
HN-Books - jacquesm
http://hn-books.com/
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wazoox
Please provide normal links, because I always (always, always, always...) open
lots of links in new tabs. Not being able to middle-click/control-click the
links is a huge usability defect.

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alnayyir
The site was virtually unusable for me due to this, it really is critical.

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DanielBMarkham
It will be fixed very shortly. I appreciate the comments.

These are some HTML5-ish buttons I borrowed from another site. I had a bit of
trouble with the links, so I just added the onclick code. Never occurred to me
the different usage pattern.

EDIT: Ctrl-Click now working in dev. I should have it pushed up to production
in the next few minutes. Sorry about the trouble. -- Done.

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alnayyir
Thank you very much for taking notice. :)

I'm an inveterate multitasker and if my middle-click/vimium breaks or the
links are otherwise odd (not to mention the noticeable lag the html5 elements
were causing for google chrome OS X) it throws me way off my rhythm.

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mbubb
Nice, very nice. There are a lot of good critiques in the comments and I might
agree with some... But my initial gut reaction was 'yes - I get what this is
and like the basic design...'

I would imagine in time links to the actual HN discussions of the book might
be nice (though it would not be too hard to google that oneself).

I open links in tabs too - so I would agree with that comment.

More 'click to sort' options, maybe by language.

For a Beta example site I liked it. Good start.

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user24
Feature request: Please detect user's country and use appropriate amazon
locale. eg I need to see .co.uk links not .com

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listic
What is the practical difference for you between the sites? Do the books ship
faster and cheaper for .co.uk? I wonder why wouldn't Amazon's backend just
figure it automatically and just ship locally anyway.

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acangiano
I spent a good deal of effort on the issue of Amazon locales for my book web
app. There are quite a few reasons for this:

* Some books will exist in one locale but not in others;

* Some books will be in stock in a locale but not in others;

* Some books will have a different cover and/or slightly different edition if it's a UK or USA version;

* If you are buying the Kindle version, availability varies by country, but only UK residents can buy from the UK Kindle store.

* If you buy many books from the States and you live in the UK, you'll end up paying hefty import charges.

* Delivery from your closest Amazon is usually faster (provided the books are in stock) and free (or cheaper for expedite shipment).

If you go to the Staff Picks of the Week section of my site
(<http://anynewbooks.com/staff-picks/>), you'll notice how under each book I'm
forced to place up to 5 links (US, Canada, UK, Kindle international, UK
Kindle). It may be slightly confusing, but in my experience international
readers appreciate the effort (the rest of the world is quite sick of US only
web apps to be frank).

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inm
Removed (redundant).

Saw just after posting that a good few other people already offered the same
information.

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acangiano
Did you mean to reply to me with this comment?

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inm
I originally posted that I thought books were exempt from charges, but then
saw someone right below had already said (and with more certainty than me!).

Sorry, probably should have either left it there or deleted it entirely.

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acangiano
Oh OK, no worries. My comment went from many upvotes to several downvotes,
because people assumed that you were saying that my information was redundant
and should be removed. We got to experience a bit of a hive-mind on HN. :)

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jlees
Nice start and a good reaction to the information overload of book
recommendation threads :)

A few comments:

\- Zooming on image covers seems pointless to me (is it just me?)

\- I'd like to see some kind of indicator of usefulness/relevance of books
(books 1 person recommended vs books that crop up in every single thread),
whether you just open it up to upvoting and downvoting, pull in review data,
or get more complex

\- One step further, crowdsource book summaries - let a contributor submit
'cliff's notes' for a book rather than just a review.

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acangiano
Very clever idea. If you are looking for a complimentary service to discover
new books, you could signup with my site <http://anynewbooks.com>, and select
categories like Programming or Business and Investing. The latter is one of my
favorite categories, because there are always great new titles for it.
(Warning for the tech crowd: you will receive one weekly email per category
you pick, so don't go crazy. :))

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FraaJad
Well executed. There are a lot of books on the list I'd never heard of, but
look interesting.

Also, nice monetisation idea, jacquesm!

Do you intend to use this site for profit (nothing wrong with that..) or have
some ideas to promote "hacker culture" with the monies.

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jacquesm
It isn't mine, it's DanielBMarkham's site.

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wwortiz
Is there any reason the links to books use javascript instead of a regular
anchor?

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tickle_me_elmo
To mask the affiliate links perhaps.

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microcentury
That was my thought. And if it's correct, it's not worth it given the aff link
is visible at the Amazon page, and if there was ever a crowd that would know
to check for it, this is it.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with the aff links. Profit is fun.

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spacemanaki
Very nice idea!

I would also like to see links back to collections of the discussion pages -
maybe scraped and organized automatically?

