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Each week Adam & Ste focus on a specific feature, idea or prototype in Hardcover and iterate on it together or with guests.
Adam (00:01.038)
Hey, hey, stay. How's it going?
Ste (00:03.535)
I'm pretty good. Excited to be on hardcover 47 right now.
Adam (00:12.078)
Yeah, it's a, it's been a busy week, but yeah, just before the show, we were just chatting about like new technology, which is, which is pretty cool. Like both in the, the book space and elsewhere. so yeah, we were, we were just having a chat about daylight computer. Could you, so you, you, you heard about this, you've seen it like on some social recently.
as well.
Ste (00:42.531)
-huh. Yeah, I've actually seen a video of the founder and it's looking pretty good. I mean, it's kind of taking me back to, you know, the heydays of hardware when people were actually trying new things. It seems, I mean, I've seen this comment on Twitter that everybody's trying to replicate what Steve Jobs did with Apple and...
I guess that's like the go -to vibe in the way they present themselves. I kind of get that idea from that vibe from all the hardware founders, but this is actually like a cool product as opposed to some other products, some even, you know, in the reading space, which are like good attempts. I mean, you can blame people for trying, but you know.
Not so well executed. I'm thinking about the AI pins and all sorts of... There's been like the orange device that I will not name that's been... I actually like the design of that. It's made by Teenage Engineering. Do you know about them?
Adam (01:51.182)
Yeah. I, I, that's the one that has like a magnet that holds it on and like, it's a charger on the back as well as the front. Like, yeah, I like the, I like the industrial design of the, the hardware for that one. But yeah, it's, it's tricky because it just feels like it's using open AI or something behind the scenes. So you're going to have hallucinations and latency and it's going to be limited by.
Ste (02:05.679)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Adam (02:19.438)
what it can connect with that it knows about you unless it's like linking up with all of your sources of data. So it feels like it's the beginning of something, but there's a lot to go.
Ste (02:31.279)
Yeah, exactly. And some of them, which are actually tackling what Kindle is doing with Amazon, they're pretty good, but I'm really curious how they will hold up, especially in this environment. I really like some of them to succeed because, I mean, we've been talking to authors the past couple of weeks and it's crazy how much...
there is no alternative to the Kindle ecosystem, which kind of works, but there's nothing else which seems to be working outside it. So I'm curious who can come and break that model. What do you think about how that might happen?
Adam (03:14.606)
Yeah.
Adam (03:21.07)
I, I feel like, the, the approach that daylight's taking is probably one of the more like happy paths that I could see to getting there. because for one, they're using, Android OS under the, under the hood. So it's, you can imagine a device that's kind of like an Android tablet, except it's using E -ink for its display and it can run Android apps. So.
You have, you know, a wealth of existing apps already, but you also have like a, an ecosystem for new developers to create new apps for the device from the start. When I think about something like, Kobo or the nook or even the Kindle, like I wouldn't know the first thing about how to create an app for it because it's its own smaller ecosystem. And some of them, I don't even know if they're open for apps. Like, I don't know if you can run apps on any Kindle.
Ste (04:18.703)
Kindle definitely, I mean, it doesn't seem to be everyone I've asked seem to have like really, you can jailbreak it, but I wouldn't, I mean, what percentage of readers actually jailbreak it? Like 1%, who actually knows? I mean, I wouldn't trust my mom to know how to jailbreak it or something. It's...
Adam (04:26.958)
Mm.
Adam (04:34.222)
Yeah.
Adam (04:38.83)
Yeah. And even then it's like, what is the, what is the payoff for jailbreaking it that you couldn't get normally? Like, is it, is it worth the extra effort to go that route? Like, yeah.
Ste (04:49.935)
Yeah, that's exactly why I'm waiting for this new generation. Maybe the open source, like ethos, the ideas around making a device that everyone can access and software that everyone can see and build on. That's really, really nice. I think it's catching...
on I guess. I mean I don't want to sound overly optimistic because like big corporations are also catching on but yeah it's looking better than at other times you know.
Adam (05:26.254)
Yeah.
Adam (05:32.59)
Yeah, it, it kind of just feels like, when it comes to creating new things, whether that's a website like hardcover or a device for reading. if you're a big company making it, you want to lock people into it. If you're a small company making it, you want to create it open so people can, you know, express themselves and, expand on your, like the vision of the initial company. So it's so like, you know, something like nook or.
Kindle or Kobo has less incentive to do that than a new player who's coming at it from like just wanting to get new people on the platform. And if they create a closed system, they're going to potentially scare people off. So I feel like that's kind of a similar ethos to what we're going for on hardcover, trying to make it as open and easy to collaborate with.
Ste (06:26.991)
Yeah. I'm hoping, you know, once we open source, yeah, I'm actually wondering what people will think of that. And if we'll get like that level of contributions, but I'm optimistic. I think we'll be like the only open source network like this from my knowledge. Is library thing open source?
