New Site!

Posted on September 6, 2013 by | Posted in Blog | Comments: 63 Comments on New Site!

We have  a new site after much sweat and tears. We expect there might be some bugs and problems, and there are a few little, and some bigger things we’ll be working on shortly. Please let us know if you spot problems: info@librivox.org.

 

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63 comments

  1. Hugh Gamble says:

    Accessibility Workaround:

    archive.org also provides access to the librivox collection.
    That site is still quite accessible like the old librivox.org site was. Until this site works again, the catalog can be accessed from archive.org.

    This forum still zooms properly. The problem is the catalog and search results which are now displayed in a table rather than divs. This prevents zooming to view the catalog on a tablet or mobile device, or by the vision impaired.

    Without being able to read the catalog it is, sadly, impossible to listen to the books. From archive.org it is easy to see the catalog, and the search functionality is well tested too.

    FYI the problem with the current site design applies to every browser and operating system I have tested. On a PC it may be possible to work around the problem with a special magnifier app, but it should be so quick and easy to fix, I hope workarounds won’t be needed long.

  2. Hugh Gamble says:

    Looking through the non-accessible catalog/search page I came across this broken markup:

    Advanced Search

    Not critical, obviously. But the bugs like this should be easy to see/find in whatever context sensitive editor the Web designers are using.

    If your markup is being generated by some no-code GUI tool, you can still run your output through a markup checker tool. w3c has a good free one.

    http://validator.w3.org/

    The non-accessible search page comes up right away with 5 errors and 3 warnings, including the problem I reported above.

    http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Flibrivox.org%2Fsearch&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0

    If you still don’t understand the accessibility problem, and reading the w3c or US government accessibility guidelines doesn’t help, try zooming the search and search results pages with a touchscreen enabled device using your favourite Webkit based browser.

    Thanks for all the hard work!

  3. Krical says:

    Hello,didnt like this new renovation at all,it doesnt work to search the catalogue,its just loads,and loads,nothing happens. Why change something that works? It only made one of the webb´s best sites totally unworkable. Why?

  4. Loretta Momenee says:

    I do not like the change. It seems I must already know the name of a book or an author to get a book. I can’t just browse like I used to and discover new books and authors. If I am searching by genre do I always have to start at A? This new site seems cumbersome and not user friendly. I don’t have hours and hours to find a new book that is unknown to me.

  5. Loretta Momenee says:

    And then I am looking for a book under genre for a mystery. I find a book, open it to see if it sounds like it is something I am interested in and it is not. I hit the back button and am sent all they way back to search by authors A.

  6. LibriVoxer says:

    Hello Hugh Gamble,
    Thanks for your comments! – they will be passed on to the developers. Please consider emailing comments to the email in the blog text, to be sure it will reach the right person.

    Hello Krical,
    Have you read the comments above you? It is my guess you are probably working with Internet Explorer 8 or 9, there is a known issue with those browsers, the developer is working on it. The site works as it should do in other browsers. All the works are on archive.org – there are some links given in previous comments.

    Hello Loretta,
    What kind of browsing did you do in the old catalogue that you would like to see in the new? You mean,just opening the whole list of titles and going through them? Or in the advanced search going for genres? It always yielded a very long list, and you could scroll through the titles. Same is possible now, isn’t it?
    If you click on “genres” for example, and then choose one of the genres (so far it works the same as it did in the old catalog) – you get a list of titles under that genre (OK, not all projects are listed under the correct genre yet, but we’re just human volunteers you know, we’re doing the best we can and it is not finished yet! :D). These titles you can sort either alphabetically, or by release date (if you just want to see the latest additions to that genre).
    If you click on a particular project and then hit the “back” button, it brings you back to the genre in the particular order you had it in. (This is a recent fix, because it was a bug before, we were all irritated by it – but it has been fixed!! so please try again).
    Finally, there is pagination: so the way you can flip through the many pages of projects that we have – that is not optimized yet either, that’s something that is in the works.

    Hope this explains things a bit. I have to admit I’m not the builder, just one of the admin volunteers of LV. But we’re all doing the best we can and trying to have fun and trying to give others a good time. And trying to stay cheerful while taking on a whole load of extra work to keep LV going – the old site was creaking at the hinges, almost falling apart and had already been seriously hacked once – we really couldn’t have lasted much longer or continued to grow & have fun without a big update.

    Come join us, and help us out! We can always use more volunteers.

    Regards,
    Anna

  7. Walter says:

    Well done change in the site.
    Very easy to search by titles, author and reader. Thank you for all that was done.

  8. Kim says:

    I’m not happy with the changes. I use this site frequently in my classroom. Now when I try to use it, it just loads and loads and never gives me a list of titles or authors. Please fix these bugs! I so loved having access to a multitude of stories!!

  9. LibriVoxer says:

    Hello Kim,
    The developer is working hard to try & fix it. It is an issue with browsers (especially internet explorer 8 and 9, which are getting too old to handle new sites). So if you could update the browser on your computer or download another browser, it will work again immediately. For example Firefox works fine.
    But someone is doing his best to fix it for internet explorer 8 as well.

    Very happy to hear that you use Librivox in your classroom! Can you tell us a bit about how you do that? I would love to hear more!

    Regards,
    Anna

  10. Jerry says:

    Hey I see you still haven’t fixed anything with Explorer!

    If any one else is still having problem try Mozilla fire fox it works with the new site.
    Kim try this in your class room.

  11. Hugh Gamble says:

    Search and search results now properly zoom like the rest of the site, I can use librivox.org again, thanks! All the vision impaired and mobile users will thank you too.

    Today I notice search results may ‘hang’ or just take a long time, but that could just be a symptom of heavy use now that your site is working again.

  12. LibriVoxer says:

    That’s good to hear, Hugh!

  13. LibriVoxer says:

    Latest news: the problem with compatibility with Internet Explorer 8 and 9 seems to be fixed! So if you’re on IE8 & IE9, the site should work fully again!

    Developer is still busy working on all kinds of things to optimize the site (esp. search & browse functions), so expect further improvements!

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