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Hopefully members will get used to the defaults of Recipes in My Bookshelf and Books in Library and not have the issue of typing in the wrong tab.  The problem with retaining the search term when moving between Recipes and Books tabs is that it is probably going to annoy more people than it will please.  You would have to remember to delete your search terms every time you moved between tabs, otherwise a new search will start using your previous search terms.

I'm so glad you like the new version.  Removing pages from results and increasing the number of results displayed were some of the most requested new features.  Pages really slow down the functioning of the website, whereas the way search results are now structured is quick and seamless.

I think if you are getting 42 pages of results you might want to use the Only Show... filters on the right hand side to bring down the number of results.  Also, if you know you want to jump to a specific area of the search results, maybe use that term in search.  If you are just wanting to mix up the results so you don't always see the same recipes at the beginning of a repeat search, then try sorting the results in a different way.  The default for recipe searches is relevance - if the search term is in the recipe name it will come first, if it is an ingredient it will come next.  So sort the results by Title A-Z, Author, Date published or Ratings which will mix up the results each time.

I just wanted to say thank you for doing such a great job. I am in love with this site. It's been so useful to me so far, and the new version is miles ahead of the awesomeness you already had.

I've found so many recipes I didn't even know I had and have been cooking more frequently.

I've also been raving to all my friends and family. I might even give some subscriptions as Christmas presents.

Thank you for all your hard work!

Thank you MrsGideon - posts like yours make all the late nights worthwhile!

We plan to have gift subscriptions available before Christmas - a great gift for anyone you know who loves to cook.  On Valentine's Day one romantic chap not only bought his fiancee a membership, but added all her cookbooks so her membership was ready to use when he gave it to her.

So I can understand how we might make this work, could you explain why you would want to do that?  What would you hope to achieve by jumping through the results?  Would you use the Only Show... filters to reduce down your results first?

omg... so cute! <3

Jane, Thanks for pointing me to my Books list.  Now another question:  in a post above you said, "You can still see your friends' profiles and books by clicking on their name in any of the Bookshelves lists for books they own."   Where do I find "the Bookshelves list for books they own"?

On my list of books when I click on a particular book I see the title & author, the front cover photo, the star rating, then 2 icons, the first is a balloon which I take to mean notes, and the other which is the icon for people and a number.  I'm guessing that means "other bookshelves", but when I click on that nothing happens...

I know I'll get used to this new spiffy version eventually.  I'm just one of those people who need to be dragged kicking and screaming into a new version of anything.

Edit:  OK, nevermind... I found the "other bookshelves." It was hiding on the page of an  individual cookbook  I pulled up. 

I know you found it anyway but I will just clarify in case other members have the same issue.  When you click on a book title you go to the Book details page.  There you can see tabs for recipes, notes, bookshelves and more details.  Click on Bookshelves and you will see all the the members listed who own that book.  Click on their name and you see their profile, the books they have in common with you and their other books.  Until we re-establish the Friends feature (see Blog posting on that) you would need to know a book that your friend owns, in order to see their profile.  Not so hard for you with the Chowhound's Cookbook of the Month gang.

On our to-do list is that clicking on these icons will take you to the relevant tab.  The speech balloon is notes, the people is bookshelves and the links is linked editions of that book (click on that one and you get a list of all linked editions with ISBN, format, country and date of publication).

We'll help you get there - just ask any question, no matter how small it seems.  You are also helping other members who may have the same issue but don't post about it - you know the statistics that for every post there are 99 lurkers viewing it who don't post.

As an example for me: My family makes "breakfast for dinner" every week.  About half of those dinners, we like to have pancakes, and we like to experiment with different recipes.  So, when I search "pancakes" I get 180 results.  Since I do this about twice to three times a month, I don't want to see the same recipes on top all the time.  And there are only so many ways of sorting.  So, I'd love to be able to jump to, say, result #90, since I've already made so many of the recipes that are up top.  Does that make sense?  I'm not sure I'm explaining it correctly.

You will only be able to see recipes in a book if that book has been indexed by EYB and that one has not been yet.  We do have a lot of Southern Living Annuals on our indexing list though not 1986.  In the next few months we will be adding a feature that will allow you to index your own books so if you don't want to wait until this book is indexed, you may want to volunteer to index it (you do get to know the book very well when you index it).

You explained it perfectly and I understand now what you want to do.  I've passed it on to our developers to see if it is possible with the new format.

Thank you very much.  The pancake eaters in  my house appreciate it.  ;)

I  do like the general design of the new version, and it clear to see how you at EYB have listened to the feedback you have gotten from your users, and the amount of thought you have out into changing the search feature.

However I must say that I am one of the users who loved the advanced search option, and the possibility to specify my search.

I know you have been putting a lot of work into listing all different kind of ingredients. I loved the way the old version worked, giving me a list of the different ingredients in your database with many different versions of the same ingredient to choose from. 

A search in the new version for recipes with green unripe tomatoes landed me 684 results, even if I limited the search to tomatoes. Out of the first 25 recipes, only 8 were with green tomatoes, the other recipes just had tomatoes, and another “green” ingredient.