Adam (06:45.23)
It is not, but the only one that is open source is Bookworm. Yeah. And that one has to be open source because it's federated. So different people need to be able to stand up their own federated instances. But because of that, because it's federated, they have a different open source problem, which is when they make changes,
Ste (06:56.271)
Is Bookworm open source? Okay.
yeah.
Adam (07:15.31)
they need to have it in a way that's, that like, it's not gonna break all the other instances. So, you know, like they could, for instance, like change what it means to review a book. And if one instance changes what it means to review a book to also include moods or themes or things like that, then those aren't going to be cascaded to all the other instances of Bookworm unless all the other ones also upgrade and they,
decide on a normalized structure for what it means to be a review. And it's, it's a very complicated setup once you get into federated. So I, I applaud them for like, you know, going with that approach because that is a high bar to entry. But, I think that's one of the things that with making hardcover public, we won't have to worry about because we're not trying to make it so that people can run hardcover everywhere. We're mostly making it so that like,
You could run it locally if you wanted, or you could use the website.
Ste (08:16.687)
Yeah, that's really, I mean, props to them for doing that, but federated always. I mean, decentralization came with the promise that, you know, everybody, everything's going to be like democratically distributed or not democratically, but yeah, even distributed so that no one can like take something down like a big platform. But yeah, I still haven't seen something that's both that and like easy to work with.
Adam (08:38.094)
Yeah.
Ste (08:46.159)
So, I mean, there are some, I guess, crypto projects, but that's like in another space, I guess, you know, once it involves money, there's a big incentive. But yeah, I'm curious to see how it will look like when we open.
Adam (08:47.822)
Yeah.
if it
Ste (09:06.895)
source, which is going to happen soon. So we're looking into it for everybody watching. We still have like three more hurdles. Yeah.
Adam (09:14.234)
Yeah, I think I'm talking with the lawyer about it this week or probably next week. And then rotating all of the keys that we have because I'm sure that some of them have slipped into our repo. Originally I was thinking about clearing our history, but I think we can just rotate every key and just improve how we're doing that setup. And...
The third one was creating a, we have a data export that readers can do of all of their data on hardcover, and it creates like this massive JSON file. I wanna create an importer that imports that data, and that way, like you could go to hardcover .app, export your data, run the open source version of hardcover locally, and import that.
that JSON file generated by the production site. And it would just populate your library locally. So if you wanted to like build on hardcover, that way you have like a bunch of local data already available.
Ste (10:25.519)
That sounds great. Yeah, that's gonna be, I mean, yeah, those are the three steps and then it's open source season. Yeah.
Adam (10:35.694)
Yeah, I'm crossing my fingers. We can get there by like the end of June or maybe at the latest, the end of July. Yeah.
Ste (10:43.759)
Yeah, that'd be amazing. I've been like so looking forward to this moment. And I guess some of the people in the discord as well, the developers, I think some of them are eager to like be able to see the code and contribute and build their own stuff on hardcover. So that's.
that's gonna be great to see those contributions and maybe fixes. We have so many fixes everyone. Today we're gonna talk about book editing and it's been on the list, but so have at least 100 other things. So yeah, we're trying to get to them and...
be able to live our lives as well. So that's the challenge we're faced with. So open sourcing will hopefully be a path to get more done. I think someone was asking on Reddit. They were saying that they hope Hardcover will provide future updates. And I think we have enough planned updates to have us working for at least two years just to implement the stuff we're planning right now.
not to think about because yeah, we've talked about this. Yeah. But with hardcover, there's always something new that we like dig up.
Adam (11:56.302)
Yeah.
Adam (12:02.254)
Yeah. Like even, even recently I've been, starting to learn like react native development because like, I think a long -term plan would be to get rid of the capacitor app and have a react native app for Android and iOS. And for that to happen, it's going to involve a very big rewrite of a lot of the app. So I think like right now it's mostly just trying to understand.
enough about React Native so that we can incrementally move that way as we're working over the next couple months that when we do start that native app, it's not like, we shouldn't have been using Tailwind classes in this way, or we should have been moving more things into smaller components in this other way. So it's like, it's not like, you know, we start working on a native app tomorrow. It's more like,
we understand what the limitations are of that native app, and then we can slowly update our coding standard so that when we do start it, it's easier. So these kinds of long -term things are kind of like intermixed with individual features like bulk edit mode.
Ste (13:20.975)
and a lot of others. So we have so much stuff in the pipelines. I mean, we have discussions, we have badges, we have like a lot of stuff in between those even. Yeah, we have those, that list of priorities, but yeah.
Adam (13:22.318)
Yep.
Adam (13:28.43)
Hehehehe
Ste (13:35.535)
Until we get to that, maybe we can jump in and figure out bulk edit mode. So today I was hoping to maybe go in the Figma and we've done some, it's pretty much there, but I just wanted to iron out some of the details so we don't end up actually having to code it live and we can think and yeah.
