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Jane, et al.,

As a long-time and increasing EYB user, I first want to commend your efforts to improve the site in recent years, adding capability and features while always focusing on the unique value of cookbook and magazine indexing.  I loved the major changes released last year.

I realize increasing capability for a few users might be perceived as complexity and bloat for others, which could risk making the overall user experience frustrating.  Keeping this in mind, I offer these few recommendations regarding bookmarks to help ease-of-use (OK, for me) to consider when you make your next set of changes.

Currently, to add a bookmark, we hover over the “+” button next to My Bookmarks, which shows tool tip “Add a Bookmark”.  Then, click, which pops up “Add Bookmark”.  Then, click down arrow, showing list of bookmarks.  Then, click (select) desired bookmark, and click “Save” button.  4 clicks total.

To reduce the number of clicks for frequent/expert users, and increase accessibility for novice users, I suggest something like:

• List all available bookmarks with first click.  Click (select) desired bookmark, which is automatically saved, and auto-close the popup.  2 clicks total.  If a bookmark is selected by mistake, just click the x-mark option next to it to remove it.  Eliminate the “Save” and “Cancel” buttons for assigning a bookmark, except the New bookmark creation function.

• Alternately, for a signed in user, eliminate the + button, and instead just list all possible bookmarks in gray font under My Bookmarks, with selected ones in color or bold.  Select new ones by clicking the gray bookmark.  Or, unselect by clicking the colored.  The bookmarks in effect become toggle buttons.  1 click total.

Finally, and most important for me, could you add the ability to filter recipes by more than one bookmark at a time?

Thanks.

Great suggestions, quite intuitive compared to existing method. 

e_ballad, your comment spurred me to count my bookmarks for the first time.  Whoa! I'm closing in on 300.

If I hadn't early on adopted a system* of naming bookmarks that groups them for easier browsing on the My Bookshelf / Bookmarks page, it might be pretty hard to find what I'm looking for in a list that long.  

eliza, you can to some extent search your bookmarks now: go to My Bookshelf, then Bookmarks, and if browsing the alphabetical listing doesn't help you quickly find a particular bookmark, you can do a Ctrl-F search for a bit of text that might lead you to the right one.  Any recipe titles being displayed at the time (because you've clicked on their Bookmark name) will also be included in the search.  [Which brings to mind another feature request for EYB:  a button at the top of the My Bookshelf / Bookmarks page to expand (or close) the recipe display for all the Bookmarks at once.]

When EYB allows for editing Bookmark names, it will be much easier to handle an unwieldy collection by some strategic renaming.

It would be quite wonderful to be able to do more Boolean-esque searches using multiple Bookmarks someday.  I have a sense that the ability to edit Bookmark names will come sooner, though.

*My admittedly obsessive-compulsive system takes advantage of EYB's default alphabetical listing for Bookmarks by beginning each recipe bookmark with a letter that assigns it to a type of bookmark:  c. for recipes from a given cookbook, i. for ingredient(s), r. for a given type of dish (slaw, plum tart, spoonbread), m. for menus, etc.

Barb_N - glad you are enjoying the new Bookmarks feature. For anyone who has not yet discovered it, there is a blog post explaining it.

In response to all the other comments in this topic:

Ed - although you didn't get everything on your wishlist, I hope that you are finding the new system easier to use. The feature to search using multiple bookmarks is on our development to-do list.

e_ballad and eliza - I presume you are now clear on how to search through your Bookmarks with ellabee's help. 

ellabee - now that members can edit their bookmarks I imagine several members will rename their bookmarks using your suggestion of a prefix.

The upgrade is great!  I had created "tried" and "to try" options myself, but I really like the ability to add dates and notes.

eliza - when doing a recipe search you can do the following:

• You can use word search (which looks for those words in recipe title, ingredients, book titles and authors). If you have a phrase e.g. Old Bay seasoning put that in speech marks so it looks for the phrase rather than the individual words.


• You can search using filters such as ingredients, recipe type, ethnicity, special diet, etc - you can use any combination of those or exclude any category by changing the + to a - .


• You can filter to just see book recipes, magazine recipes, online recipes, personal recipes or recipes with videos.


• And you can filter using your bookmarks.

You can use any combination of those options. In the example you give of chicken your best option is to use the ingredients filter Chicken in Ingredients / Meat, poultry & game. Then you only see chicken meat. If you use chicken in the word search you get recipes with chicken stock, vegan chicken substitute, recipes from books with the word chicken in the title, etc.

For anyone new to EYB (or even long-time members who may need a refresher) the tutorials accessed from the green Need Help? button at bottom right (not available on phones) are a great way to learn about the features on EYB.

Love this new feature!  Is there any way a running list of dates can be incorporated into the feature, rather than just a single date? Will the old bookmark icon eventually be removed, or is it there to stay?

Nancith - do you mean you want to add multiple dates for recipes, so you add a date every time you cook it? To be honest we hadn't really envisioned that being a requirement. We assumed people would either want a record of when they first made it or if they wanted to know when they last made it, they would just change the date on the Bookmark.

We may eventually remove the old Bookmark icon, once members have got used to using the chef's hat. Can anyone think of any reason why we would keep it? We will be adding the chef's hat to the recipe details page.

Jane, that is exactly what I meant about the dates, probably because I am rather ridiculous when it comes to those things! I have already been doing this as personal Notes for each recipe, & will just continue that way.

Cati - yes, I am just talking about removing the bookmarks icon from recipes.

I'm not wild about the way the 'I want to cook' Bookmark works, automatically creating a blank note. Now that I know it does that, will make an effort to fill something in. But really overall, I don't think Notes are a good way to archive the date for cooked recipes.  Seems it would be much more useful to have the date display next to the 'I cooked this' bookmark when looking at one or a group of recipes.

I do appreciate the new ability to add or remove more than one Bookmarks at once go with the checkboxes, although it forces me to the mouse/touchpad and away from the keyboard (no more typing the first letter of the desired Bookmark).

The chef hat is bigger, better located, and more intelligible than the old add-a-bookmark icon, whose absence from the recipe display is unlikely to be mourned. 

ellabee - that blank note created when you select the "I want to cook this" bookmark is a bug and will be fixed. A note should only be created if you add a note or a date cooked when selecting the "I cooked this" bookmark.

Thanks, Jane -- good to know!