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Congratulations on this fabulous website, it's a dream come true for an avid foodie and cookbook junkie!  After just 2 days of my free trial, I'm hooked and excited about the opportunity to maximize use of my many, many cookbooks.

I sincerely appreciate your request for feedback and offer the following early observations/wish list for your consideration:

• I'd love to see a recipe search box on my home page (vs a link to a search page)


• Is there a place I can easily view a list of recipes for which I've added comments and/or ratings?


• Is there a way to search recipes others have rated or commented on?  It would be great to see which recipes or cookbooks are getting the most buzz.


• Congratulations on all the new titles you've been adding.  It would be great to be able to add books to our bookshelves directly from your lists.  


• The "Recipe Type" search option is terrific.  Could you add Pasta and Noodles to that list?


• In your ingredient lists, "minced" beef, pork, chicken etc should be combined with "ground" beef, pork, chicken.  A minced/ground veal category should be added.


• The options bar on the search results page is a great tool (this is what I call the bar where you select things such as "Do Later".  Ideally, I'd love to have these options listed beneath each recipe but at a minimum, at the bottom of the page as well.  Since a screen refresh is currently required after each "save" of a selected option, I've learned it makes sense to review the whole page first, marking selections as I go and then do a save once per page.  If the options bar appeared beneath each recipe, you'd have the ability to select different options for each recipe (eg. I may want to "Add To Menu" for one recipe and "Categorize" another) and only need to save my selections and have a page refresh once.

Thanks again for this wonderful website, I look forward to a long future together!!

Thank you so much for the feedback - we really do welcome it.  We are making lots of improvements to the website and have a list a mile long so it really helps to know what our members would like to see changed.  My answers are below after each of your questions.

• I'd love to see a recipe search box on my home page (vs a link to a search page)

       -       We are redesigning the entire search process and part of that is having the search boxes on most pages.

• Is there a place I can easily view a list of recipes for which I've added comments and/or ratings?

        -       No, not at the moment but I will add it to our list of enhancements.

• ·Is there a way to search recipes others have rated or commented on?  It would be great to see which recipes or cookbooks are getting the most buzz.

        -       We are adding a feature to the Community page which will highlight latest comments and most buzz-worthy books and recipes.  We really want to encourage members to enter ratings and comments for books and recipes as sharing this information is going to be a really valuable part of EYB.

• Congratulations on all the new titles you've been adding.  It would be great to be able to add books to our bookshelves directly from your lists.  

-       I assume when you say lists you mean the indexed books lists?  This was a quick fix we did so that members could see all the indexed books.  We will be adding Indexed books to the search IN box so you will then be able to add books directly to your Bookshelf from that list.

• The "Recipe Type" search option is terrific.  Could you add Pasta and Noodles to that list?

-       Pasta & noodles isn’t in Recipe type as it is an ingredient.  If you check the Ingredient type list in Advanced search you will see Pasta & noodles – all there.

• In your ingredient lists, "minced" beef, pork, chicken etc should be combined with "ground" beef, pork, chicken.  A minced/ground veal category should be added.

-       These are all now combined.  Ground and minced veal are already in the list – perhaps they don’t show up on your ingredients list drop-down as that ingredient is not in your recipes.  Your drop-down list is just those that appear in the recipes on your Bookshelf.

• The options bar on the search results page is a great tool (this is what I call the bar where you select things such as "Do Later".  Ideally, I'd love to have these options listed beneath each recipe but at a minimum, at the bottom of the page as well.  Since a screen refresh is currently required after each "save" of a selected option, I've learned it makes sense to review the whole page first, marking selections as I go and then do a save once per page.  If the options bar appeared beneath each recipe, you'd have the ability to select different options for each recipe (eg. I may want to "Add To Menu" for one recipe and "Categorize" another) and only need to save my selections and have a page refresh once.

-       Part of the redesign of search is to do exactly what you are asking for - for books and for recipes.

We also look forward to a long and happy relationship!

Thanks so much for your response and the great news regarding upcoming enhancements.  The search boxes, Buzz & updates to the options bar will be terrific and greatly appreciated. 

It was also extremely helpful to understand that the specific information contained in recipe ingredients and indices in my bookshelf drives the content that populates the pull-down menus when I’m searching in my bookshelf.  I’ve been able to search more effectively as a result of this.  For instance this explains why when I do a search for shrimp recipes, I wasn’t getting any results from my UK and Australian cookbooks that tend to use the word “prawns” vs shrimp.  Now I realize I need to select shrimp and prawns as ingredients if I want to capture all recipes. 

I do have a couple of questions regarding some of your feedback as I’m not able to get the results I’m looking for when conducting searches and suspect I may be misunderstanding something…sorry!!

You noted that ground and minced (meats) are now combined however in my pull-down menus, there are still separate categories.  I was looking for meatball recipes and when I selected “ground beef” none of my recipes from UK or Italian books that used the term “minced beef” were captured.  I still have to list ground beef and minced beef as separate ingredients to ensure I capture all my recipes. 

Regarding the “Recipe Type” option. Normally I’d search in the Index or Table of Contents of my cookbooks when looking for Pasta recipes and since “Pasta” is typically a category, I’d thought it would be a “Recipe Type” since EYB similarly considers ingredients such as eggs and rice as Recipe Types. You’d noted that Pasta is an ingredient vs Recipe Type in EYB though, however when I try to search for a pasta recipe using the ingredient list and select “any shape”  I get a very limited list of recipes with all recipes that suggest a specific pasta type excluded. For example, all my “spaghetti” and “penne” recipes were excluded from an “any shape” search.  If I use the "Ingredient Type" list and select "Pasa & Noodles" then I get an overwhelming number of hits because appetizer, salad, soup and dessert recipes are also captured. When I’m looking to prepare pasta as a primi or, main dish pasta, my inspiration isn’t the shape of the pasta, rather it’s the accompanying ingredients. I know I must be doing something wrong so definitely look forward to your feedback…we love Italian food and especially pasta dishes so this is a search I’ll be doing frequently!!

Thanks again for your assistance and also for your patience in helping me figure this out.

Warm regards,

Sue

Thanks for your detailed feedback.

We link identical ingredients that have different names in different parts of the world so if you search on one you will also see all the recipes containing the other.  So if you search on prawns you will see all recipes containing shrimp - general.  If you search on aubergine you will see all recipes containing eggplant.  Beef - ground and beef - minced are linked and I just tested it and they both came up in results.  Can you try it again and see if you still don't see them appearing in each other's searches?  Please email me at [email protected] the details of the books from which you are expecting to see recipes but can't.

The Advanced recipe search will show all recipes containing one ingredient AND another - so if you list two ingredients, the results will all contain both ingredients.  As part of our redesign of searches we do plan to add OR searches so you can list several ingredients that you are interested in e.g. several similar cuts of beef, and see all recipes that contain any of them.

We are currently reworking Recipe types and very soon Pasta dishes will be in Recipe types - three separate types for sauced, baked and filled.  The ingredient "pasta - any shape" is where the author doesn't specify so you can use whatever you like.  It doesn't mean all pasta shapes - you need to use Pasta & noodles - all in Ingredient type for that.  If you want to just look at one or two types of pasta only you would need to search by each type separately.  Once we add the OR search you will be able to combine them.  If you want to reduce the number of recipes in your results, click Refine then add the Course - in the example you mention you could specifiy Main course and that would take out all the unwanted recipes in appetizers, salads, soups and desserts.  There are other ways to refine your searches in Advanced search - e.g. just search in your Favorite books or specify ingredients you don't want.