Adam (13:39.598)
Yeah.
Ste (14:01.007)
design it through. So I can just go ahead and let me show you my screen.
Adam (14:05.582)
Sounds good.
Ste (14:15.567)
Okay.
Adam (14:16.462)
it.
Ste (14:18.319)
That's it.
Adam (14:19.566)
Yes, I can see it.
Ste (14:21.711)
Okay, perfect. So this is where we left off a couple of sessions ago where, you know, the past weeks on hardcover have been crazy, by the way, we're at over 12 ,000 readers.
Adam (14:37.87)
Yeah, we've gained like 5 ,000 this month, which is kind of crazy to think.
Ste (14:43.215)
Yeah, I was just remembering when I was telling people, yeah, we're an app, we have 2 ,500 readers. And yeah, I mean, I'm hoping, you know, it's going to be the same and 100K at 1 million.
Adam (14:59.15)
Yeah, so to recap the problem here, the idea is that on across hardcover, whether you're on a list, whether you're in your library, whether you're on a prompt, you're on someone else's list or someone else's library, there'll be a lot of times when you'll want to take an action on multiple books at once. Like for instance, set multiple books as want to read.
maybe tag multiple books at once, yeah, change the status, maybe even date spread. Yeah, what would be some other things you would want to bulk edit? we have a list over here. Thank you, Pastas.
Ste (15:37.231)
dates read.
Ste (15:46.127)
yeah. Here we go. You actually made this. I was thinking you were reading from it. Here we go. So, yeah, we've got Marker zoned, Marker's not zoned.
Adam (15:53.942)
You
Adam (16:01.294)
Add to list, that's a big one. Remove from list, owned and not owned, yeah. Those are big ones.
Ste (16:08.144)
Yeah, you mentioned some which might not be there, but I haven't like noted them down.
Ste (16:19.599)
So change status. Is it here? Change. here we go. Yeah.
Adam (16:22.122)
yeah, that's the second one on there. Yeah, your status. Tags, remove tags.
Yeah, those seem like, I guess there's also like remove from library. Like if you want to, that's actually a big one that's come up a bunch in the chat because like if import doesn't import correctly, people will want to like just go to their list, just select all and remove it from their library.
Ste (16:53.135)
Okay, so actually like have it like have no status basically Nice
Adam (16:57.582)
right?
Ste (17:02.607)
Okay, and then there's the librarian site, which basically would mean editing all of the fields that you can set that are, you know, basically there are selects. You can select between a number of options or yes, no things like fiction, nonfiction.
Adam (17:27.982)
Yeah, I think the librarian side is going to be a stretch goal for this because that one's going to be a little more tricky than your stuff. But I like the idea of like planning it with that in mind, even if we don't actually get there on V1.
Ste (17:40.303)
Yeah, I bet.
Ste (17:50.255)
That sounds good. So for this, remember last time we put the bulk edit button over here. And I was actually thinking, looking at this, how were we thinking it would work? So basically this would be a button. And when you click bulk edit, you'd be able to have this checkbox.
pop up and you could either select all of them or bulk select any book in here and when you tap on bulk edit you would get a list of options and based on that list you would be able to change your rating to something I think we might have had let me see.
Adam (18:38.126)
Yeah, but -
Ste (18:40.751)
here we go.
Adam (18:42.03)
yes, that's a good one.
Ste (18:44.495)
Yes. I'm gonna put it there somewhere.
Ste (18:52.367)
So if you would change your status, if you'd go here, it would show the books that are, you know, each with their own status. So you might have 23 books that you've read and 34 that you're currently reading. And let's say this is the list. And if you would click on any of those, you're...
options, you could mark them all as red, let's say, and basically 34 would add up to 23 and...
Yeah, you'd be able to set that. My question over here is, do you think we should like add an intermediary like confirmation step in here so that you don't like accidentally change all of your statuses to something?
Adam (19:41.774)
Hmm.
Adam (19:49.646)
Yeah, I think that's probably a good idea. Like, should that be like a modal alert or something that's like confirm? And then maybe it tells you like, we will remove something.
Ste (20:00.175)
Yeah.
Ste (20:09.615)
Either that or...
Ste (20:16.207)
this.
Ste (20:21.931)
How's this looking? I mean...
Adam (20:28.046)
So the idea is like you, so the idea here is that, yeah, you click on red and then that would change to, are you sure? Yeah, that could work.
Ste (20:29.103)
I was thinking of something. Yeah. If you click on red. Yeah.
Mm -hmm. So it's contextual. We could do this like, let's see if it applies to other parts of the app, because I wouldn't just want to have it here. So at any time when you would change something, let's say you want to change bulk rating and...
you'd actually tap a number of stars. Let's say you want to change from five to four stars for your selected, the books you selected. It would display an are you sure dialogue. Would that be?
