Default covers are missing their titles

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Default covers are missing their titles

1freixas
maaliskuu 31, 2023, 7:23 pm

I've seen repeated references to default covers with titles. My default covers are blank. If I look at the HTML code, I see this code for a DIV that would appear over the cover:



If I edit the page code so that there's some text in the empty div (and fiddle with the color), I get a nice title appearing over the book. The only thing that might block the title would be the AdBlockPlus extension, so I turned it off for the site. Still no luck.

Do I have to enable something somewhere?

2MarthaJeanne
Muokkaaja: huhtikuu 1, 2023, 1:38 am

If you use the system default cover, you should see titles on the black cover. If you have chosen a different default cover, you don't.

https://www.librarything.com/work/17888462

3freixas
huhtikuu 1, 2023, 7:07 pm

>2 MarthaJeanne:

I don't know how to use the "system default cover". None of the covers listed are identified as the "system default". I tried several that were credited to "LT", including one that looks just like the one in the link you gave me. None of them displayed the text, so I think your answer is either incorrect or incomplete.

4AnnieMod
huhtikuu 1, 2023, 7:35 pm

>3 freixas: If you picked a default cover, it won’t have the title superimposed on it. If you leave the system to add the default one (the black/kinda looks like no cover one), it will have the title on it.

There are a few of the default ones which look similar but do not behave the same as not picking a default cover.

If you share one of the books in your catalog where you don’t see the title when you expect to, we can look at it and explain why it is missing. Without that, all we can do is to explain that selected default cover is not the same as a default cover and they behave differently.

5Taliesien
huhtikuu 1, 2023, 8:33 pm

>2 MarthaJeanne: That's the "work" cover which happens to have zero covers and not what the OP is talking about. They are talking about their *book* covers for their specific editions and the fact that the generic LT "default" cover images don't display the title/author on them.

>4 AnnieMod: You're automatically assigned the poop brown "default" cover when you first sign up, you don't pick it. You can change it later to one of the other generic covers but there is no opt-out of LT setting that default and none of them display the title as the OP desires.

>3 freixas: You're definitely not the first user frustrated with default covers not showing the title.

6AnnieMod
huhtikuu 2, 2023, 12:09 am

I am pretty sure that once upon a time there was a default way to not have covers - in which case it showed the title. Had not looked for it for years though and I may be misremembering.

Sounds like an RSI material…

7freixas
huhtikuu 2, 2023, 11:13 am

>5 Taliesien: Thanks for adding some clarity.

>4 AnnieMod: I haven't decided if I will make my catalog public. As far as I know, I can't just make one collection public, so I'm afraid I can't provide an example at this time. To go the other way, is there anyone who has a public catalog with books with default covers that have titles/authors showing and who would be willing to share a link?

I've poked around and have yet to see anyone with a collection containing default covers with titles. I looked at collections from some of the members who've replied here and pulled out some examples:

https://www.librarything.com/work/27917900/summary/236047663
https://www.librarything.com/work/192688/summary/205378562

Neither of these show tile/author when I view them in the main "covers" view or in the summary view linked to above.

8Taliesien
huhtikuu 2, 2023, 11:32 am

>7 freixas: You don't need to make your catalog public. There is nothing unique about how your default covers are behaving. They do not display the titles. Ever. Here is an almost identical question to yours, from 2009 -> https://www.librarything.com/topic/59723

9AnnieMod
huhtikuu 2, 2023, 12:25 pm

>7 freixas: No, once a cover is applied (any cover), there is no overlay.

As I said, I seem to recall a time when there was a way not to have a cover at all - and that had the overlay but my brain may be mixing a specific way to show things with the ability to have a cover with a title/author on it.

10freixas
huhtikuu 2, 2023, 12:26 pm

>8 Taliesien: OK. I tend to not rely in old discussions. We are a long way from 2009 and many of these discussions are irrelevant.

A more useful pointer would be to current documentation on how default covers are handled. I haven't found anything that says how default covers should work. That 2009 thread seems to be it.

Let's assume that nothing has changed since 2009. LibraryThing is capable of automatically adding titles/authors to works (since they do so for works), but chooses not to do so for editions.

I can see why--they chose to do so by creating a custom version of a default cover, one with the title/author embedded as graphics. I can only assume this klutzy, compute-intensive method was chosen to avoid having to rework code elsewhere. Because it takes time, we might conclude that they decided not to use a similar technique for editions.

A long, long time ago, I wrote my own version of LibraryThing (this might have been before LibraryThing existed in any form). I had my own version of default covers and it used a DIV and some CSS to display the title/author on default covers. I even had the text displayed so as to appear embossed.

The code requires access to the title/author and whether a default cover is being used. I'm guessing that whatever code is used to display the cover doesn't have this info. This might also explain why they can't even provide an ALT tag so that I could at least quickly find out which work a default cover was associated with (instead I have to do click, close, click, close, ...).

As long as I'm guessing, I'll guess that if nothing has changed since 2009, there's not much point in requesting a change...

Thanks for the pointing out that the 2009 thread is still current.