May
15th,
2012
I picked up development again for one of my favorite projects: My Reading List. In this post the new features for current release 1.1
New features / improvements
- My Reading List is now hosted on its own domain: fbreadinglist.com . All bobbelderbos.com/books... links should be redirected (301) to the new domain
- User data: no email storage in the My Reading List database, I only use the email once (from the Facebook session) to send a welcome email with links and as an option for the user to provide input (early user feedback is really valuable)
Post to FB wall is opt-in instead of opt-out. Although it was always clearly visible in the "add book" form, I think it is better to let users actively toggle the select box when they want to post. - It is opt-out in the end, because I think one of the purposes of this app is to sharewhat you read, so the FB wall post is something to encourage. However, it is clearly visible when adding books (see below), you are in control!
Moreover FB built in some granularity it didn't have before: now you accept a FB app, and you have to explicitly accept the "post to wall" permission as a 2nd step.
- Slight changes in the querying of the Google Books API: putting a % instead of a + between the words yielded me books I couldn't find earlier, even putting % before and after the keywords helped, I also cropped duplicate titles, because the first hit is usually the book (googleID) with the most reviews/data, so that is the one you want users to grab from the autocomplete.
- URL txt-to-html conversion in the book comments (for example )
- See same URL for improved share buttons, like my blog they take you outside of the page to sharer URLs where you have more options to customize your sharing.
- Better og: properties to share books with their appropriate thumbnail.
- The Facebook Canvas App is back.
- Some small cleanups in the design, but overall I left it the same, because I think it is simple and clean. It also fits perfectly in the smaller width of the FB Canvas.
Next
- I'd love this to be available on an iphone and/or ipad!
- Provide / link more info for each book. It would be great to fetch Amazon reviews. Personally I use those a lot deciding whether to read and/or buy a new book.