Adam (21:11.054)
Maybe it only does that if any of the things you're changing have a value. Like, you know, if you're marking a bunch of books that aren't even in your library as read, then that's not a destructive action. That's only a creation action. So maybe we only show the, are you sure if it's going to destroy something?
or change something.
Ste (21:42.414)
Okay, I mean if that works, if you'd know how to do that.
Adam (21:46.862)
Yeah. Or maybe if you already have those books in your library, I should say, then so if it's impacting the book in your library, then it would say, are you sure? But if it's a new thing, then yeah.
Ste (21:49.999)
Okay, if we get, yeah.
Ste (22:03.055)
yeah, that makes sense. Mm -hmm. Okay. Then maybe, so I think this first status kind of works. So I was thinking, you know, we could work just like a popover. So it would appear here and you'd be able to like...
Yeah, basically it could either take the place of this or it could like open on the side. It could behave like the drawer or it could just do this, I'm guessing. Well, not this, but in the other side.
Adam (22:40.75)
Hmm.
Ste (22:42.287)
Do you think they have any better idea?
Adam (22:45.998)
Yeah, I'm wondering about that, but.
So yeah, on this page, I think we do still need filtering and sorting because you might want to bulk edit stuff that's in a certain criteria. I want to find all the books on this list that were created in the last, or that were written in the last 10 years in bulk edit mode those. So I think we still need these options.
I think maybe for the view for this, maybe we don't need this table view. Maybe we can use some other view, because that way we won't have to have columns and column headers. And without this column header here, that could give us more space for.
either the options, like if we don't want to make this a dropdown, because I'm thinking like right now each of these little buttons here at the top is a view option, but edit bulk edit is a view button and a button. So we could, we can make it just a button or just a view. So like.
Ste (23:59.567)
Mm -hmm.
Ste (24:10.255)
Yeah, that's true. It is kind of a view. I mean, if that's our approach, I was thinking the headers, maybe they might have to be there because that's where we can put the select all button, but.
Adam (24:25.806)
Yeah, we need the select all button, but.
Ste (24:27.983)
Yeah. I was wondering though, if we could do it, you know, like in Airtable, there's not like a bulk edit view. You can just like in table view, you can bulk edit everything. Would that work here? So in Airtable, yeah.
Adam (24:49.198)
Subok edit mode is table view with one additional column, basically.
Ste (24:57.007)
with this one, yeah.
Adam (24:59.886)
Yeah, that could work. So it's kind of like, it always shows up the same as TableView with that. Yeah, that could work.
Ste (25:11.471)
Just to not add another view. That's what I was thinking. Or maybe even have the checkbox by default so that it's so bulkhead, it is just like a button. You don't have to activate it. And you can have the checkbox either way over there.
Adam (25:36.782)
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm like the more I think about like having these buttons compared to like what we have now, which is, let me like pull up.
Ste (25:39.919)
they think.
Adam (25:55.982)
this little part. So yeah, like right now we see basically something like this here. Like if you're, so that's, that's what you would see today for, like when you're in card view, you would see that. And so it, like, it seems like for this, we would be adding like one more little icon, like, like this for edit bulk edit mode.
Ste (26:20.815)
Mm -hmm.
Ste (26:27.215)
Yeah, maybe it just shows up in table view because I mean, you wouldn't be able to bulk edit in card view or with you.
Adam (26:36.846)
But I wonder if people would see it, like if they would see Bulk Edit Mode if they have to go to Table View first.
Ste (26:43.567)
Yeah, that's true.
I mean, yeah, expecting comments on Discord about bulk edit mode. Right after we push it. I don't see any bulk edit mode. Only for supporters. Here we go. We could have it there just as a button. I'm a little bit worried because...
Adam (26:52.11)
Yeah. It's like, how do I get there? Yeah.
Adam (27:03.434)
Yeah... Yeah huh.
Ste (27:15.983)
It's a drop down as well, so it's kind of different from these buttons. It's not like really a view so much as it is. So it could be like a button that takes you to a new view, but it being a button and a drop down is kind of, it could be confusing. You know, you wouldn't know what.
Adam (27:27.374)
Yeah.
Ste (27:39.087)
it does if it there takes you to the bulk edit mode or if it does something something else.
Adam (27:46.926)
Yeah.
Adam (27:51.534)
Yeah, the way that...
I think in...
Ste (27:56.591)
How does letterbox do it?
Adam (28:01.966)
There's a, the way that our admin handles that is it's kind of table view. And then there's a button that says a batch actions. And if you've selected something or it's, it's disabled by default. And if you select one thing, the button becomes enabled.
So it changes its style once you've selected one thing, and then it becomes a dropdown.
Ste (28:35.759)
So it could, yeah.
Adam (28:38.03)
And they put it like right above the checkboxes.
Ste (28:45.615)
Okay, that's interesting. So we could have like a bulk edit. So right over here, right? So let's see, we could remove the bulk edit from here. Let's remove search from this so you'd only get sorting and this. And you could have a tooltip that says, please select, sorry, please select...
