Old website and app have been retired as of March 14!

myskaros

https://twitter.com/jnovelclub/status/1498357883410567171

Hi everyone! We have retired the old website and the old app as of March 14, 2022!

Links to old.j-novel.club no longer work, and the old app no longer loads parts. We have been steadily making improvements to our site and backend infrastructure, and it's necessary to retire our old technology to prevent issues related to outdated code calls. This is related to @chocolatkey's post regarding the old API being retired as well (link here). This does mean that we'll be able to roll out new improvements to our website and app in the future, though!

Thanks for your support! Read more books!

Also check out the meme version of the announcement pic ;x

Terabyte

That's too bad since I still don't like the new web reader. It's wider compared to the older one and it makes it easier to lose which line you're on. 🙄

jpwong

@terabyte I know, I'm still waiting for the half sized reader mode on the new site, but sounds like there's more critical work still being done there so there's no dev cycles available to look into quality of life updates.

If you shrink your browser window horizontally enough it switches you to a more mobile looking layout that looks close enough to something that will work for anyone who wants a reader the size of the old site reader though.

Terabyte

@jpwong I have no idea how the website is coded but would it take too much time decreasing a width value...? 🙄

There is already a double page option, the single page just need to use half of that value instead of the current 2/3(?).

myskaros

@terabyte If that width value ends up breaking the rest of the reader because we didn't do thorough testing, I assume you would be less happy than you are now D:

Terabyte

@myskaros Ops, I edited while you replied.

There is already a double page option, the single page just need to use half of that value instead of the current 2/3(?).

poisonedbite

Why don't you retire the crappy new app, and go back to the one that looks nice and searches properly?

myskaros

@terabyte Programming is very rarely as easy as "just do X" and everything works out magically.

@poisonedbite What problems are you encountering with the search in the app?

poisonedbite

@myskaros There doesn't seem to be any way to keep my search settings. The old one simply defaulted to a-z and novels, but it's still better than having to manually unclick everything I don't want every time I want to search something.

myskaros

@poisonedbite Are you talking about the old website? Like this search?

spoiler

jpwong

@terabyte The only way I could see it maybe working right now is if they had a separate page where they could force the iframe for the reader to be thinner, but who knows how that would actually turn out on different browsers.

If I pop out a browser window and resize it so it's about 700-800px wide I get this layout which seems to be pretty decent as a stand in for now.

spoiler

Terabyte

@myskaros said in Old website and app retiring on March 14!:

@terabyte Programming is very rarely as easy as "just do X" and everything works out magically.

Yeah, I know. I do program myself (though in PHP).

It just seems odd it's hard to add a new width when the site already supports multiple ones (and is responsive, too). 😕

piisfun

@terabyte said in Old website and app retiring on March 14!:

@myskaros said in Old website and app retiring on March 14!:

@terabyte Programming is very rarely as easy as "just do X" and everything works out magically.

Yeah, I know. I do program myself (though in PHP).

It just seems odd it's hard to add a new width when the site already supports multiple ones (and is responsive, too). 😕

I just poked it with the source code tool...

The CSS class names are all auto-generated.

.ftutoe9 {
  box-shadow: 0 0 .5rem rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.16);
  max-width: 1152px !important;
}

That is the actual rule controlling the width, at least for me.

So, yeah, maybe a bit more complicated than normal.

Semi-off topic:

spoiler

@jpwong There is no iframe. All the dynamic effects have to do with how max⁠-⁠width property is handled.

jpwong

@piisfun It's not within the reader itself, but each of the parts pages uses an iframe to actually load in the reader from the labs.j-novel.club URL. I was thinking that to not break the reader code itself, a page that could force that frame to be a certain width so that the reader loads up in mobile layout would probably be easier to do since a real long term solution could be a ways out still.

<iframe src="https://labs.j-novel.club/embed/61c0fa431ebc15a07fc2c85e" allowfullscreen="" aria-label="Embedded Reader" class="f14gnmhj f45h"></iframe>

piisfun

@jpwong said in Old website and app retiring on March 14!:

@piisfun It's not within the reader itself, but each of the parts pages uses an iframe to actually load in the reader from the labs.j-novel.club URL. I was thinking that to not break the reader code itself, a page that could force that frame to be a certain width so that the reader loads up in mobile layout would probably be easier to do since a real long term solution could be a ways out still.
<iframe src="https://labs.j-novel.club/embed/61c0fa431ebc15a07fc2c85e" allowfullscreen="" aria-label="Embedded Reader" class="f14gnmhj f45h"></iframe>

Oh, didn't see it.
The sizing code is outside of it.

You can't actually target anything inside an iframe with code: security feature.

Though it doesn't stop you from deleting them... and most ads use them...

ShipTeaser

I'm sad, as I still prefer the old reader...

Oh well, time to get used to the new one I guess

Eminent

Yeah, I feel like the single page option should be the size of an actual book page like in the old reader. Just doesn't feel nice to have to move your eyes across the page. Couldn't they make the width an option in the reader settings menu?

Kilocron

Many good memories with that site/reader.... RIP!

rkkn

I don't use the old reader, but I do click on the old site, once a month. Since that's the quickest way to access the little blurb about the month's catchups. Why is it missing from the new site??

myskaros

@rkkn You can see it in our blog, there's a link on the bottom of the page:

https://j-novel.club/blog