shelf | covers

Seems to happen on any search that returns only one result.

Fixed. There are no books for that tag.

You just deleted the book so you wouldn't have to fix the bug, didn't you?

;)

The checkmarks should be placed below the cover, i.e. after the number of books

All the pages that use this feature have forgotten my preference for list format. (FF/Win7)

At the risk of becoming the resident moron here, I don't understand any of this. First, it took me awhile to even figure out how to get to the proper page that would display the covers on a shelf (which I happen to like a lot since "some other" book sites have a similar configuration and I'm tired of explaining that only LT is the cool one). I tried all sorts of ways to get to "the tags page" before - somehow -- I landed in the right place.

Secondly, I have no idea what the check marks or the numbers are for. Should there be a legend on the page?

The check marks indicate that you own (or at least, have cataloged) the book in question - the color tells you which collection it's in. They appear all over LT - on Series pages, in other people's catalogs, on the tag pages (even before there were shelves), in some Home page modules...I'm surprised you're not already familiar with them, at least in general. Here's the blog post about them.

The numbers indicate how many times a book has had that tag applied - how many people, for instance, have tagged Truly, Madly with ARC (45). Admittedly, in the title list it says (45 times) after the title, not just 45 - Tim, any way there'd be room for that? It looks like it would fit on my screen (in the same small brown font as the numbers).

I almost never use the tag page, so my method is clumsy at best - but when I want to get there, usually I go to my own Tags page, hover over an interesting tag and choose the Tag page link that appears. The other way is to search for the interesting tag on the Search page. I know there's other ways, because I keep doing it by accident, but as my response 99% of the time is to immediately click back to what I was doing I can't remember what I do to get there.

ETA - the other place to see these pretty shelves is on the Publisher pages. You get to those by going to a book page and clicking the Publisher link on the right (for those books that have publishers that have LT pages); by going to your Stats/Memes page and choosing Publishers on the left to see what books you have that LT publishers have published (and click on the publisher there to get to their page), or...hmm, can you search for a publisher? Not that I can see, and you should be able to. That's something for Tim et al to add...

I was just in a publisher page, and had to find the toggle and get rid of the shelves in each of several different places. Can't we please have a setting for this that sticks?

It makes sense to see some as shelves and some not. If you are adamantly opposed to shelves everywhere, it's a half-dozen clicks.

But it's not remembering those half-dozen clicks. I've had to redo my settings for the Osprey publisher page twice now.

It's two clicks for each one every time I look at these pages. I guess I just have to avoid the pages with this stuff.

>111 DaynaRT:

It's based on your session. If you regularly clear all your cookies, or they are set to clear of their own accord, I suspect that explains it.

>112 MarthaJeanne:

It's not every time. Unless it's a bug.

1. Go to http://www.librarything.com/tag/history
2. Change to "titles"
3. Go to Talk and find this thread again
4. Click http://www.librarything.com/tag/history again
5. Tell me whether titles stuck or not.

Note: Don't go to tags, elsewhere than then use the back button. The back button generally serves up the page you first received, not the page as it exists for you now.

I feel like the whole cookies thing has gotten a bit overloaded for preferences. I know I feel it since I switch between an iPad, an iPhone, my desktop, a netbook, a media PC. And those are just the computers I own!

I'd really like to see LT start going more in the direction of preferences being saved for users, not computers.

</soapbox>

.... for once I agree with brightcopy.

A. MEN.

>114 brightcopy:

I hear you. Some are, some aren't. I'll take a look at binding the sessions to users more closely.

Can't you give us an overall default choice, and let people who want to see some one way and some the other the option of changing away from their default?

Otherwise I'll just avoid the publishers pages totally, and any time I have to change a different one, it will make me less likely to use that again.

A question: Does the text view use less kb than the images view (shelves and book covers)? Originally text was the default, and only view. It would make sense if text continues to be the default view when clicking on pages where there's an option of viewing style (similar to viewing the collections in library view being the default). It uses less download for those who have limited Internet access, and makes pages faster to download as well, assumably (without knowing the technicalities, but it is definitely faster for those who still use dialup, and they are out there, I've met them). Giving the option of which shows as the default sounds good too, and by user rather than computer type (as mentioned above for those who use multiple access points).

Dialup is less than 2% of users now, though.

There are those on broadband with download limits, and there's a lot of those, this user included.

121>

Are download limits really generally so low as to care about small images? Frankly that must make most sites unusable; when I've seen limits they've been aimed at limiting downloads of large videos or executables (basically, bittorrents).

121/122: bookel is meaning a fixed download limit per {timeperiod}, such as month. This seems to be common in many places outside the US.

lorax, I think you're meaning a rate cap that throttles speed down on large files? If not, what? :)

123 is correct.

We could do a lot more for you bill by ajaxing in your post, not reloading the whole Talk page...

In my opinion "Fear and Loathin in las vegas" should be classified as "American Literature," Along with the novels of Kerouac, Ken Kesey, and Tom Wolfe's stories, to say the least. the definition of the shelf, correspond to zero, largely librarian, "Information sciences".
Who corrects that great mistaques?

Since I am now using a verrrrrrry slow internet due to someone else exceeding the month's usage (can't even view Google Reader), I can now confirm the text (titles and authors listed) on the tag pages is way faster in loading than seeing the covers, hence why it makes more sense to have the text as default (as that was what it was originally anyway)... or out of curiosity, is there any way to make each user's choice "stick" every time they sign in, as a user preference?

Oh please please please extend this to tagmash!

I hate to bump such an old thread, but I have a question... How often does the shelves-toggle "reset"? Lately I've found myself having to reset my "titles" preference more and more often. I haven't logged out. I did close the internet window, but I didn't log out and I didn't clear cookies. Is it automatically reset every 24 hours or so? It seems like that's what I'm seeing recently.

I don't know Heather, but I usually have to reset my catalog view every time I use it. I thought it, too, was supposed to stick, but it doesn't. I never log out either.