Ste (29:15.567)
something, a book, at least a book to be able to bulk edit, would that work? So you'd have the...
Adam (29:21.966)
Yeah, it would be like a tool tip if you hover over it when it's disabled or something. Yeah.
Ste (29:26.191)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. And if you'd select like any book, it would become... Let me actually put in a button over here. no, I can make a drop down. So yeah, it would be active only if you...
Ste (29:51.087)
So if you select anything, you could bulkhead it.
Adam (29:55.246)
Yeah.
Ste (29:56.975)
and this is only in table view or like, yeah, we could make it in now actually, it will only work in card view, right? Because we can put the checkbox there.
Adam (30:08.206)
Yeah, we could. Yeah, that's a, that's an interesting one. It's like.
If we, we probably don't, we definitely don't want it on shelf view, but, but, but how do like for most people, when they go to the list page, they're going to be at card view. So what do we show on card view that makes it obvious that there is an availability of this bulk edit feature.
Ste (30:20.719)
Yeah.
Ste (30:34.543)
Hmm well I guess let's go to where did we have those cards? Card you carve you carve you
Adam (30:46.382)
Here's a, I dropped a screenshot in next to it too with what it currently looks like.
Ste (30:51.151)
Okay, okay. Yeah, a card you'd like that will do. We could like over here we could just put it we could put the checkbox. I mean
Adam (31:05.774)
But yeah, this is a specific ranked list and some lists won't have that area.
Ste (31:08.079)
Let me see.
Ste (31:12.175)
Yeah.
Adam (31:21.774)
Yeah.
Ste (31:22.735)
it dimmer or we could have it like over here there's nothing here so
And we had that model of the card you actually wanted to... I'm working on the new book progress thing right now, as I was thinking to add that background to the card view so it looks more like a card. I mean, I'm not sure. I'm not 100 % sold on it, but you could have these cards and select the actual card and it would highlight it.
Adam (31:30.67)
Yeah.
Adam (31:58.87)
Hmm. Yeah. What I'm trying to think like one thing I really like about this view today is that it's so minimalistic. Like, like, the features that are on here seem like we've stripped away everything we can. That's not used by like someone that just wants to browse this list. And it seems like the bulk edit mode would be something that for one, you would only use if you're logged into hardcover.
Ste (32:08.655)
Mm -hmm.
Ste (32:20.815)
Yeah.
Adam (32:28.046)
So if someone shared this list with a person who's not logged in, you wouldn't even see anything for bulk edit because you can't edit.
Ste (32:35.023)
True. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think, I mean, do you think people are gonna, our readers are gonna mind if it's only in table view? Because I guess that's like the easiest way to edit, to bulk edit. I'm guessing like bulk edit is a native feature for a table view.
You could consider this a very minimalistic table view, the car view, but this is where you'd expect, I guess, to be able to do those bulk changes.
Adam (33:15.744)
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe, maybe that's what we do. We make it so that table view is bulk edit view. Like, so there's not a separate view for bulk edit. It's just like when you go to table view, you get bulk edit options.
Ste (33:29.871)
Yeah, I mean that makes sense. Okay.
Adam (33:31.63)
Yeah, I think that works. So yeah, because we're talking about two views that are basically the same except one column. So might as well just, yeah. And so maybe when you go to table view, there's a where.
like in here for the add column part, we...
Like one of these columns could be like selector or like, you know, select or whatever. And that one is the default first column that always shows up in table view, but you can remove it if you want.
Ste (34:18.447)
Yeah, that's perfect. So if it's default for TableView to be able to let you bulk edit and then you can remove it for, I don't know, aesthetic reasons, maybe you don't want to bulk edit and that is something that annoys you. Yeah. Yeah.
Adam (34:34.19)
Yeah, that's, I think that's probably the easiest, like the easiest thing to do.
Ste (34:39.439)
Yeah, and it kind of falls in place naturally because a table view, the car view has its own specific properties and purpose. And like you mentioned, it's the very minimalistic, nice, neat view of your library. The shell view is for people who want to browse the covers, like you'd see in your library. But the table view is where you'd edit all of those. So...
Adam (35:05.998)
Yeah, someone like, I shared the, a list on Reddit and someone replied like, my God, this app looks so beautiful. How many people do you have working on this? I'm like,
Ste (35:18.767)
Yeah Exactly If they only knew
Adam (35:23.758)
Like two, three.
Adam (35:31.118)
Yep. Yeah. So this bulk edit button would only show up when you switch to table view and then...
Ste (35:38.639)
Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah.
Adam (35:41.39)
Yeah, and it would be disabled until you click something.
Ste (35:44.911)
Yeah, I also like it because, you know, let's say you see your ratings over here, you change, you select the books, you change the ratings. And the fact that you can see the columns and you can see your ratings update. I think that's going to be like really interesting because it's kind of like reflects how you'd expect both you to function. It's like the natural way to access it, I guess.
