Yet Another PWA JNC Client

[sniper_samurai]

@sniper_samurai Edge is now showing the same glitch as Chrome so it must be an issue with Chromium rather than any one browser.

[Crimson Wise]

Yeah, anything using Chromium 102 or newer from what I can tell. My main impression is that it's a bug in Chromium itself.

I gave it a try to see what it could be, and if I could find a workaround, but didn't. Need to give it another, otherwise I guess I'll report a bug.

[Tube]

Hey, I have recently been unable to select text for copy pasting. Issue persists both on Firefox and Chrome on Windows 11. However, a friend told me he can copy and paste snippets of text no problem, so the problem very much might be in something I am doing. Is this an issue that has appeared before that would have some known possible solutions?

[Crimson Wise]

No changes from my side at least, and I'm able to copy/paste on desktop (MacOS - Safari/Firefox.) Note that it only works via mouse, using touch is treated as swiping pages which is why you can't select text on mobile.

[Tube]

It could be that my laptop's touchscreen is messing this up somehow then. It worked fine on my desktop (now out of commission), but it does not work with my laptop. Mouse and touch work differently though (can't change pages with cicking and dragging mouse etc) but neither allows for selection of text.

[Crimson Wise]

I have released an update to the app, and changed hosting from Netlify to Cloudflare Pages. While it's a relatively substantial update internally, it's not so much externally, but there are a few things:

• Finally added a button to scroll to the top in the Home tab.
• The reader now supports something I call "Bus Mode", that blurs the images in case, e.g., you happen to be in public transport. Can be activated via the eye-looking button in the reader toolbar.
• Some pages were reorganized, in particular, the Releases and Series tabs.

Other than that, it should be faster and less glitchy, but let me know in case of things broken.

(At least it doesn't seem to be updating automatically to the new version in my iPhone, that I had to connect it to my laptop and hard refresh it...)

[Tube]

Only the first and the last parts are readable:

Not sure if bug or API reasons. Other series are fine.

[Crimson Wise]

@Tube Thanks, the expiration information was missing for those parts. I guess it's a bug in the data, since I don't see that to be the case in other series.

In any case, updated the app to handle it. Fixed on version v240326.dfea683 - to force an update you can reload the page (which starts the app update in the background) and then reload the page again 10 seconds later, that should be the latest version.

[Tube]

By the way, is there a way to prevent more than two columns on desktop screen sizes?

I can usually manage with a different window size, but it would be nice if there was a setting you could tick that would make it limit to two columns, no matter screen size. Extra points if the two columns used the extra screen real estate to be wider, but not even necessary. I'd rather have a maximum of two columns at once, even if they would be no wider than they are here with four.

[Iseguy]

@Tube They've said in the past that it's tuned so the pages have an A4 aspect ratio, which I'm sure works great for their screens. Personally, I would aim for a certain number of Em's per column so the number of columns goes down as the font size goes up and the words per line stays roughly constant.

[Crimson Wise]

It's the images in particular the problem. If I don't keep the aspect ratio they start clipping. And fixing that becomes a pain I hadn't have much interest to solve since doesn't apply much to me (I read from my phone/tablet, so it's usually a single column).

That said, I do have control on the number of columns so I have added a setting for that, although it will keep the aspect ratio. It's in the Reader settings once the app upgrades for you.

(And with this update the app goes from fully static to serverless since I needed to proxy image requests to work around CORS for caching...)

[Iseguy]

@Crimson-Wise said in Yet Another PWA JNC Client:

If I don't keep the aspect ratio they start clipping.

The trick is to explicitly set the CSS height of the .rr-image-wrapper to the height of the viewport. You would have to script it to update every time the layout changes, if that's possible in your framework of choice.

[sorvani]

Could you change part 1 to show part 1 of X for currently streaming series that have not released all parts? Or simply put it on part 1 of all series?

I can never recall without going to the series page how many parts a series is going to have, but I noticed that the part count is in the json data you show under the "info button"

    },
    "owned": true,
    "noEbook": false,
    "totalParts": 12

[Crimson Wise]

@sorvani tried at some point but I wasn't satisfied with how it fitted, so I ended up with the below.

I can never recall without going to the series page how many parts a series is going to have

I assume you're referring to the series page in the JNC's official website.

In my app you can find it in the Volume info panel: click in the three dots below the volume cover -> Information -> Parts.

[sorvani]

@Crimson-Wise said in Yet Another PWA JNC Client:

@sorvani tried at some point but I wasn't satisfied with how it fitted, so I ended up with the below.

I can never recall without going to the series page how many parts a series is going to have

I assume you're referring to the series page in the JNC's official website.

In my app you can find it in the Volume info panel: click in the three dots below the volume cover -> Information -> Parts.

Honestly I meant either. Your app does have easy ways to get there, no complaints about that. But seeing it once in the primary view would be great.

[Crimson Wise]

But seeing it once in the primary view would be great.

Yeah, I get the point. I do think the interface is a bit noisy though so I've been trying to avoid adding too much... that said,

---

Speaking of clutter, although unrelated and pretty much the reason for most of my updates this year, feature announcement: I have added offline support to the app. Anywhere you can read parts there is a fab button in the corner to enter what I call "download mode" - any parts selected will be then downloaded, and can be read from the new Offline tab even if there is no internet access.

There are some restrictions though, up to 20 parts can be downloaded, and are removed after 2 weeks.

Finally, I'm calling the whole thing "experimental" since there are glitches here and there, in particular when it comes to keeping track of progress, that I'll be sorting out as I'm able.

[Crimson Wise]

Preemptively, in case the app is dead after the maintenance, I’ll look at it on the weekend.

[pcj]

@Crimson-Wise said in Yet Another PWA JNC Client:

Preemptively, in case the app is dead after the maintenance, I’ll look at it on the weekend.

And indeed it will be. I'm told on Discord that /app/v1 went away and you need to use /app/v2 now

[Nitrousoxide]

@Crimson-Wise said in Yet Another PWA JNC Client:

Preemptively, in case the app is dead after the maintenance, I’ll look at it on the weekend.

Now that the site's back up, I can confirm that it's, indeed, broken.

Looking forward to when you get a chance to update it!

[Crimson Wise]

First attempt:

• APIs changed from an v1 endpoint to v2, but seem largely the same.
• All resources have an id now, plus the old legacyId. Events no longer have an ID though.
• Parts don't seem to have an expiration set in them, which I need. The website is showing it, so it has to be somewhere.
• Future parts are also listed in the responses, even if they aren't yet live nor content available to read.
• Thumbnails are now using a different endpoint, and no longer coming from Cloudfront, at least not directly. Images in the parts still do.
• My domains are no longer allowed via CORS, unfortunately. I guess I can pass all requests through my proxy to work around it, as I already do that with Cloudfront images.
• Progress percentages aren't available but we knew that already.

Will continue tomorrow.