LibraryThing Release Notes

Talk messages that have been removed, either because the message was flagged a lot or because the member was removed for spam and such, are now hidden by default. This should be a help in good topics that some spammer briefly commandeered, and then got removed.

Members have asked for this before, but we were held back by the pain of renumbering the messages. So we're skipping that—messages are not renumbered. And if you're curious aboutt the removed messsages, there's a button to click in the "Actions" section—itself a new home for several buttons—to show the removed messages.

Original source Report a problem

We've added an image editor to LibraryThing! Now when you upload a cover, author photo, or any other picture, you can crop, adjust, and fix it right here — no need to open another app.

What can you do with it?

• Crop — Trim your image freely, or use standard ratios like 1:1, 5:7, or 4:6
• Perspective correction — If you've ever taken a photo of a book cover with your phone, you know the result: the cover looks like a trapezoid instead of a rectangle, with one side wider than the other. The perspective tool lets you fix that. Switch it on, drag each corner of the crop independently to match the edges of the cover, and the editor straightens it into a clean rectangle. It turns a quick phone snap into something that looks like a proper scan.
• Rotate & flip — Quick 90-degree rotation or mirror flips
• Photo adjustments — Exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth, sharpness, and more — twelve adjustments with a live preview so you can see exactly what you're getting

Edit images you've already uploaded

This is a big one!

Want to crop an old cover that has too much border? Fix the color on a dark photo? You can do that now without re-uploading. We think the perspective correction feature is going to be a game changer. You can now go back and edit any picture you've previously uploaded — including your book covers. On Gallery images just look for the "Edit Image" button. For covers you'll need to go to the book covers page and open the cover details popup—either using the "expand" icon on the main cover or clicking one of the magnifying glass icons on each cover. From there you can click the Edit Cover button.

And even more interesting, if you see another member cover that you like but it's not perfect you can edit it to create a new cover so that you can use it on your book. When you edit somebody else's cover it creates a new copy just as if you uploaded a new cover.

Your Covers Gallery

You can also browse all the covers you've uploaded at a new Your Covers Gallery (Home > Gallery > Your Covers).

Where does it appear?

Everywhere you upload images: book covers, profile pictures, author photos, group images, gallery pictures, and more. The editor opens automatically when you drop an image onto it. Make your edits, then hit Upload.

We've also replaced the old, ugly, unwieldy, and non-matching upload forms that were still being used on some parts of the site with a standardized drag-and-drop interface everywhere (you can also click to upload like you used to do).

More Formats Supported

It handles JPEG, PNG, GIF like it always has. And we've added support for WebP, AVIF, non-proprietary DNG, and iPhone photos (HEIC, but not portrait or RAW as those are Apple-proprietary formats that we can't decode) — we convert automatically. It runs entirely in your browser and works on desktop and mobile.

A tremendous amount of work went into threading this through the system and we're a little proud of it, but I'm sure we aren't finished with it—and I'm sure we missed some things. For instance, we expect to add more features to the Your Covers gallery in the coming days.

But, let us know what you think!

Original source Report a problem

Venues have long had a "comments" section, which was better than nothing but not good. It was separate from the talk system—and indeed from all other systems—making it hard to maintain, a site for spam, and generally a pain.

I've now moved to a Talk-based system that will be easier to maintain and, I think, will draw more use. Venue pages show the comments—the last three comments—and link to the full discussion, which is in Talk.

Some details:

• All the old comments (3,984, across 3,249 venues) were moved, unless they had flags or were from bad users.
• The venue page shows the comments without any adornments, except for tiny images. But Talk is Talk, and works like Talk.
• Most venue comments are short but, if long, the venue page shows only the first few lines of the comment.
• Venue discussion goes into Venue Discussion group (https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/25243/Venue-Discussion).
• Venue discussion has its own TOS.
• "This is a place to leave helpful comments, share memories, share pictures and more. Criticism is allowed, but group administrators will remove criticism that seems excessive, personal or mean-spirited."
• Looking through the comments, I found a hard minority that were personal gripes from drive-by-users. Something about the store irked them, and—I'm guessing—they went everywhere they could online to post about it. Members can criticize a bookstore, but LibraryThing isn't the Better Business Bureau. We're not Yelp. If you want to take a store down with negative reviews, go elsewhere.
• Even if this doesn't get a lot of use, it's helpful for us to consolidate the systems. And it's a good test of using Talk in ways that tie into an "entity" other than a group alone.

Example Links:

• Powell's City of Books (Portland) https://www.librarything.com/venue/3811/Powells-City-of-Books-Portland
• Venue Discussion group https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/25243/Venue-Discussion

Additional updates include:

1. A "Your venues" section on the left Talk nav
2. Your Groups and Posts now includes your groups, your posts, your starred (as before) and your venues. If you really don't want your venues in there, go ahead and ignore the group.
3. A little section on the right of the talk page about the venue. It replaces the "About" section, because a venue Talk page cannot be about a book. Someone might want to use it to talk about a reading, or something, but this would be a misuse as the page will long outlast the reading.

