New server, new look
The new server came and, after some rough hours, everything is running smoothly. Ongoing server and programming tweaks should win further gains. The site is unlikely to be much faster during off-peak hours, but I'm hoping not to have hourly crashes and twenty-second waits during peak times.
I've done something of a major overhaul of the design. If you're on Firefox, Netscape or Safari you shouldn't see much of a difference. Windows Internet Explorer users will suddenly see... what you're supposed to see. Why didn't anyone tell me it looked so terrible! Owing to the death of my Windows machine, I hadn't done much cross-platform testing. Ouch! Those who weren't turned off by strangely-large fonts and boxes extending 5% off the edge of the window, I salute you!
Comments encouraged. I'm frankly a bit snowed-under right now, so replies may take a few days. Enjoy!
I've done something of a major overhaul of the design. If you're on Firefox, Netscape or Safari you shouldn't see much of a difference. Windows Internet Explorer users will suddenly see... what you're supposed to see. Why didn't anyone tell me it looked so terrible! Owing to the death of my Windows machine, I hadn't done much cross-platform testing. Ouch! Those who weren't turned off by strangely-large fonts and boxes extending 5% off the edge of the window, I salute you!
Comments encouraged. I'm frankly a bit snowed-under right now, so replies may take a few days. Enjoy!
posted by Tim at 12:43 AM
10 Comments:
I know for a fact that you can't make a site that works perfectly for everyone. I was content that it didn't scroll half a page off to the right.
Everything looks good. Congratulations. Now go rest for a while! You really deserve it, and probably need it by now!
Wow, that's fantastic. Thanks for the IE-related tweak! Much appreciated!
One thing, though. Before, IE allowed the display of vowels with acute accents, such as those you'd find in Spanish words. Now, it has substituted what looks like Kanji for the acute-e, and squares for the other accented vowels.
Netscape and Firefox, on the other hand, are now displaying each such vowel as a black diamond with a white question-mark inside.
Are accented vowels (and their West European cousins, the cedilla, N-with-tilde and Eszett) now verboten? 'Cause I've got quite a few Irish-language books that I'd added to my list ... and I know at least one other user (fraise) who has quite a few French titles. I checked and the same thing is happening with her French-language entries.
Sorry to introduce a new complication, but I thought you should be aware of this - especially as Amazon.fr and Amazon.de are among the official sources of book info.
Clearly character sets are something I need to work on. It makes sense that the change I made would have that effect. It's high on my list now.
Laura,
Yes, I've noticed the same thing tonight. When I go to the other user's profile, though, it correctly lists the books we have in common. I figure Tim must be mid-tweak of something, and it'll probably be recounted by morning…
Correct. I was trying to solve the "multiple editions" problem. If you have one and someone has 12 copies of Pride and Prejudice, do you share one book or twelve? What if you have the screenplay, or the book in French?
Changing the way "sameness" was calculated had all sorts of odd effects. I'm still fiddling with it. I don't think there's a "complete" solution, either philosophically or algorithmically.
Or take US and UK editions of the first Harry Potter book, which have both different ISBNs *and* different titles (Philosopher's Stone vs. Sorcerer's Stone). I think I may throw up my hands at some point and let users do the work—nix a book's connection or make one it if they feel the need.
On that same topic then ("sameness" of editions :) ) I think each of the three volumes of Lord of the Rings gets counted as three duplicates of the book "Lord of the Rings".
Series are possibly going to be tricky to deal with ;)
Thanks for the multiple editions change! I don't envy dealing with series at all :)
The multiple books was a big problem for me since I put in the 54 books of the Great Books of the Western World (1954 edition). I have not entered the 57 volumes of the 1994 edition until I figure out if it's really going to mess people up.
much improved, thanks!
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