I might be biased since I've been reading these books now, but I think there
should be more Lisp books. It might not be strictly correct to put On Lisp,
SICP, and Paradigms of AI Programming in "functional programming" (although I
am not sure about a JQuery book in that category) but there are a few threads
in the HN archives with solid discussion on Lisp books so I think they do
deserve a place somewhere.

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phpnode
Nice site Daniel, any chance of some RSS feeds or an API?, I'd love to
integrate this with <http://hackernewsers.com/books.html>

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meatsock
excellent idea. i'd love to be able to sort by format and price, though.
rather than voting to select personal preference, how about having order-able
lists that i can share?

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DanielBMarkham
Don't know if you saw this or not, but the lists are orderable and sharable
now -- as you make changes, the link changes at the top. Just copy the link
for whatever settings you like.

Needs to have format and price, though. Right now it's only sortable by
experience level and question.

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dasil003
No SICP?

Also, Javascript: The Good Parts is duplicated.

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SkyMarshal
Great site, a successor to the defunct Programming-Books.com. /bookmarked.

Question: What's the source of your book info?

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baa
Wow, that BIOS book is a great find. Thanks!

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jeffreyg
I thought so, too, until I saw that it's selling for $679. Then I saw that
your account was created an hour ago so I wonder if you're being sarcastic.

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takameyer
Wonderful! I've been looking for a resource like this for a while. Many blog
posts, but nothing like this.

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mambodog
Thanks for doing this. Just a point about the site itself: scrolling seems to
lock up while items are loading (which it does for some time). Maybe you could
make it less aggressive with the async loading of items (load a few, load more
when I get to the bottom)?

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mike-cardwell
Just wondering why you chose to require JavaScript for this site? It strikes
me that it would have been just as easy to write it without any JavaScript,
but then adding a small amount of client side JS for client side sorting when
JS is available?

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vukk
There is going to be a lot of books in there, so _filtering_ is a must,
sorting just isn't enough.

EDIT: I mean this for "Noob ... Expert" selection. Also simple tags would
probably be better than those "How to xx some xx"

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rwolf
I really like it. One suggestion: changing the "How to" section to radios so I
don't select two at once. As far as I can tell, any two "How to"s result in
zero result.

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DanielBMarkham
The combinations work, although not as much as I'd like

For instance, here's the list of books about how to tell people about your
business and run a killer startup, for folks who already know a bit:

[http://hn-books.com/#1=Q1V1&10=Q10V0&11=Q11V0&12...](http://hn-
books.com/#1=Q1V1&10=Q10V0&11=Q11V0&12=Q12V0&13=Q13V0&14=Q14V0&15=E1V0&16=E2V0&17=E3V1&18=E4V0&2=Q2V1&3=Q3V0&4=Q4V0&5=Q5V0&6=Q6V0&7=Q7V0&8=Q8V0&9=Q9V0)

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benhalllondon
Was this an off shoot of a previous Show HN?

I remember a similar concept based around topics within books, but I've not
been able to find it again.

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jacquesm
Yes, it was. Daniel's been busy :)

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benhalllondon
You don't happen to have a link do you?

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Kaizyn
It should be noted that this is a great way for the site owner/creator to make
commissions on each purchase through the provided links.

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another_ali
hi nice site, please consider having a table view that have the following
columns: Book Title, Author, Publication Date (make the table sortable by any
row)

And if I click the table row, it can expand to the long descriptions and cover
shot you added to each book. What first at attracts me to a book is the title,
author and how recent it is!

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amarcus
please implement pagination. Firefox froze for a few seconds while rendering
your page.

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tfh
There were a few threads on non programming books too. You could add them to
that list.

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pbiggar
It would be great to be able to see the HN comments about a book, and who made
them.

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pedrokost
JavaScript: The Good Parts has a duplicate!!

UPDATE: many books are duplicated.

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jonursenbach
Feature request: Ability to see only books that have an e-book version
available.

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stevenp
Amen. Almost any time anyone recommends a book on here, I immediately go for
the eBook on Amazon for my Kindle app on my iPhone/iPad. The most annoying
thing about Steve Blank's book was the fact that there's no electronic
version. For me, that's almost always a deal-breaker.

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MisterWebz
Are you violating any copyright laws because you're using Amazon's images?

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lsc
I'm pretty sure that's allowed. Amazon has a really nice xml interface
designed to make it easy for you to sell books for amazon.com. I'm fairly
certain that they provide photos for the same reason.

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Nycto
Well done. I have one request: The ability to filter by language

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vkdelta
Not reachable at 23.37 EST

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rick_2047
Hey it would be nice to add a discussions/comments page. Of course we can have
the discussions here on HN but the site will keep it active for much more
time.

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malandrew
clickable: <http://hn-books.com>

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jacquesm
Is the link in the submission not clickable for you ?