Your Groups and Posts now has an info button after it. The team is waiting on info from Chris about how to get the explanation it into the help slider.

Other improvements:

• Topics now have the place (city and state for the US and Canada, city and country for elsewhere), in the subject. This is true both on the topic page and on the list of topics. The latter is cached, but will update every 4 hours, if something changes.
• Plans to include the store's location (or at least the country) in the thread title to make it more informative.
• Synchronization of thread titles with venue renames is partially implemented and will be improved.

Community feedback and discussions about the new system are ongoing, with members sharing thoughts on usability and suggestions for further enhancements.

Original source Report a problem

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I don't see any mention of this new feature, so I dunno if it's been released into the wild early, or...? Anyway, when clicking the "Add a Cover" button, a new interface pops up with some editing tools, etc. All good, but when I hit "Save", it does a "Upload Complete" (or whatever) but then... that's it. The page doesn't refresh, new covers don't appear. A manual refresh fixes all of this, but it's not intuitive, especially since the old method did include an automatic refresh afterwards.

One feature request, if possible: I've always thought it would be nice if the upload interface could show the image resolution up front? Then one could cancel the upload if the resolution was lower than desired.

Thanks. I'm soft launching that right now and working out any kinks in the process before announcing it. It's a massive code change involving hundreds of source files...so I figured there might be some issues.

I'll take a look at what you're seeing.

Thanks! I just saw this feature and love it! And thank to @saltmanz for heads up about refreshing page.

Ok. Those fixes are going out. It will reload that page again now.

I also added the original image dimensions to the top of the editor title bar when you upload an image.

Give it a couple of minutes for the updates to go through the system.

You may also notice if you click the enlarge option on the cover of one of your book pages you should now get an option to edit covers you've already uploaded. Which means that you can fix older covers that might need some editing.

Thank you! Big help, huge!

Even if someone besides you had used the cover?

Yes. For now. We'll see how that goes. My guess is that it in real world use it will be used for "good" and people will improve them.

We'll have a full talk post on all of the new features (maybe this evening, maybe in the morning).

I am not worried about people changing with nefarious intents.

But until now, if you chose a member cover, it never changed. Now it can. So if one cares what cover they have, they need to always upload their own I guess.

This seems to have broken the new Add image to Talk feature. When I try to add an image to Talk, the process goes all wrong. The image is added to a gallery but not really, and definitely not to the Talk topic which is closed without saving.

Hm. I'll investigate.

ETA: this should be fixed now. (after a few minutes for it to propagate)

Would it be feasible to make it so that when a cover is being used by others, doing edits makes a new additional image in the gallery rather than replacing it? Thus other members don't get affected by any editing. Choosing a cover should be a once-thing that sticks unless you actively change it. I'd find it frustrating if a well-intentioned user edited what at present does represent my book, without me having a say (eg. they darken their image because they think it looks too washed out, but I chose that original image because my book actually looked like that due to sunbleached, etc.).

"Choosing a cover should be a once-thing that sticks unless you actively change it."

I agree.

Wholeheartedly agree. Allowing changes to be made to covers others are using is a nightmare.

That's a possibility, but I must remind you that most people use Amazon covers for their books and those change all the time. :)

But yes, it's a possibility. I'll look into it.

I must remind you that most people use Amazon covers for their books and those change all the time.

Yes, and I originally used Amazon covers because I didn't know better and that was the default I ended up with! :-p There were no warnings about Amazon covers back then.... To change them all now would be a major project for me, so I haven't fixed them all -- but I don't use Amazon covers for anything new; if the only available cover for a book is from Amazon, and it's "right," I'll grab a copy and re-upload. So I agree with >13 Nevov et al: Once a person picks a cover from a non-Amazon source, that cover needs to stay. Monster of vanity and arrogance that I am, I will grant you the option to implement that however you like. :-)

Seconded. If I'm using any Amazon covers, it's an oversight.

That issue aside, I am very excited overall about the new feature--thanks for your work on it!

Yes it could be a really useful thing! I like the idea of the adjustments as sometimes the exact edition image is online but it doesn't quite match in tone/hue/brightness to the real life book so having a few dials to twizzle with may do the job nicely.

Yeah, I put far too many hours into meticulously scanning my cover collection so that my LT books could I have my covers. So the thought that someone could edit the covers of my books is low-key horrifying.

Chiming in to echo several above, re: someone else being able to change the look of the cover I chose for my works in my catalog.

and, not to beat a hardworking and creative IT expert, but ...

I must remind you that most people use Amazon covers for their books and those change all the time.

The whole reason I stopped using Amazon covers was because they could change! One purpose of this cataloging project is to help make it easier for our heirs to figure out what we've got and what might be special about it. Having covers that look as much as possible as our covers is one big clue.

Most of the books in my catalog with Amazon covers are ones that have only been rough-cataloged (quick found and added, with ownership and shelf Containers assigned) and then boxed (with another Container identifying the box) so that we can clear out some old bookcases and replace them with ones that work better for us.