It took me a while to figure out that if I limited my search to "green tomatoes" I got what I wanted:  19 recipes. But I still can’t find a way to search for gooseberries, without getting all the recipes for cape gooseberries as well.

Also I seem to remember there was a possibility to search for a recipe with chicken, but without tomatoes in the old version.  I wonder if I have just not figured it out yet, or maybe this is no longer possible?

Another thing I miss in the new version is the possibility to limit my search to specific books or authors. This feature has been a great help in the old version, when I wanted to locate recipes in my own books.

This feature has also been useful to me when it came to decide what cookbook to buy next.

Since I am located in Denmark I do not have access to browse through a cookbook before making my decision to buy. Only a very limited amount of books are imported and the public library system only has an extremely limited selection of cookbooks in English. The recent years all my cookbooks have been bought online, many are older books bought secondhand.

In the old version I would be able to search the index of books I don’t own. I will often look for specific ingredients that are rare, or specific spices, and herbs. This, along with reviews in general, will give me a good idea if a specific book would be a good buy for me.

In the new version I can still see the whole index for the book, but I have to browse through the index to find what I am looking for, and this takes much longer time.

Please consider to give us the opportunity to limit a search to a specific book or author.

The thing I like most in the new version is the ability to see 25 results on one page, but I agree with other users, please make it easier to go to last page or any other page for that matter.

Thanks Tommelsie for your detailed critique - it really helps to know what issues long term users of the old site may be having with the new site.  I think a lot of your issues are lack of familiarity with the new way of doing searches so I will answer each of your points separately and hope I can help you improve your search results.

Unfortunately we found from our site data that very few members were using advanced search which was a waste of all that wonderful data we had gone to the trouble of indexing - cookbook, author, multiple ingredients, ethnicity, special diet, occasion, meal/course, could all only be searched through advanced search but most people were using quick search to find recipes using just the recipe name or one ingredient.  So after doing usability testing we decided to have just one search method which allows you to use all the categories, including ingredients, as filters. 

If you have a specific term you want such as green tomatoes you need to enter that term into the search box in speech marks - "green tomatoes".  This is a standard search convention on search engines such as Google.  I just tried it on My Bookshelf, got 56 results, of which the first ones had green tomatoes in the recipe name (i.e. were the most relevant results) and the rest had green tomatoes in the ingredients.

To see just recipes with gooseberries use the Only Show... filters.  Your starting position in a recipe search of your Bookshelf is all your recipes.  In filters click Ingredients, Fruit, Berries, Gooseberries and you will only see recipes with gooseberries, no cape gooseberries will appear.  If you only want to see desserts, no savory recipes with gooseberries, click Meal/Course, Desserts.

The key thing to know with the new search is that anything you enter in the search box will search throughout the recipes for the words you enter, either separate words or terms if in speech marks.  The Only Show... filters are specific categories - so select chicken in filters you only see chicken meat, not chicken stock.  Select Italian in ethnicity filters and you will only see recipes with Italian ethnicity, whereas if you enter Italian in the search box you will see all your recipes with Italian seasoning.

You exclude ingredients (or any other categories) by selecting them from the right side Only Show... filters then click the green plus which turns into a red minus.  That ingredient or category is then excluded from your search.  So in the example you give, you would select chicken from Meat, poultry and game in the Ingredient filters (don't put chicken in the search term box as that will pick up everywhere the word chicken appears including chicken stock) and then select Tomatoes from Vegetables, Salad and click the green plus to exclude that ingredient.  If you decide you don't want any grill recipes then select Grills & BBQ from Recipe type, Main courses and click the green plus to exclude that.  There is so much flexibility on what you can add and exclude I think once you start using it you will find it much more helpful than the old Advanced search.

You can still search by author or book title by entering the name in speech marks in the search box.  So you only want to see recipes in books by Nigella Lawson, enter "Nigella Lawson" (not "Nigella" as then you get all the recipes with nigella seeds!) in the box.  If you have a specific book just enter the important part of the name is speech marks e.g. "Silver Palate" and then you will see only recipes in the Silver Palate books.  If you only want to see recipes from the second book enter "Silver Palate Good Times".

You can still look through specific books and authors in the way I have described above.  Enter the name in speech marks, click on the book details and you will see the complete list of recipes under the Recipes tab.  If you want to search by author or book name through books you don't own, enter the term in speech marks then the additional ingredient names or use the filters to narrow down your searches.

On our to-do list.

I do hope this helps.  We do also have full instructions with images for all of this on our Help, How To section.

I believe that a Forum feature is not working at the moment.  Whenever I post, I ask to be informed by e-mail of any further postings on the topic, but I never get any e-mails.  Not a big problem, because I find myself looking at the forum multiple times daily.

xxx

Thank you jane for your quick and detailed reply to my questions.

One of the thing I love about this site is your good and fast support -it alway impresses me, how do you find the time :) 

And thanks for the great search tips, I had clearly mised some of of them, I will by playing around with the new version to get to know it better. I am especially pleased that I am able to search books by a specific autors, thats a great help to me.