New Website Feedback
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The new navigation in the reader which allows for jumping to any parts in the volume is really nice. It was very clumsy to do that with the old reader.
One request around the "follow" capability. Currently, there is no easy way to get a "List of series I'm following", which would be pretty handy to have. Could you add "Follow Status" filter on the TITLES page the same way as in CALENDAR?
Also, while I do have series I'm following, when I enter USER page, it currently says;
You do not own any books nor are you following any series.
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I like it overall. One thing I'd like for the library is the ability to see unpurchased volumes for series I've already purchased a volume in. Bookwalker has something like that and I like it a lot.
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Suggestion: Make a filter in the calendar to only show final chapters for prepubs.
Personally, I don't like reading the new book until the full thing is out, and I can read it all at once. If you could filter out to find the final section, that would make it really easy to see when the next volumes are completed.
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My first impression with the new site was not great. After digging around a bit I’m happy with the new features but still find the front page jarring. Since I mainly read through the beta app I don’t use the website to read, though I did hit the 404 problem other iOS users were having at first but seems to have been corrected. I mainly pop in to see what’s coming up and if anything new is being released.
My experience is mainly coming from using on an iPhone X, but have looked at it on my iPad and PC.
It took me a while to figure out what bothered me about the front page. At first it was the loss of the upcoming release schedule. I like the new calendar but still would be nice to see what’s coming up for that day right away.
That wasn’t all though. The problem I believe is how the site handles the mobile view. The whole page is one solid block. While the headers are there, they don’t do much to highlight the next section. On top of that everything feels too large. Covers take up almost half of the viewable area. Text runs completely edge to edge even on an iPad. There’s no negative space at all on the mobile view. I shrank the view on both devices to 75% and found it all much more visually pleasing.
The last little thing is the catch-ups. I like seeing the covers and being able to jump to the series by clicking on them but miss the fun article description that went along with it.
One technical issue I hit was a 404 error when using Google to log in on my PC, Win 10 Firefox. It still logged me in though.
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Forgot one last thing. I haven’t tested in other browsers but in iOS Safari tapping the top of the screen doesn’t return to the top of the page.
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I would be nice to see on the main page today's part releases rather than having to go to the calendar to do so.
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@DoomerX
Agreed. Navigating the new site is beyond difficult. -
Dunno if this is the right place, I only noticed it setting up series follows so I thought I'd put it here seeing as the new site is what let me notice it was a thing...
Searching under author names we have both an "Ichirou Sakaki" and an "Ichiro Sakaki", with the titles evenly split between the two spellings.
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My User page say "You do not own any books nor are you following any series.", but I am currently following several series (which is still accurate on the individual series pages).
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Really love the new site. Great job guys.
Some suggestions for enhancements: On the Title page have the following filter and under Publication Status have a filter for just on hiatus.
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Parroting other feedback, it'd really be nice to have the recent prepub part releases be shown on the main page; that is by far the #1 thing I navigate to JNC to find.
The current main page design seems focused on content tailored for people who visit once a month or less and don't read prepubs; new series, ebook releases, and print releases (current main page content) update much less frequently than prepub parts. I would guess most page hits are for people coming to read the prepubs, even if the number of unique users is somewhere lower.The image size of the "Our Latest Titles" covers is probably larger than it should be; both in the sense it's jarring and the fact it takes up front page real estate. Image sizes there really shouldn't be larger than the other sections.
Extending that, image sizes for all categories could probably be reduced and possibly margins reduced. In the old page, images were much smaller, and on my standard sized laptop screen, with a glance at a single screenshot I could take in at least some of the imagery from each of the categories (new series, recent ebooks, prepub releases, catchup announcement). In the new site, a single one of those categories takes about just about my whole laptop screen, and I'd have to scroll to view each category in isolation.
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From the calendar there is no way to open the light novel/manga page for a prepub, it always opens the part/chapter itself.
Also, not a fan of the new reader. Guess I'll keep using the old one until it's available... 👀
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Would it be possible to have an option to sort Calendar entries by release time, and then title name? I liked that in the old Releases page, the 3 PM EST releases would always be listed before the 7 PM EST releases.
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If the reader is set to display 2 pages, and there's an odd number of pages in the part, then you can't view the last page of the part.