I must remind you that most people use Amazon covers for their books and those change all the time. :)

And the reason people don’t use Amazon covers is because they want to make sure their covers don’t change. If covers I’m using are at risk of changing randomly, I’m going to have to make sure all my books have covers I’ve added myself - which is not only going to be an absolute pain but might even mean I can’t find covers for all the books. And it will mean more people (needlessly) uploading covers and the cover pages being even more unmanageable than they already are.

And just a tip: adding smileys after statements like that do not convey anything good. It makes you sound passive-aggressive.

Which is why many of us DON'T use Amazon covers.

Please don't make member covers as unreliable as Amazon covers. As a side impact, this would encourage more people to post their own duplicate covers greatly increasing the number of covers to be stored.

Nobody will be able to edit YOUR covers. Only you.

This was a question about if you edited one of your covers that somebody else happened to be using as the cover for their book.

I was having trouble yesterday, but was just able to add that same image.

I think everybody jumped to a conclusion here.

Nobody can edit your covers. Only you can do that.

If you have uploaded covers for your books they will not change unless YOU yourself edit them.

Now, if you're using the cover that somebody else uploaded and they edit it, then yes, the cover will change to reflect the edit—just as it could have if you had selected an Amazon cover that wasn't your specific book's cover.

But in all honesty, I just don't see this as being a major issue in real life. I don't see people editing covers just to edit them. I'm guessing that it will be editing to improve cropping on poorly taken images, improving keystoning to get a proper rectangle cover that fills the image, better contrast, etc.

Let's not make an issue where there isn't one.

OK. I'll just stop using member covers that somebody else has added. I didn't want covers I have chosen to change. That's why I have been only using member covers. It's what we have been telling people for years. Chose member covers and they won't change. Now we will have to say, 'If you don't want to risk your cover changing, upload your own.'

I think the good will outweigh the bad. For every cover that someone changes fundamentally, there will be ten that are improved.

But I understand those who are concerned.

Let me add my voice to the choir of people who’d really dislike if others can change the covers of my books.

(If that’s the way it’s to be, I suppose I’ll have to change all my covers to ones I’ve uploaded myself.)

By the way, there's something wonky with the upload dialog now. Not the top text, that's just the Lorax style not working everywhere, it's the same on the English side, but that Proceed tag.

And if they decide to remove the little circle that says a book received an award? Or to add one? Change the language the title and author are in? Editorialise the covers of the Harry Potter books in their Read But No Longer Owned collection?

100% agreed with every word. And the note about adding duplicates was exactly what I was thinking of. It's difficult enough to navigate the covers as it is - this will make the problem way worse.

I think everybody jumped to a conclusion here.

Nobody can edit your covers. Only you can do that. If you have uploaded covers for your books they will not change unless YOU yourself edit them.

Now, if you're using the cover that somebody else uploaded and they edit it, then yes, the cover will change to reflect the edit—just as it could have if you had selected an Amazon cover that wasn't your specific book's cover.

But in all honesty, I just don't see this as being a major issue in real life. I don't see people editing covers just to edit them. I'm guessing that it will be editing to improve cropping on poorly taken images, improving keystoning to get a proper rectangle cover that fills the image, better contrast, etc.

Let's not make an issue where there isn't one.

No one is jumping to conclusions, we're all just commenting on the exact fact that the person who uploaded a cover that we are using can now edit it, and thus change what we thought would be permanent - the exact reason why we chose that cover. The cover I am using for my books is MY cover, even if I'm not the one who uploaded it in the first place.

You don't see this being a "major problem"? Good for you, but it's going to be a point of worry and stress for a lot of people, who are currently using the function for a reason you are now removing. And like MarthaJeanne pointed out (and I tried to), this is going to lead to a lot of people adding additional identical covers just to make sure the cover they use won't suddenly change.

I'm glad you think this will only be used for good, but we don't actually know that, and even if it is - that's still not the point. If you choose a cover you should be able to count on that cover staying as it is.

Luckily, I don't think most of those changes are possible.

The image can be cropped, flipped, rotated, or exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, tint, warmth, sharpness, clarity and haze can be adjusted.

There's plenty to make the image look weird and unlike the cover you have, but not quite so extreme as redrawing parts of it.

Many of us have switched from Amazon covers to member uploaded covers specifically because it has always been true that those would never change. This now means that covers we have carefully selected as representing our books correctly can change - member uploaded covers will now have the same problem that Amazon covers have.

It sounds like you're saying that there will be no way to select an existing cover that matches our book, and be sure that it will always match our book.

Can you implement this so that an edited cover is saved as a new cover image, leaving the original in place? And as always, if no other book is linked to that original image it will eventually be deleted, but if someone is using the original it will stay unchanged?

This message has been deleted by its author.

Experienced users avoid Amazon covers because they might and do change.

If we extend that trouble to the uploaded covers of all other users, it will incentivize users to use only their own uploaded covers, which would explode the number of cover uploads. It seems like the sharing of images promoted by the current system is preferable.

Can you implement this so that an edited cover is saved as a new cover image, leaving the original in place?

Yes, that is something we are considering. I mentioned this very early in the conversation.

Ah. That's a translation block that isn't being closed correctly. Might be in the translation, but might also be in the code. I'll take a look.

