Minor LT2 Homepage bug in Recently Member-Uploaded Covers

I got offered a cover for My Father's Dragon (link to book: https://www.librarything.com/work/6242/book/205095129). I clicked on the cover to see what I had on it already. In the dialog, it showed the cover I had, the lozenge below showed Amazon, and the yellowish warning next to it said that Amazon might change the book cover at any time (I forget the exact words). I don't like having Amazon covers, so I clicked through to More Covers - and found that the cover the book was actually using, according to my Add Books page, was the most popular member-uploaded cover for this ISBN (and it asked me to confirm I wanted the cover). That's not the same thing as it being an Amazon cover.

Unfortunately, I changed the cover (to one I uploaded) before it occurred to me that this was a (minor) bug and should be looked at. I've seen the notice previously (and it was likely also wrong, since I avoid Amazon covers), but didn't then have time to go through to the Change Covers page. If it comes up again, I'll leave it alone and put a link here.

Okay, let me see if I'm understanding this correctly:

1. You look at your "Recent Member-Uploaded Covers for Your Books" module on your homepage
2. You click on one of the covers to open the pop-up/lightbox for it.
3. Within that pop-up, there is information on the "Uploaded Cover" as well as the cover image you have for "Your Book", including an image for "Your Current Cover" and the Source where that's coming from (e.g. Amazon, etc.). You're seeing that your current cover looks like it's coming from Amazon.
4. You click to view the "Other Work Covers" from the pop-up, and you're brought to the "Change cover" page for that book.

What happens next? How are you checking the cover image that is on your book? Are you just looking to see which cover has a green square around it (looks like it's selected for your book)? Are you clicking the magnifying glass on your top-left cover image to inspect the cover itself?

Thanks!

The green square is kind of random. Actually, I was checking sizes, and the Member-Uploaded cover had sizes that matched mine (viewed by clicking the magnifying glass). The Amazon cover didn't give a size (as usual).

The other thing is that, at the top of the Change Cover page, it said "You are currently receiving the most (popular? common?) cover for this ISBN. Click here to confirm this cover" (not absolutely certain of the wording, but something like that). Which is not usually applied to Amazon covers, but only to Member-Uploaded, I think.

I can't find that banner now - looked at a bunch of "best-guess for ISBN" books, but none of them have it. I have no idea why I got the Confirm banner on this one and not on the others...but I do remember seeing it.

OK, I found another one. With some extra interesting bits...

RMUC popup - note size given (and the Amazon warning)


Info popup on Change Cover page. Note size given here...


Member-uploaded covers on Change Cover page - note first cover (with no green box), and its size.


Amazon covers on Change Cover page - note green box. Also note (though I didn't make an image of it, there's too many) that the cover that displays on my book does not appear in the Amazon covers list.


So it's displaying the green box on a cover that is not displayed on the book, and displaying the warning. The Confirm info is only in the info box (that's where I saw it before), not on the Change Cover page in general. And the size given in the RMUC popup does not agree with the size given on the Change Cover page, either in the list or in the info popup. Hmmm, interesting!

I have not done anything with this cover - I'm even leaving it in RMUC, in case someone wants to look at it as me. I do want to get it out of RMUC as soon as possible, it's annoying there, so tell me if you don't need it.

Ah, excellent! I've been seeing the green box around random covers for quite awhile now, I'm curious if this is related to what you're reporting. Will pass this along to see what the devs think. We're a bit busy this week, with all the big pushes made yesterday, so hopefully they can take a peek soon. Please keep it as-is for now, if you can!

Ah. This is likely just a miscategorization of the cover in the display code. It's not an amazon cover but the display code thinks it is so it is displaying the amazon info there. I'll track it down.

The green box is a whole other issue. Not sure yet what's going on with that.

The green box at random has been around...about as long as there has been a green box, I think. Sometimes it's right (especially on covers I've uploaded), but best guess is often called Amazon, and sometimes a member cover that I picked is.

Any idea where the change in size reported came from? It might even be a clue to where it's being miscategorized (or something completely unrelated, who knows).

Here's another one, pulling very much the same tricks.

https://www.librarything.com/work/34775/covers/216835590

Is it in any way related that we're no longer getting sizes on our covers in the RMUC popup? For a while it was showing the label and saying Calculating (or something similar), then the label would disappear. Now even that's not happening. So we're back to - if both covers look good (and match), I have to click through to More Covers to see if the cover I'm using is actually as good as the offered one, or if it only looks good in the thumbnail. I'll bug this separately if needed - it was so great when we finally got that!

>9 jjmcgaffey: The lack of cover size calculation should have been fixed now.

As for the original issues I think we'll solve them very soon when we rework the Work page and how it is loading the covers. I'm going to close this for now because, honestly, it's going to be non-applicable to any new work we're doing on works right now.

But certainly feel free to open it back up once we release the new work page (hopefully within the next few weeks).

