Minor updates to Connections, Recommendations, Reviews

conceptDawg has moved connections, recommendations and reviews into the "LT2" format. In doing so he made almost no changes--these were straight transfers, not redos. (We plan to redo them, but this wasn't the time.)

Connections: https://www.librarything.com/connect
Recommendations: https://www.librarything.com/profile/MEMBERNAME/recommendations
Reviews: https://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php

The result is good, but also creates static with the "LT1" pages adjacent to them. So it's going to be a little weird flipped from home to profile to one of these. This is unfortunate, but we see no good way around it short of holding everything until everything is done—and I don't want that.

Feel free to suggest tiny changes for immediate implementation. And feel free to suggest other changes, but understand that we aren't focusing on these sections at present, so only the smallest changes will be done.

The Reviews page is now much nicer on my phone, and slightly less appetizing on my desktop browser. Alas, that's my rough expectation for LT2 changes moving forward.

>2 paradoxosalpha:

What's the main complaint about the desktop?

For me, my main complaint about Reviews on the desktop is the same as for other changes moving to LT2 - a drastically reduced information density. The previous two-column layout let me (a) see more things at once and (b) was easier to read - very long lines can be difficult to read. The new layout makes total sense for the "portrait" layout of a phone or tablet, but on the "landscape" view of a typical monitor it's annoying. I can drop the font size a notch, but then the font in Talk is a bit small, and it doesn't do anything about the "long line" problem.

The first time I looked at the new Reviews page I assumed it hadn't loaded correctly since it's so stretched out and has tons of empty space. And as lorax mentioned, having lines run the entire width of the screen is more difficult to read.

Oh, and the outlines on the half stars make it harder to read them as halves on small screens.

>4 lorax: agree about the reduced information density issue on the LT2.

Will we have an option to scroll the headers off the top of the page?

>4 lorax: Same here.

Awesome on my phone/small screens. Not that great on desktop - looking at https://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=AnnieMod on my laptop, I see a single review now - while in the old view I would usually see at least 2 of mine and a few of the ones from other users. And reading the line across the whole screen is... unpleasant. Working with fonts does not make it better - there is so much extra space everywhere that by the time more shows up, it is too small to read... and it makes the long line issue worse.

Not a fan of the grey box around the ER mark.

Gack:
Allow me to illustrate >7 AnnieMod: And reading the line across the whole screen is... unpleasant

>9 r.orrison: Yeah. I probably need to have a cutoff for wider screens there. Easily done now, not so much with the previous design. ;)

>8 amanda4242: I don't think I've even seen that. It's likely not done on purpose. I'll take a look.

>6 casaloma: Not an option right now. Eventually it's a possibility.

Other members' reviews are taking a really long time to load. It cycled through five messages beneath the spinny wheel before loading--although I did get a chuckle out of the one suggesting I start reading a book.

It takes no longer than it did before (it's actually making the exact same requests). It's possible that our system might be a little slower right now (database, servers, etc.).

>11 conceptDawg: It's also like that on work pages.

It took a really long time to load Connection News the first time I clicked, but it's fast now. I also enjoyed the various loading messages (and the fact that the loading message changed was nice, letting me know it was still working)

I also would like a much narrower review page on a big screen, preferably with 2 columns

The previous two-column layout let me (a) see more things at once and (b) was easier to read - very long lines can be difficult to read?

I agree with this 100%.

>16 norabelle414:

Connection news is terrible. And terribly slow. We moved it, we did not like it. I hate it.

Happily others have chimed in to specify my reaction more precisely than I did!

Could we have the two-column layout back on the reviews page on sufficiently wide screens?

If not, there really needs to be a maximum width on the single column, it's unpleasant to read now - and my browser windows isn't even maximized.

(I usually keep my browser window at slightly above half screen width, which is a sort of compromise to keep various suboptimally-designed websites readable. If I start making it narrower to make LT look better other places are going to look worse.)

I've noticed that half stars stand out a bit too much, I think because they're white whereas any other unfilled stars are grey. Could we have consistency there for those ‐- either a grey half star or a white-with‐green‐border full star?

I have some yellow highlighted text top right on the reccomendations page "show 16 new reccomendations" under Recent Reccomendations. My first throught was it was awaiting translation, but I'm on the main version of the site. It doesn't go away if I click it. Is it intended?

Computer, Firefox 89.0.2

I look regularly at "books recently added" in Connection News (practically never at reviews and ratings) and I notice this--hitting the next page (clicking page 2 or next), I land close to the bottom of the next page and must navigate/scroll to the top. This happens every time so it doesn't seem it's due to new info loading.

Not sure if it's Just Me, but I tried to load Connection News repeatedly and got a lot of "wait" messages, plus a 405 Not Allowed at the end.

>24 the_red_shoes: A lot of wait messages - confirmed (I was amused by the little messages coming with them "maybe you should start a book", followed by "in fact maybe you should start writing a book").

But I didn't get 405 at the end

>24 the_red_shoes: Takes an awful lot of time, yes, but for me it loads in the end, which it never did before.

Perhaps this edit is still coming: the new "thumb" icon (which I like) no longer differentiates between whether or not I'm included in one of the users having "thumbed" a review. The old thumb turned green when I had selected it, as well as incrementing the tally. Currently, the tally increments / decrements when I click / unclick the thumb, but it is not filled in (green or any other shade). I can only tell if I've already thumbed a review by clicking it and observing which way the tally changes, up or down.

>24 the_red_shoes:

Recently I've been getting those all the time too. Didn't bother reporting as refreshing the page jars it out of block, but yes. It's a thing.

______

So, could something be done about opening the "next" page on top, please?

>27 elenchus: same for me. I've accidentally unthumbed several reviews already, because it doesn't look as if I'd voted until I see the number go down. Used to be, the thumb was colored in when I was one of the voters.

>28 LolaWalser:
>29 aspirit:

To be clear, this issue is true only for the new thumb icon. Wherever the original thumb icon appears, the green-fill functionality remains.

>23 LolaWalser: It does the same thing in Recommendations and Reviews pages. When you go to a next page you really want to be at the top of the page, not 75% of the way down.

Agree that the one giant column is unwieldy and difficult to read.

>31 Helenliz:

Yes!

Why do you hate information density? Recommendations are all spread out now. Thumbs down.