ETA: should be fixed in the next few minutes.

"I think everybody jumped to a conclusion here.

Nobody can edit your covers. Only you can do that. If you have uploaded covers for your books they will not change unless YOU yourself edit them."

You're the one who jumped to a conclusion. One person made that mistake and you're presuming that everyone else who commented must have made the same one. It's not a ridiculous position that if someone chooses a cover then they don't want that cover to change even to "improve" it.

"I mentioned this very early in the conversation."

You tacked the following on to the end of a comment where you were trying to argue the nonsensical position that because most people use Amazon covers then people who don't wouldn't mind if the covers changed.

"But yes, it's a possibility. I'll look into it."

No wonder many people didn't notice that.

Wow, lots of anger with the experienced members lately. I don't remember this from my youth. ;)

Suffice to say that I am looking into how we can allow edits and keep old covers stable. Let's just leave it at that.

Is there a way for me to see a list of all the covers I've added? Can I see how many people are using each one? (Other than visiting each cover page individually.)

That would give me an idea of how many people would be affected by any changes I might make to my covers.

ETA: Editing covers could perhaps be limited to covers used only by the member in question? The available options (cropping, saturation, rotation etc.) invite small fixes immediately after uploading, and not so much a collection-wide implementation of theme colours or whatever.

...a list of all the covers I've added?

No way right now, but I'm working on that too.

Editing a cover no longer changes the cover for other people

If you edit a cover that you have uploaded and another user is using it then it creates a new copy of that cover image and assigns it to your book. The original cover is still available and still being used for the other peoples' cover images.

It is smart, so that if there are no other people using the cover it just edits the cover and doesn't create a new one.

Yay! Thanks!

Thank you. Now I don't have to worry about going through my entire catalogue to try and figure out which covers I've uploaded and not. (Although LT is claiming two covers were auto-assigned based on best guess and not chosen by me, which seems suspect - I could swear I had 100% self-chosen covers a few months ago.)

Like the others, let me say thank you for this.

Thanks! I've gone from grumpy to excited!

New feature/wrinkle:

Edit as New Cover

Have you ever used another member's cover for your book but you wish you could improve it in some way? Now you can open the cover details popup and from there you can choose "Edit as New Cover" and it will let you edit their cover image and will save it as a new cover option and set your book to use it.

It's as if you downloaded their cover, edited it, and uploaded it as a new cover.

ETA: you can actually do this from ANY cover's detail popup on the covers page of one of your books.

New feature:

Number of people using the cover

The cover details popup now shows the number of members using the cover (if it's more than 1).

That is all very cool! Thank you.

ETA I remember once somebody messaged me that she had downloaded one of my covers, fixed it and uploaded it again, in case I wanted to use the improved version. I hadn't been quite careful enough placing the book in the scanner, and she had adjusted it by a few degrees.

Are these features not live yet? Nothing happens on latest FF, though the button is there

Yes. Live, so I'll check to see what FF is doing different.

It is working perfectly for me on Firefox, so I'm going to need more information from you. Are you possibly running any sort of network blockers? Do you see any errors from the browser?

Mar 25, 5:01 pm

working fine here. Firefox 148.0.2 (64-bit) Mozilla Firefox Snap for Ubuntu..

Edited: Mar 25, 5:15 pm

This is the error upon clicking:

Uncaught TypeError: lt.loadBundle is not a function
onclick
https://www.librarything.com/work/301685/308768392#:1
308768392:1:128

ETA: No network blockers I know of, just Privacy Badger addon if that makes a difference, but it normally gives a warning when it's blocking something and why. Either way, if it is working fine for others on FF, it doesn't matter and don't waste time on it. I am personally unlikely to use the edit function unless from phone, and it works there, though it's also FF. Thanks

Interesting. Seems like you aren't getting our newest JS files. (since that's an addition to our base JS file). It's probably some aggressive caching by either your browser or some point in between our servers and your computer (your ISP, network, VPN).

You can try holding the shift key down while reloading the page and see if that fixes it (that would fix it if it's your browser cache).

If it's not then I'll investigate possible other solutions.

New feature:

Your Covers

If you go to your normal Gallery page there is now an option on the left to see all of your covers you have uploaded.

Link to your member covers

Just reloading the page solved it on laptop too. Much obliged

We need to announce things for real.

BTW: This is not all the covers you've uploaded, it's the ones since some early period when we started tracking them in the new system. We'll have to dig that up, CH.

Ooh, nice. I'm going to check that out when it's not past my bedtime.

Nice. A couple of things to add if possible: the count of added covers, and some way to expand the pagination links (like in catalogue view).

I think the gallery should show the covers at their correct aspect ratios.

We'll have an official announcement in the morning. It will talk about the features in detail, and talk about what it offers in addition to the cover editor. It was also a big feature add for us on the administration side, allowing more of our staff to correct image issues that they couldn't do before (or it took time and focus from a dev to fix them).

I see you've thought of nosy parkers (edit: the gallery link in >64 conceptDawg :)

"You can only view your own covers."