Adam (36:07.054)
Yeah.
Adam (36:11.406)
Yeah, that'll be cool. So you like, you know, you bulk edit, you select all, you set, you set status as red and all of a sudden all those book buttons change from whatever they were before to the, to red, like immediately.
Ste (36:27.439)
Yeah, that's nice. Okay, yeah.
Adam (36:29.774)
Yeah, yeah, this, I mean, yeah, I think, I think this is a great direction for this. It's, it's, it's both not a crazy amount of work and I think it just makes sense.
Ste (36:43.887)
Yeah, it does. I mean, yeah, I don't see anything wrong with it.
Adam (36:49.262)
So one other thing for this, like for our sorting options today, we have, I'm gonna drop a screenshot here on the right.
Ste (37:02.799)
Yeah.
Adam (37:09.262)
we have like a match percentage as a sorting option and that's a supporter only feature. For bulk edit mode, then we could potentially make that a column that only supporters can see. So if you go a little bit farther to the right, you'll see a like match percentage has a little like pro next to it.
Ste (37:32.367)
yeah, here we go.
Adam (37:37.774)
So we could have something like that for like the, when you're adding the column for like bulk edit mode. So if you're not signed in as a supporter or you're not signed in at all, you would still see that column as an option to add, but it wouldn't add it for you by default. So you would never see the bulk edit button unless you are a supporter. If we want to go that route.
Ste (38:01.551)
Okay, so yeah, definitely. I mean, that sounds good. So I was thinking that it could be like there and have a tool tip telling you what you have to do to activate it. But yeah, this works as well. So basically have a Pro badge next to it over here. And would the checkbox here be like the same?
Adam (38:32.046)
Yeah, I think like the checkboxes just wouldn't show up if you're not a supporter.
Ste (38:38.991)
Yeah, that sounds good.
I was thinking like, how could we signal it so people know it's like an option, even though, you know, they're not supporters, so they can like earn supporter months or become a supporter. So maybe like we could have a great out version of these, which is like really great out like it is now. And so it's maybe.
like this and there's a tooltip every time you hover over it or would that be too much?
Adam (39:21.486)
Yeah, maybe. so it would just be like disabled buttons all the way down if you're not a supporter.
Ste (39:29.135)
Yeah. Yeah, basically this, and it would show a tooltip telling you what you have to do to activate it because I'm kind of like, if you put it, if you don't put it there at all, most people are not going to know about it. And they're going to ask us, you know, what's going on with bulk mode.
Adam (39:43.118)
Yeah, that's true.
Ste (39:47.919)
bulk edit. So it's either the button. I mean, I'd have the button and the column and just like grade them out, have them with a certain capacity and tell people that, you know, it's a sub -order feature and, you have to share your link or sign up if you, want it because yeah, this is definitely a power reader feature and, it's something.
Adam (39:48.142)
Yeah.
Ste (40:16.847)
that, you know, if you have a big library, it will make sense to have what I do there.
Adam (40:23.15)
Yeah, I think that makes sense. So it's like, or maybe if you're, maybe we don't show the checkbox if you're not a supporter, but we have the bulk edit button with a little pro indicator next to it.
Ste (40:41.774)
Yeah.
Yeah, let me put that in.
Adam (40:45.262)
So, yeah, so, so yeah, it looks like that. That way we don't have to have the, the column there, but we can still indicate like, Hey, there's a feature here for supporters that you don't have access to.
Ste (40:51.439)
huh.
Ste (40:57.583)
Yeah, yeah, I'd be dumb. I think it's OK. Maybe not make this yellow so it doesn't bug if you're like.
Adam (41:06.702)
Yeah, yeah, that's good.
Ste (41:10.095)
Fuck that, why?
Okay, it's looking good.
Adam (41:16.782)
Yeah, something like that.
I think that's looking good. And so if you are a supporter and you go to TableView, you would see the button, you would see all the check boxes. And then if you clicked on one, the button would enable, you'd be able to use it. Yeah. And we could show it with the pro thing, even when, like if you are a supporter, you would also see that, but you would...
also see the checkboxes so you would just know it works.
Ste (41:52.335)
Yeah, that makes sense. Let me put it here as well. God, why do I keep nailing the same exact color that's... Jesus. Anyway, yeah, it's gonna look different in production. And for the options, I just put in remove from library. I was cross checking it with the actual list, but...
There was only one this one at the list. How should that work?
Adam (42:30.734)
I think that would probably be like maybe like two options, one's add to list, one's remove from list, kind of like add tags and remove tags. And I think we'd probably end up doing something similar to the status one where we show like maybe for add to list, we show like which ones they've currently, like which lists.
the books they've selected are currently on and.
and then they can like add it to another one. So it's kind of like the book button where we're showing like a bunch of lists and they can like check boxes and it'll just add them to all of them.
