New shared browser layer for book/author/series

[alexhb1]

For all three browsers to build upon - a shared stack of tools (Grid, filter rail, bulk action bar) that each of the three browser pages can use for their specific implementations. These focus on presentation and consistency, not actual data or operations.

[coderabbitai]

⚠️ Possible Duplicate Issue(s)

• New browser UI and introducing frontend pagination #2031

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[SergeiAK]

Hello. Regarding the implementation of the new shared browser layer across book, author, and series views:

Could you confirm if the new shared component will support the "collapse by series" feature (which is currently available in the main library view) when browsing a specific Author?

For authors with large bibliographies (e.g., Agatha Christie with 200+ books, Stephen King with 70+, etc.), the current flat list makes navigation quite cumbersome. Having the same Series grouping/collapsing toggle on Author pages would make navigating big author collections much more manageable and keep the UI consistent.

I have created a separate feature request with more details here: [Link to the created Issue].

[alexhb1]

Right now collapse by series needs some extra backend work, so the specific approach that makes it into the browser is up for debate. I think the value of it wasn't entirely clear in its current form, but something broader like you mention on the author pages might be worth including.

[SergeiAK]

Thanks — "the value wasn't entirely clear in its current form" is a fair objection, and I think I can put numbers on it. I pulled these from my own library (499 author records, ~1835 author-book links).

The value is concentrated, not uniform. Share of an author's books that belong to a series, bucketed by how many books that author has:

Books per author	Authors	Books	In a series
1–19	486	1000	57.3%
20–49	6	164	64.0%
50–99	5	342	72.5%
100–199	1	121	94.2%
200+	1	208	83.7%

So for the long tail of small authors, collapsing does almost nothing — which I think is exactly why the value looks unclear when you evaluate it as a global toggle. For authors with big bibliographies, 72–94% of their books sit in series, and that's where the feature earns its place.

What it does to the list length. rows_collapsed = distinct series + standalone books, i.e. what the author page would actually render:

Author	Books	Rows collapsed	Reduction
Agatha Christie	208	46	−78%
Sergey Lukyanenko	121	24	−80%
Boris Akunin	99	27	−73%
Glen Cook	59	12	−80%
Stephen King	73	34	−53%

208 entries down to 46. On a phone that's the difference between scrolling ~50 screens and seeing most of the author at once. Sorting doesn't substitute for it: no available sort puts the volumes of one series together and keeps the series themselves in a sensible order, so the volumes of a single series stay scattered through the flat list.

It isn't a niche case. The 7 authors with 50+ books hold 671 of those 1835 author-book links — over a third of the catalogue sits behind exactly the view that doesn't work today. (My library also has duplicate author records — "Agatha Christie" and "Christie Agatha" are separate — so once merged the concentration is higher still: Christie is really 222 books, King 107, Lukyanenko 190.)

What I'm actually asking for. I understand from #1958/#1960 that series aren't a first-class entity yet and that collapsing today is client-side over a loaded page, which doesn't survive cursor pagination. I'm not asking for a client-side hack now. My ask is narrower: when the shared browser layer is designed here, please keep author-scoped series collapsing in the shape of the contract, so it can be switched on once the membership model lands — rather than having to retrofit it into a browser that assumed a flat list.

Happy to test on the numbers above whenever there's something to try.