:-)

Not sure what’s going on, but there seems to be something wrong with the Your covers page. This is what it looks like for me at the bottom of the page.

Also, am I the only one having issues with slow loading times with this new cover/image upload system? It used to take a second or to to load a new cover (after pressing Grab), but now it’s taking a minimum of 20 seconds, sometimes close to a full minute. Seems a bit to slow.

I'm going to drop some suggested edits here:

1. It says "Uploading Image" and below that "Please wait." The "Please wait" isn't necessary.
2. All things being equal, I'd prefer the uploading image to one we use elsewhere. We have a jillion processing images now. Let's not add another.
3. Let's kill the wording underneath "Copyright statement."
4. Move the two checkboxes "Make Primary Picture" and "Allow Comments" above the text boxes.
5. When I click on perspective "Preview" is in the middle of the image; when I do anything it runs over to the right. Intentional?
6. If you click the 1:1, 5:7, 2:3 boxes a bunch of times, the selected part of the image gets smaller and smaller. This feels wrong. I think they should resize from the starting box, not from the current box.
7. If you're on a group page, like https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/382/Touchstone-Testing , there's a link on the right that's aplus sign. For some reason it adds the image to your personal gallery, not the group gallery. I'm worried there are other such cases.

What does "make primary picture" do?

I assumed it would replace my profile photo, but that doesn't make sense for cover uploading. And if I'm uploading a cover, that's the one on my book so is it making it the work's cover? That seems bad.

You should no longer see that button on cover uploads. It was present for a short time today during a code transition. Your browser might have it cached. Hold the shift key down while reloading the page to force it to update all code.

Another comment on the paging function. I get 50 covers pr page, so I have about 200 pages of covers, but I can only advance by two pages at a time. I.e. it starts by showing 1,2,3,4,5 as options. clicking 5 gives me 3,4,5,6,7, clicking 7 gives me 5,6,7,8,9 , etc.

It's happening both with uploads from my ipad and when I'm using a URL.

Could we perhaps filter on which of these we're actually using? I.e. uploaded by me and currently picked and uploaded by me and not currently picked.

Also, as a private user, when viewing a cover I've uploaded on the work page (when logged in), I only see Contributed by Private user, while it should know that it's one I uploaded. Could that be changed as well?

ETA: I guess now there's a clue, in the wording of the edit button (Edit Cover vs Edit as New Cover). Still it seems it would be nice to see Contributed by You or something similar. Maybe other private members would freak out if they saw their actual username there?

That's likely because it is now using your local machine for downloading the image instead of our server (which is what happened before because there were no actions to be taken on it then). Your local network speed is the issue in this case.

Definitely. I don't expect that the current iteration of Your Covers will continue without some fixes/additions. It was a kind of last minute feature added because someone asked for it. We'll flesh it out a bit. These are good requests and I'll take a look at getting these changed.

Would love to be able to upload something like this and, instead of chopping a square out of the middle to make it 1:1, expand the field vertically to make it 1:1. Any chance of it?

We can do ANYTHING!

Heh. In all reality, yes. I think we could figure out something here. Let me think on it. I don't think many would use the feature, but it might be worth something.

Massive boon to awards and corporate authors workflows, for reasons that should be obvious. It will get a lot of use, even if not by many people.

While I'm at it, bug report:

Uploaded that as-is here:
https://www.librarything.com/award/19483

But it doesn't show up on the page. Go to add again, and it shows up as a duplicate post-upload, but still not on the award page.

Also doesn't show up here:
https://www.librarything.com/author/daummeghan

Pretty sure something got broken in the plumbing.

Can that really be the case when it’s happening BOTH to images I’ve uploaded from the iPad AND images pulled via URL. Doesn’t make sense to me. And my network speed it great.

No, it would only apply to a difference in speed for images pulled via URL. Images uploaded from your computer should be the same speed as before.

Those should be fixed now.

@bnielsen

I've introduced a new pagination UI type for this since you have....checks notes...over 100 pages of covers...wait, that can't be righ— yep, that's correct. {nods an approval}

Anyway, you can jump to any page now. Let me know if there is a problem using it.

I had a look at my covers page and I found that the last seven covers on page seven are not uploaded by me.

Would that be a mistake or is there some reason for it?

Thanks

Same here, except for me it’s the last 3 1/2 pages that were uploaded by someone else.

Ah. It's likely just a mistake in the way I'm merging some data. I'll take a look and get it ironed out.

No, it's still there.

The gallery is very cool! Some of the covers I uploaded 15+ years ago are used by lots of people, which is neat to see.

The gallery sends you to the work page, not the book page, so sometimes if you have multiple copies of a work, you might click through to an edition that doesn't have the cover you just clicked on.

Fix should be out in a few minutes.

The links on the covers send you to your covers page for that book (if you have multiple books for that work it will only link to one of them, obviously, if they share the same cover image).

If you switch to a different langauge and view the covers gallery, you will see that it doesn't look quite right. In addition, the mouseover shows a tooltip that says <span id =.

And now it looks like this:

The links on the covers send you to your covers page for that book (if you have multiple books for that work it will only link to one of them, obviously, if they share the same cover image).