Hmmm. Ok, just one oddity left (if it's still there after you've done the next batch of work, I'll reopen) - in the RMUC popup, I see sizes on everything _except_ covers where the offered one is the best-guess applied to my book. Those show nothing to indicate that they're already the cover applied, and no size (which I guess is a hint, now that I know, and if I can remember that...). It would be nice if the green button said Confirm rather than Choose this cover - a nice solid hint that it's already on the book. Or if the size showed, which would also be a hint (since it would be identical to what's being offered).

As you say, my problems may get fixed with the next (or a next) reworking. We'll see. Thanks!

I'd love it if you'd leave one of those in your RMUC list and point me to it. It's so hard to find these things in the wild, especially when just looking at my books.

Let me know if you have one right now.

I think I cleaned them up but I'll check now.

Found one


https://www.librarything.com/work/21627037/covers/229431344

And another.


https://www.librarything.com/work/19400868/covers/205095312

Thanks. I'll take a look at your RMUC.

This should be fixed. Now getting dimensions for every image, even LT-sourced images. And it's now better at figuring out the dimensions correctly (I hope) based on high-resolution image availability.

Well...sort of? It is now showing a resolution on the RMUC popup. However, I'm not sure where it's getting it from - it is not the resolution on the best-guess cover that's displaying on my book, nor any of the other member-uploaded. The best Amazon cover, maybe? So this may be something that will be fixed in the later work - but it's currently pretty inaccurate. Sorry, this is clearly being a lot more complicated than either of us thought it would be...

I just made another update to it. Let me know if you see improvements. Or not.

Oh, _fascinating_. Yes, improvement...sorta. If it's useful, I'll add pictures, but I'm getting kind of tired of screen-shotting and uploading.

The Carriger (as in the pictures above) now shows the correct dimensions, in black, for the best-guess cover that's applied. However, it doesn't have the Confirm button (that shows up on the next one I'm going to talk about), nor does it say it's a best-guess. It still shows up with a Confirm button on the Change Cover page in the info popup.

The Nyx (second book in my RMUC) has a nice little "Confirm this cover" button directly under the best-guess cover displayed in the RMUC popup, and says that it's a best-guess cover in the yellowish bit beside the cover. However, while it in fact has as a best-guess cover the same one that's being offered in the popup (the Carriger is a different cover offered than applied), the resolution showing is tiny, presumably for an Amazon cover - 350x541. Ah, yes, and it's red, while the Carriger and a later book that has an actual cover applied show the resolution in black (nice touch).

American Spirit says best guess, has the Confirm button, and gives the correct dimensions for that best-guess cover, in black. So that one is perfect. Why Carriger and Nyx don't have the same things...

And the two Diane Duanes, 9th and 10th in my current list, display the original bug - they both claim to be Amazon covers and show the Amazon resolution (in red), while both in fact have a best-guess cover applied.

But everything is now showing a resolution...and I think that if it's in black I can trust it to be accurate. Red ones are usually not true to the cover that's actually applied.

Progress!

Thanks. The cover code is a mess of epic proportions generated over a decade-plus of changes, refinements, and fixes.

Yep. Legacy code, and wonderful added features on top... I have no doubt that's a _fun_ area to poke into.

Exactly. I'll get to the bottom of it and find all the "special exceptions" eventually. I might put this one on hold for this week while I'm out of town. But not shelved.

cD, can I go through RMUC and remove these covers? Or do you still need them? I could probably find a new batch when you're ready (and have time etc to work on this), and I'd really like to get rid of these...

>23 jjmcgaffey: You can remove them for now. I'm temporarily pulled away to do some other things and, like you say, you can probably find new ones for me. Thanks for holding them though.

OK. Yell when you want some more.

Um. So - the resolutions seem a lot better (not perfect, there's still red resolutions on Confirm books, among other things). But there's a new and very annoying bug with RMUC.

I cleaned up the covers I'd found...and (maybe) finished all the covers in the set (it was set for two rows, highest quality, my editions only, Show Even More). I've "finished" before, and what I do is drop the quality and get a new lot. So I did that (dropped to 1500 pixels), and it populated...until I dealt with one book, then it went back to no covers. Clicked Refresh, they came back (minus the one I'd dealt with)...then disappeared again. I can dismiss two or three covers before they poof, but I can't get them to stay and let me deal with more than a few that I know I can dismiss (if I click through to a cover popup, when I go back they're all gone). Either clicking Refresh in the module, or refreshing the whole page, fills it in, but only momentarily. Oh, and it doesn't disappear until I do something - I can stare at the module for quite a while, but as soon as I start clicking I've got a few seconds at most before they poof. Help?

Should I bug this separately? I don't _think_ it's related to this bug, actually.

>26 jjmcgaffey: Probably best to bug this up separately with clear steps to reproduce, making sure to include your OS and browser, etc. Thanks!

Will do.