Add books improved
I made some improvements to the Add Books tab. Notably, it now saves the libraries you use on the left, and remembers them between sessions.We hashed many of the features out on the Google Group. But I'm still considering whether the tag box should be "sticky" or not. Oh, if you're pining for the old one, use it here.
In a day or two we'll be adding the most requested feature—adding multiple books at a time.
posted by Tim at 11:36 PM
31 Comments:
Looking good! Of course, it makes me want to go out and buy books just to try out the new page. Is that warped, or what?
I second that, lilithcat - now I've got to get more more MORE books just to try out all of the new features. Thank you for enabling my book addiction. ;-)
I was wondering if another "mass" feature could be added.
Basically I've just added a bunch of books and I'd like to have a function available where I can have special edit powers to edit any feature of the books in my catalog at once.
For example, we now have a mass edit where we can edit the tags we have for multiple books at once, I'd like it to be able to edit the date acquired for multiple books at once because I often buy books in batches.
Also, whenever I try to enter a date acquired or date read by double-clicking on my catalog page it doesn't work! I enter the date and it says "saving" and after the "saving" screen goes away the box is still blank!
LibraryThing is AWESOME and I'm really enjoying adding my books to it!!!
May I be so bold as to add some feedback about the new "Add Books" interface?
What I LOVE: That the "?" is AFTER the Tag entry box so that I can now hit TAB once and then enter my tags. GREAT!!!!!!!
What I HATE: That the Title/ISBN entry box doesn't clear automatically so that I can just add the next book without click/highlighting/deleting the last entry. I'm using a mousepad on a laptop and it's a PITB.
All in all, thanks SOOOOO much for all the hard work you've put into this......all I can say is WOW!!!!!
I (mostly) like this! But, inevitably, a couple of comments: first, I agree with firstcavwife that it would be good if the search and add tags windows would clear automatically, not after you have run your search (because you might need to run it again using a different source library) but after you have selected a book to add to your library. Second, I liked having a bunch of other specific links for re-running your search at the top of the search results box, mainly because my standard practice is to search on an ISBN in LOC and then re-search in Amazon if the book turns out to be a paperback that LOC doesn't own. This adds a click to that process....
Thanks as usual (and thanks for responding to the speed issues so efficiently -- it seems to be running a lot faster now!)
Patchen
Wonderful site!
Is there some way to differentiate authors with the exact same name when books are added? See for example: John Atkinson. Here find at least 2 and possibly 3 different authors.
Hi Tim,
I just want to agree with firstcavwife and markell that it is pretty annoying that users must now manually clear the title/ISBN search box in the "Add new books" page. If you can fix this, it would be wonderful.
But otherwise the improvements to this section of librarything look great. Keep up the good work!
LibraryThing is just what I need! Have already starting using the Blog Widget however the book covers keep disppearing.Is it a bug?
Arianne: Yes. That would be a good idea. As for the dates, hmmm.
CHRISTOPHER? WHAT DO YOU THINK? (Maybe if I shout, he'll see this. I'm not sure he checks the blog comments when it's not his issue.)
Firstcavwife: Fixed. Sorry. Dumb.
markell: Interesting. Hmmm... I'll think about it.
Anonymous on authors. We're working on it. We spec'ed it out recently.
In what sense do the covers disapear? They work on your blog for a while and then go? (Note, some books have coversa dn some don't.)
Hey, cool! That's the first time I've witnessed the system change while I was using it.
Thanks for putting the auto-clear back in the search box.
On the second issue I raised, here's an idea! What if you made the *names* of the search options under "Search what?" into links, in addition to having radio buttons? Choosing a radio button would "set" that library as the user's default search source until s/he selected something else. BUT clicking on the link, instead, would run the current search on that library, *without* resetting the default. Then you wouldn't have to crowd the top of the results window with links.
Have a good night!
Well, I don't like it. I use the Canadian, English, and Japanese Amazons a lot. Keep the old one where I can get to it (is there an easy way?)
Also, I would like to know why it takes LibraryThing so long to perform tasks and upload etc. etc.
Is this a server problem? Perhaps some revamp is in order?
Tim: some books don't display the cover when using the javascript blog widget. I believe these are books with manually added covers, but not *all* manually added covers disappear...
CCBC -
Just click on "choose from 45 libraries" and add the sources you want to the list. They will appear just under amazon.com and LOC and will remain there until you choose to remove them.
Bug report:
I added some Spanish sources to my list by mistake and found that yet again, accents are causing problems. In this case under "Search what" I see "Universidad Aut鮯ma de Madrid" with a corrupted letter. What's more - I cannot remove it but trying to do so changes the entry to "Universidad Aut?ma de Madrid"
If a real book lover keeps worrying about technological tweaks to LibraryThing's evolving site they shall not find enough time to read those many books that are physically sitting on the floor in stacks next to the puter waiting to be added into
LibraryThing.
I vote for leaving the tag box "sticky" (which I presume means the tags stay between book entries, since that's what they're doing now).
I also like markell's idea of having the libraries be links that you can click on to search without resetting the default--THAT job would be handled only by clicking on the radio button.
Love the improvements.
arianne: I was having a problem entering a date acquired, too. It seems that you need to enter the date as dd/mm/yyyy, regardless of whether you have Euro format checked or not. If you're having the same problem as me, then LT thinks you're entering an invalid date, since there are only 12 months but you're entering the day in that slot.
What's up with LT right now? Books I added aren't showing up and I keep getting "Fatal error: Call to undefined function imagecreatetruecolor() in /home/tspalding/live.librarything.com/data/addcover_upload.php on line 21" when trying to add a custom cover...
Oh, and thanks thailynn. But that can't be the problem because any date even 03/04/2006 won't enter. And that's a valid date in either Euro or US format.
Uploading of book covers no longer works...
Fatal error: Call to undefined function imagecreatetruecolor() in /home/tspalding/live.librarything.com/data/addcover_upload.php on line 21
Uploading book covers should be fixed now. Sorry, we switched servers last night and are still ironing out some glitches. Please email me if you come across anything else.
We're looking at the dates problem...
Abby
Thanks for the sticky tags! I entered 20 books today, all with the same tags, and it was wonderful!
A problem in entering today: Several books took longer than the others to process, when they did, the book was not listed, just the tags. Repeating the process entered the book. This happened on 4 of the 20 books.
I'm interested in using LibraryThing for a nonprofit organization. I do not want the 'ratings' or links to other people, comments, etc. column for our purposes. How do we remove these features? Is there a simple hide command?
Thanks.
I definately prefer the original method of choosing to search by country (and associated amazon listing) rather than having to search each individual library. I found it to be very timeconsuming and if that is the only available method, not worth the effort.
Anonymous: I'm unclear how you see the difference. You would like it to suggest other sources within that langauge/country if it fails? This is what it did before, but at the same time the suggestions were limited and many people didn't understand that you COULD search anything other than the Amazons and the LC.
Tried to add "A Clockwork Orange" (Ballantine paperback) from a couple of different links, and although both times it appeared to add (showed up at top of 'recently added' list), when I tried to edit the entry to assign a cover image, I got "Error: Work does not exist."
Had seen this a couple times before but [Refresh] always seemed to make it go away. Not so with this entry. Anything I should be looking for?
TDS: Thanks for the heads-up. In part, this is about slave-master issues. We're working on them. In general, the lack of a work will be corrected, one way or the other.
Please put the link to the original way of adding books in a more convenient spot. Like on the Add Books page. So we have options. I have to search the site for it everytime!
This is good idea for books
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