This is inconsistently true for me, but I can't figure out what makes it one way or the other. I've attached a photo where you can see the URL of the link in the bottom left, and it's the work page.

Already fixed before you mentioned it. Just hadn't been sent out yet. Thanks.

Interesting. I'll dig and see why that is.

We've announced the feature, so we should probably move conversation of it over to that thread:

New Image Editor Announcement
https://www.librarything.com/topic/383170

The issue in 104 is but not the one in >103 anglemark.

And extended ASCII characters are replaced with HTML entities in most places, but not everywhere (interestingly):

If you want an example, it happens on page 2 when sorting by "Most Used":
https://www.librarything.com/gallery/member/Stevil2001/yourcovers

But just for Little Lord Fauntleroy and the two covers to its right.

, the problem in >103 anglemark persists.

I think the change was overwritten by another change. Sigh. I'll make the changes again and push it out. Thanks for the reports.

Yeah. I think I've figured out why that is. Should have a fix out later this evening.

For me: I also want to add the ability to directly link to a specific page.

Let me know when you think you have corrected it. It's hard to know whether the fix failed or whether you haven't had time to work at it yet. A new bug, by the way: The page navigator dropdown at the top is blank now (but it works!).

If it works then what's the problem? That looks perfect. ;) Just kidding, I'll check on why that's cropped up.

I just added my first cover since this change. I got a message "converting HEIC image" . . . but I wasn't uploading an HEIC image . . . it's a regular jpeg.

Also, while some people might like getting the chance to edit the image here in LT, for me it just adds one more unnecessary step. And the save button was hidden below the page on my screen so I also had to scroll to find that before I could actually upload the image.

So thumbs down from me. Is there anyway to make the edit feature optional? or provide a more direct way to add images that are already just the way I want them?

I'm usually adding images that I've just scanned into my computer or pulling images from a URL that are already the form I want. Only rarely would I want/need to edit them in LT.

What browser are you using there? I can't get that to replicate here (and I even faked being your account to test it and it was ok for me).

Now it populates visibly, so whatever it was, that righted itself. But I can no longer use it to navigate, if I choose a page from it, it takes me to page 1. The arrows work, though.

Firefox 149.0, MacOS Tahoe 26.3.1.

Ahhh. Firefox. it has become the new Internet Explorer for bugs. Fun times.

Firefox. it has become the new Internet Explorer for bugs.

Is it that, or is it just that LT users have a strong tendency to be Firefox users because we're too smart to trust Google? :-) It really does seem to me that the fraction of FF users around here is much higher than the claimed numbers in the wider world.

, that's quite possible. But it's also the buggiest of current browsers because they are going their own way. There's something to be said for that, of course.

I've fixed the pagination issue for Firefox.

I also fixed the issue with some bad unicode characters.

I've also improved the loading speed for people with large amounts of covers (that's you). It's not instant, but it's better.

These changes should go out in the next 30 minutes, just waiting on our distribution pipeline.

We're getting there step by step! :)

1. Loading speed. Improved, many thanks.

2. Navigation. Functional now on both FF and Chrome.

3. Extended ASCII characters. Seems to be fixed now, many thanks!

4. Visibility of commands on navigation dropdown. Nope, white on both FF 149.0 and Chrome 146.0.7680.154, both on Windows 11 Enterprise 25H2

5. Original bug (display of number of cover users). Still not fixed:

Is it the buggiest? I'm no developer, but my impression has been it's treated as second class citizen by developers due to its small market share compared to Chrome and Safari. Some do not test on FF at all

I think what >118 conceptDawg: means is that FireFox is the most idiosyncratic. It is most likely to respond to something unusual in an unusual way. Which, from the standpoint of a web site developer, feels like a bug. Whether it's a bug in the usual sense is a much deeper philosophical question.

I think most FF users use it for reasons not related to its actual page renderings, so their definition of bugs will be different. :-)

Yes. That's exactly what I said. Right? :)

Thanks for the review. I'll get to the remaining items today.

Fixes have gone out for both of the remaining issues you mentioned. I hope these fix them (I can't reproduce the menu issue on my end...so it's a bit of a shot in the dark for the exact solution).

Success on both counts, at least on Mac OS! Your shot in the dark hit the mark. I checked both Chrome and FF. Sterling work!

Oh yay! How many times have I had to delete and reload my covers because editing on my tiny phone screen didn't look right when I looked at the saved image on my computer screen. This should be an improvement.

Now let me go and take a look at this feature ...

The zero makers on the cover galley appear to be all over the place.

Waterfox/Firefox on Android*
*Gecko 149 engine

Ahh. more firefox. But this time on mobile. Fun times, but I'll see what I can do. It's quite possible that browser is just so non-standard in how it handles modern layout that it can't handle it. We'll see what I can workaround.

ETA: Ah. Yes. That browser doesn't handle some more modern rules of layout that use CSS nesting. We are using those in a few places on LT now since they have good support across nearly all browsers, you just happen to be using one that doesn't support it. So you may see some strange layout in places if you continue using it.

