which would show a bookshelf, onto which you can add (and rearrange) works from the Librivox collection. Each 'book' would be a link to the catalog page (and the rss and iTunes feeds).
I think it's a simple application to do, the trick will be getting the appearance and user interface right. Then there are lots of features you could think of adding: a flash player to listen online, section dividers to categorize books, multiple shelves, smart shelves (add all works you're a reader on automatically) and various social things ('what's on most shelves', 'people with this book also have this one', tagging etc), but those should be driven by demand once the most basic version is working.
It sounds like a great idea! I personally would love a feature like this.
I guess it would require an end-user authentication system? Or do you think we should tie it into the forum user/pass database? That should be doable...
Certainly need some authentication. Whether we tie it to the forum is an interesting question.
I think a major use-case will be for people to create themed collections, so there would need to be more than one collection per person. This could be done two ways - a single user (identified with a forum user) can create multiple collections, each with a unique URL, or a single user creates a single collection, but people can sign up multiple times to do multiple collections (therefore not tied to forum user).
If we went with the former, of course, we could start with a single collection per user, and then add the multiple collection feature at a later date...
I think the multiple collection/single username is the best way to go - we don't have to invent an auth system then. Also, existing librivox users won't have to make a new account. To keep things simple, you could have this:
I'd love to help, although I'm not sure how good I'd be, I can do html, and am learning CSS. (Plus I can use Photoshop, just in case any image manipulation/creation might be needed..?)
I do need to learn PHP, as such I'm not going to offer to help with that because I'm only on the basics at the moment, but would it be at all possible to sort of 'sit in' on the development of that bit? So I can learn a bit?
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Hadn't thought about image stuff, we'll certainly need some of that! A major help that anyone with html and/or css skills can provide is to help iron out cross-browser issues...
You're more than welcome to 'sit in' on the PHP, not quite sure how that would work though . If we have a source forge project it'll be easy enough to watch (or is source forge overkill? do we just need a CVS server?)
I think a subversion server would be fine, and you can view the files in your web browser. I think sourceforge may be a bit overkill, it gives you development mailing lists, a shell, etc, things we already have or don't need. Also I've read it's quite difficult getting them to approve projects these days (in that it takes them a long time to get back to you)
DigiSage wrote:I think a subversion server would be fine, and you can view the files in your web browser. I think sourceforge may be a bit overkill, it gives you development mailing lists, a shell, etc, things we already have or don't need. Also I've read it's quite difficult getting them to approve projects these days (in that it takes them a long time to get back to you)
Perhaps, when you have time, you could set up subversion on the librivox server for us? And we'll probably want a new MySQL database for this project as well...
No rush - I've got lots on at the moment so I'm not going to be getting into this quickly!
I'll closely follow this and jump in when i see that i can contribute something. Where will future discussions and suggestions about the various things of the bookshelf happen?
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Good question, Stephan. I guess general discussions and suggestions could happen in this thread; for more detailed stuff I expect we'll add a new project to the bug tracker we use for the catalog software.
I'm in of course, to do whatever that's needed that I can do
I think this is an awesome idea, and I'm really excited about it. The thing that I think is most awesome about this is the opportunity to draw non-volunteers into the community. People who are avid LibriVox listeners will likely want to create their own collections to share. This is definitely something we should think about when setting up the user system; setting it up so that it isn't difficult for non-LV volunteers to participate as well.