Ste (43:15.023)
That was what I was about to ask. If it's like the add to list dialog in the book button. Okay, so you basically see a list of books and you would be able to search inside of that. Okay.
Adam (43:26.126)
Yeah.
Adam (43:35.918)
Yeah, yeah, I can see that.
Ste (43:37.775)
Okay, sounds good. And in that dialog, you basically get a popover, and in the popover, you'd be able to mark each book as you'd mark a list. It could look pretty weird if we show the covers, but we can show them really small. This is gonna be like, yeah.
Adam (43:57.198)
or this will be all of your lists. So it'll just be the list names.
Ste (44:02.351)
or, or although, okay. Now I get, okay. So, okay. Gotcha. Yeah. I think I understand now. So this wouldn't be like removed for, from library where you would just like delete. actually this one isn't going to be like,
Adam (44:23.757)
Yeah, if you like that.
Ste (44:25.567)
Yeah. here we go. Okay. Yeah.
Adam (44:29.102)
Something like that. This kind of makes me wonder if this whole dropdown should be, we could structure it pretty similar to the book button if we wanted to, where it's like a, it's a dropdown that replaces the current screen. And then on mobile, it's a drawer. And then, yeah.
Ste (44:49.231)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, I was thinking about, yeah. So basically when you click on something, this would just like come up from the side and it would be able to go back. So it would have a back button over here. So let's put the back button in there. Boom, boom. So it's going to say back, not without the 44. And this is going to be a Chevron left.
Boom, okay, so kind of like this.
Adam (45:21.454)
Yeah, exactly.
Ste (45:22.959)
Okay.
Adam (45:24.366)
And maybe we could have something where it's like, like in the top right corner of like every page, including the first one, it could have like the number of books you've selected, like 14 books or 14 selected that way. That way you always have context for like what you're, what you're taking action on.
Ste (45:38.767)
Okay, okay, so.
Ste (45:48.207)
Mm -hmm, so it would just say Mmm would over here be like the first column would it be like a good place for that to sit?
Adam (46:01.486)
I think it could, or, and then like, we could do that in like a, yeah, exactly, kind of like the header of the book button. It's kind of just like a contextual information.
Ste (46:13.647)
yeah, we could put it in something like this. So yeah. Nice.
Adam (46:15.982)
yeah, it's looking great.
14 books selected and then you can just change the status or change things about them. Yeah.
Ste (46:24.943)
Yeah, let's put like change status here, change rating, add tags, remove tags, mark as owned, add to list, remove from list. And these options, if it's your library, I'm guessing it's gonna just be like remove from library or is it just gonna be remove?
Adam (46:45.422)
Yeah, probably remove or, yeah, it's cause it's kind of like remove status. I feel like there's a kind of disconnect between the word status and library because library has so many different contexts depending on the person.
Ste (46:55.183)
Yeah.
Ste (47:00.655)
Yeah, so Adbooks would add something to the list.
Adam (47:04.206)
or add to, yeah, add to list and remove from list. And then probably the last one, which is like.
Yeah, it could be either remove, clear my status, or delete from library.
Ste (47:16.655)
Clear status, okay. Do you think like clear status could be like...
Adam (47:25.902)
It could be. I guess the other part of clear status is that it also deletes your rating, it deletes your review. So it's kind of like, it is kind of like a nuclear option of deleting that.
Ste (47:35.855)
Okay.
Ste (47:42.127)
Yeah, remove from list. So this would be like, let's put a minus here. And this would be like remove status or clear status or like, what's a good phrasing to like, this could be like a, yeah. Yeah.
Adam (47:56.014)
Maybe, yeah. It's like, I know what we do. So on the book button, we have a little trash can and it just says remove.
Ste (48:12.079)
Okay, so we put the trash here and...
Adam (48:18.222)
We just savor it.
And it, maybe it's like removed from library or something. And then that doesn't even have a right angle since that's the action by itself.
Ste (48:32.623)
Yeah. yeah, this should have a right angle. Here we go.
Ste (48:45.743)
And this one would get would definitely get a confirmation like this, right? Okay. Yeah.
Adam (48:51.95)
Yeah.
Adam (48:57.198)
Yeah, I think that's, it's looking pretty good. Like it's a.
Adam (49:03.79)
I think that'll give us plenty of room to like add more things if we need and yeah, it's I mean it seems super powerful and not not like annoying to use.
Ste (49:15.791)
yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Well, that was our goal. Yeah, I'm very happy with this. It's got all the things in there. I think we need this session to be basically...
settle all of these little details, iron out the things which will go into bulk headed mode. I think with lots of people importing their libraries, which I guess is like the main thing readers first do on hardcover, changing like, dates read, I just remembered about that. Should we put them there? Change dates.
Adam (49:58.126)
I'm split on dates because like how often would you bulk edit dates read? Because like that would mean that you finished a bunch of books on the same day or started a bunch of books on the same day. I can understand more for clearing dates read.