I have removed the nesting for these rules, so let me know if it looks better in a few minutes.

I'm on Firefox for Android and everything looks right for me right now so that probably fixed it.

Mar 26, 3:41 pm

Thanks for the check.

Seems to work fine on Firefox on IPhone too.

By the way, why are you using 50 covers per page when the cover view rows are set to 9 on larger screens (and three, obviously)? It leaves two covers on a row of their own at the bottom which looks really weird. Why not cut it to 48 and have it look much more clean?

Because on most screens it flows to an uneven number anyway. And 50 just feels right. Or did at the time. Magic number or something.

Basically, no reason.

48 would make it divide evenly for those whose screens give them row length 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12...

50 only gets you a perfect arrangement for 5 and 10.

So it would give you a better hit rate to go with 48, if having them tidily arrange for more people, more of the time, is desirable.

60 alternately, would perfect arrange for those who have rows of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12...

Bias disclosure: I am on a 6-length row display at the minute :-P – but I like altering the browser zoom level to get a different perspective if I need it, nice that it copes with that on the fly.

I have a question and a comment/request about the cover gallery now that I'm paying closer attention to it.

Question, is there a way (or going to be a way) to delete covers that absolutely nobody is using (aka listed as unused) and thus can't be used because they don't show up in the cover explorer for the associated work? I have 29 unused covers that only I can see, and some of them are absolutely terrible. This is mainly housekeeping but I really don't need to remember that I uploaded bad covers and then probably immediately replaced them with better ones.

Comment/request, I have uploaded covers that I am no longer using but other people are (which is neat). However, because the covers aren't associated with a work in my collections, they aren't showing any work information in the covers gallery. It would be nice to still see what work is using the cover even though it isn't a work that I have in my collection anymore (at least not with that specific cover).

It's still happening. I think I know what is going on though. When I filtered the covers to only unused it became clear there were many more 0 symbols than there were covers.

I have been hit many times by the covers failing to upload on Android issue. Except it's not quite true to say they fail to upload since they do create an artefact on the system: a 1x1 gif (there is an example in the image gallery on my profile page).

So I have a strong suspicion that this is a bunch of 1x1 images playing merry havoc.

Ability to delete unused covers

Yes. That is my plan. But I didn't want to introduce that quite yet. There are a lot of moving parts to deal with when we consider deleting covers. But it's definitely in the cards.

No work info

Ah. That's a bug. I'll check on that one.

Hm. Yeah. That might be what's happening there. I can check on that. Hopefully the delete option I just mentioned will help you clear those up if I can work it out. Until then I'll see what I can do to make those look better.

Cover deletion being further down on the roadmap makes sense, it's not a high priority need compared to the other changes that are being made.

I'm also happy to accidentally report a bug by being OCD about data management!

Original source Report a problem

Group admins have been able to hide messages for some time. As another moderation tool, I've made it so that group admins can now close a topic.

If you're an admin, the button is on the right of each talk post, as the last option. The message members get looks like the other image here.

Open “More” within a posting in a group you administer. Admin Actions is now a choice.

Go to the post, then "More", then "Admin Actions". You should see "Hidden" and "Removed" as options.

This discussion was closed: https://www.librarything.com/topic/379386

Huh. Okay. Will look at.

Fixed. It was within an area that has some LT-admin-only buttons. It's outside of that now.

Never mind - it just showed up under Administer.

However - now I am missing the Edit Topic (the ability to change the title of a topic (due to typos and what's not).

Can we please get this back?

Yes, we definitely need that back! That's probably used far more than the "close topic" will be. I'm thinking particularly of the "Name that Book" group, where one of the primary things the admin does is change topic titles.

Go to the topic, and it's over on the right, under "Administer".

It should be up now. And the edit topic should be back.

(Give it 5m to go live.)

Thank you!

I can see both now! Thanks!

The edit slipped under the site-admin thing.

Would it be possible to add an icon to thread titles to show they're closed? I'm thinking a little lock on the left, like how pinned topics have a pin icon.

That is a really good idea.

Great idea, especially since there's still that hardcore group of proxy seekers and slackers coming here.

Done.

Thank you!

Thank you both for the new icon, and for using it on one particular topic.

Original source Report a problem

Smart Import is here!

Go here to check it out.

We’ve added a new import option called "Smart Import." It allows you to upload a file, enter a url, or paste text, and then it scrapes what you have provided for ISBNs, ASINs, and UPCs and/or for title/author pairs. Previously, our Universal Import only considered identifiers when scraping the text, but we have added an option to "Consider Title/Authors," which can be used in conjunction with the “Consider Identifiers” option, or by itself.

This import replaces the old import options for webpages and pasted text. It replaces some of the functionality for the file upload, but it should not be used with the LibraryThing csv sample file format as it does not import fields like reviews or tags. The Spreadsheet Import will be coming soon to replace that functionality.

After uploading a file, you will see a progress bar tracking import preprocessing.

Once preprocessing is completed, you will see a Questions page with a summary of the results as well as a list of all the books found by identifiers and/or title/authors. On this page you will also be able to add collections and tags for all books in the import.