Ste (50:18.319)
Yeah, and I'm thinking, I mean, we've got the problem with the Goodreads import because that doesn't let you add a vague date like a year or let's... People have been complaining that they have to manually edit their read dates. So...
Adam (50:40.782)
Mm -hmm.
Ste (50:42.095)
they mitigate this problem with that goodreads through on our backs that, you know, they can't, they don't export DateSread. So people have to set them manually. So I didn't make it like really, really easy to edit DateSread in TableView, or we could have this change dates or add dates for,
books where, you know, you've read something in 2019 and you just want to set that year and you want to set it for 100 books. I think that's what people have been, some people have been complaining about. So that's the use case I'm seeing. It's not like a natural use case, but it's one that would mitigate that exact imports problem with Goodreads. I'm not sure the story graph imports. Do they import read dates?
Adam (51:42.158)
They do, but I think they only have one read through. So if they've read it multiple times, it might not show up for all of them, but I'm not positive on that.
Ste (51:53.551)
Okay, well, yeah, at least, yeah, you have one read.
Adam (51:58.094)
One thing that is possible today is like you can add the column for dates read and then you can manage it there. So here, let me share my screen for a sec.
Ste (52:19.631)
Yeah, here we go.
Adam (52:29.294)
Mm.
I think if you stop sharing for a sec. Here we go, screen.
Ste (52:33.967)
okay. Stop. Here we go.
Adam (52:42.126)
Yeah, so like we have we have this option here where it's like these are dates read and you can click in here and then.
So this is the closest thing we have to bulk edit. It's like, I'm gonna go through and change each one. But yeah, if like, if I wanted to set them to fuzzy dates, I could understand that use case from the bulk edit mode. So maybe like we don't yet have fuzzy dates, but when we do get fuzzy dates, we can add those to bulk edit mode.
Ste (52:55.407)
Yeah.
Ste (53:21.103)
Yeah, that sounds good. I mean, yeah, since it's a thing people have mentioned, I'm imagining, you know, it's pretty tough to, if people actually want it. And I'm imagining if they came on Discord to ask us, yeah, for some of them, that might be like a big, a big improvement. And yeah, for this one, it would be great to actually...
without that extra click, although I'm not sure I was going to like, yeah, so it could auto save. Do you think auto saving could work? That's like the thing I...
Adam (53:55.086)
Hmm.
Adam (54:02.926)
This one does autosave. So like when you click here to there, like that's autosaving. Unlike the book button, which you have to go in.
Ste (54:17.647)
Okay, okay, yeah
Adam (54:19.15)
And then you update and then you have to click save. So like this version auto saves, but this version doesn't.
Ste (54:28.207)
Okay, that's cool. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty good right now, but I'm guessing some people had to, didn't import dates. So there, that might come in handy. We can even add it like in second phase. I just, yeah, I just put it there just because someone mentioned it recently and yeah, it could be like a valuable thing because of this import not working.
Adam (54:52.814)
Yeah. Yeah. I, I like this direction. It makes, it makes table view more powerful and it gives us more incentive to like work to make table view even better.
Ste (55:06.031)
huh. Yeah. And I think this is missing from every book platform that I've tried. I haven't seen like a good bulk editing for books, just like you'd use in Airtable or like you'd use in Excel for Excel users out there. And people I think are doing this in their own, like if you have a notion or you're managing it in Google Sheets, your whole library, I think they're doing this. But.
Adam (55:25.422)
Yeah.
Ste (55:35.985)
it's going to be so much easier to be able to bulkhead it directly on hardcover, so more of an incentive for those people to move to us.
Adam (55:44.046)
Yeah, and yeah, just the idea of like, you know, you see a list of books and you're like, I want to save all of these or you go to an author you've read and you realize you don't have them in your library and you're like, click, click, click, click, click, mark is read.
Ste (56:01.487)
Yeah, exactly. That's going to be, I mean, power reader features. There are like people like Jeff who have, I mean, I can't even imagine what it's like to edit through like thousands and thousands of books. So yeah, this would definitely like be a helpful tool for that and the most powerful one out there, hopefully. So yeah, great.
Adam (56:26.702)
Yeah, this was very, very helpful. I think my plan is this week, wrapping up the data updates that should go out probably tomorrow or Friday. And those include like being able to set the publisher on a book. Most of it's been backend refactoring to make it so that our book data is populated better.
So that's kind of the big change. So it's less user -facing and more infrastructure. So after that, I think the next thing I'm gonna work on is filters and bulk editing for error lists or for letter lists. Yeah. Yeah.
Ste (57:13.487)
Nice. Yeah, that's going to be very nice to see. Great. Yeah, making progress each week. Perfect. Well, I guess thanks, everyone, for joining this Live Build session, and see you on the next Hardcover Live.
Adam (57:34.318)
Yeah. See you next week. Bye.
Ste (57:36.591)
See ya. Bye bye.