This is the third import after Goodreads and MARC that we’ve updated. It replaces some of the functionality of the current Universal Import. We hope to release the Spreadsheet Import to complete the replacement of the Universal Import soon. Once our import updates are complete, all import types will work better and faster, have better tracking, and have better functionality overall.

Let us know what you think!

====

Edit: This import does not take title/authors you enter as they are and add them to your catalog. It uses the title/authors to search our normal sources and adds the records it finds there. So the title/author may not match exactly what you enter.

Original source Report a problem

You can now change the size of the covers in Your Books "List" mode, the default mode everyone uses. The current, default size is "Medium." You can make it "Small," "Large" or "Very Large."

Change it here:

https://www.librarything.com/settings/display

Directions and a demonstration below.

(We're good. It took a moment to get to all the servers.)

Just tried this, and it looks good. Thank you very much!

Large looks perfect on my laptop, thank you.

If work is underway on updating catalogue to LT 2.0, may I ask that disproportionately large fields be cut at some point with the 'See More' link to view the rest? Long lists of awards, long reviews, ToC in the comments and the like can get extremely long and can take en entire screen worth of scrolling for a single entry. If not really working on the rest of the catalogue update, I'll bring it up when it's properly on the agenda

Actually, I'm at work on the back-end—making it faster. But I'll keep your suggestion in mind!

Thanks for all the recent cover-related updates!

Is the conversion/upgrade of the "Recent Member-Uploaded Covers for Your Books" homepage module into a standalone cover-doctoring page still on the agenda? Just a couple of QOL changes would make all the difference, allowing us to efficiently fill-out and improve our covers.

The main improvements could include:

• filtering on current cover status (Amazon, low-quality, ...)

• filtering by collections

So:

1. Checkboxes for what to show for?

2. Checkboxes for which collections to show?

That sounds perfect to me!

I really like the new feature that lets you choose different cover sizes. Thank you.

I’d love it if you could change the size directly in the catalog—just like you can already switch to a different cover. Perhaps you could also add a button to choose whether this change should be temporary (until the next screen load) or permanent, as is currently the case in the settings.

BTW

I’ve noticed for some time now that the text for the cover change (mentioned above) is displayed very large. I’ve attached a screenshot.

Seems like a small thing, but loving this. I prefer cover view & this has made it much more practical :-)
Thanks!

I just realized this will help with the touchscreen issue where the box isn't big enough to double tap for editing without clicking a link. Just make the covers bigger to add whitespace! nice!

Niiiice! 😍

by changing it in LT will it also reflect the cover size display in TC?

No, they aren't connected. Do you want larger covers in TC? (Or smaller?)

Large is great for screen captures to send categories to various friends as I disburse my library. Thank you. Just one small thing here on my Mac, in Covers mode, the Small, Medium, and Large options are fine, but the Very Large is cutting the covers off a bit on the right edge. Any chance of adding a Right Margin?

Oh yes, seems my borrowers love to judge a book by its cover so if they can see the cover bigger right away in TC then I think they will be happier. My borrowers don't look at the catalogue of our library books in LT, they only use TC so that is the part that I want to be beautiful and easy for them.

One other thing that I don't know if it is in the works, but would love for members to be able to place a hold on books that are currently checked out in TC! It is hard for me to track which book someone is waiting for if it is already checked out.

Original source Report a problem

For a long time now members have added images to posts with HTML IMG tags. This works well, but presents a barrier to many members. We've added a feature to allow members to add images to posts without HTML.

The option is on the lower right when you post a Talk post.

The images you add go at the bottom of the talk post. At present you can't embed them anywhere else. Here's what one looks like:

Here's when there are several. How they display depends up their dimensions.

If you click on the image, you'll get an almost full-screen version of it.

Additional details and community discussion include:

• The new image-uploading sizes your images down to a manageable size (e.g., from 2000px wide to 500px).
• Currently, the system doesn't preserve moving GIFs; uploading a GIF converts it to a static image.
• Images always show at the bottom of the message.
• There is a limit of 5 images per message.
• The order you upload them is the order they appear.
• There is no overall limit to the number of images a member can upload.
• Each image is clickable to view a larger version "in screen".
• Right-clicking the in-screen image allows opening it in a new tab for an even larger view.
• The images are stored on LibraryThing servers and have unique URLs.
• Talk images now use the description field content for alt and title text on images (hover to see alt text).
• You can browse your galleries for images to use in Talk messages, avoiding re-uploading the same image.

Community feedback includes requests for:

• Adding alt text as part of the image upload process for accessibility.
• Ability to add captions or titles visible to all.
• Options to hide or block user-uploaded images in Talk without affecting core site images.
• Maintaining HTML support for more flexible image placement and formatting.

Bug fixes and improvements:

• Fixed an issue where uploading images from the web could cause the upload dialog to hang.
• Fixed bugs in editing pipeline related to image gallery and profile picture updates.

Overall, the feature aims to make adding images to Talk posts easier and more accessible, especially for users not comfortable with HTML, while maintaining flexibility and accessibility considerations.

Original source Report a problem