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Yeah as some have already mentioned, I’d really like a way to change the font size for the reader. As someone who is a bit far sighted it’s much harder for me to read with this new font size. The original font size was great, I didn’t need to use my reading glasses at all, and while I can still read this new font without my readers I’m finding myself squinting much more.
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I get an error when trying to load the User page on Chrome :
An unexpected error has occurred.It loaded fine at first when I checked out the new website. Then I followed a series, which worked. After that, when I tried to load the User page, I got the error. Before I followed the series, I had no books nor followed any series (or at least that what the Library said, but I think I clicked on Follow for a series earlier in the day or possibly I unfollowed?).
On the Chrome console I get :
main-3c719f1b1782b1b4e6f9.js:1 TypeError: Cannot read property 'length' of undefined at de (e1db8c4bc8438bd33693f8d37b7349827bd4e75e.4dd45e027cb3df9742e7.js:1)And if I click on the link, this is highlighted :
iconRight:"read",color:"digital",children:r.books.length}) -
@smashman42 said in New Website Feedback:
Dunno if this is the right place, I only noticed it setting up series follows so I thought I'd put it here seeing as the new site is what let me notice it was a thing...
Searching under author names we have both an "Ichirou Sakaki" and an "Ichiro Sakaki", with the titles evenly split between the two spellings.
This is a contract issue; this author has published books via different publishers, and our contracts with each of them stipulated different romanizations for his name :(
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The new reader really needs font + resize options like the old one.
Too hard to read at 1440p
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Overall... very not impressed so far.
The new home page is very wasteful:
- As others have noted, images for the 'Our latest titles' are huge and drive all other content off the first screen on my laptop.
- 'Our latest digital releases' effectively takes up another full screen; a small bit of content is visible outside of the section, but not enough to be actually useful. Images are somewhat better but still too large; it is nice to get a better view of the cover, but not at the expense of page readability. I'd guess somewhere between half and 2/3 of the current 'latest releases' size would be optimal for all the cover images.
- And to continue the trend, 'Catchup Titles' is also effectively a full-screen section, taking up enough of the screen that there's not enough left for any other useful information. And I also miss the article describing the catch-up titles.
- For that matter, is there ever going to be a 'News' section - for example, the articles announcing new acquisitions before they start prepub on the site?
- The improved Calendar section is no substitute for taking the upcoming titles off the front page.
- Finally, the new page is just ugly from a typographic standpoint. The font is highly generic sans-serif and poorly kerned; the enforced justification on body text also leads to poor word spacing and reduced legibility.
Onward to the Titles page...
- The new search/filtering options are very nice, but the heavy formatting draws attention away from the main content showing the new titles. At the very least I'd remove the boldface formatting from the text and drop the font a point size or two.
- The title headers are way too large, overshadowing the book descriptions. I'd bring it down at least one or two point sizes (it looks like it's about 24 pt, I'd bring it down to about 14 pt).
Individual title's page:
- Overall, better than the other sections of the site so far. Typography on the page header is better, though the menu is still lousy and I'd prefer a body text font that isn't so generic.
- As with the Titles page, the sidebar's heavy formatting is distracting; I'd drop the boldface text on the individual segments and maybe the headers.
Calendar:
- As with the other sections, the sidebar's heavy formatting could be toned down some.
- The strong coloring and large size of the buttons for each line ('Novel', 'Manga', 'Out Now', 'Chapter <x>') are very distracting and draw the eye away from the most important information, the item title. When you load the page, the first thing the eye jumps to is the Novel/Manga labels, because they're large blocks of bright solid colors. The eye should first go to the title, then the secondary information. I'd suggest either making the buttons just text, making them smaller, or desaturating the color.
- The design format is not bad, but it's not as space-efficient as it could be; I'd bump everything down a point size to show more on screen.
- Speaking of showing more on screen, the way it starts with only the current day's titles is very irritating; if I miss one or two titles from the end of the day, I could just scroll back up a bit on the old page, but with the new page I have to hit 'Show older entries' and wait for a reload.
- Clicking on a segment that isn't released should take you to the title's home page, instead of doing nothing.
- Some of the titles seem to be expiring early? For example, since it's at the top of the month's list: She's the Cutest Vol. 1 was released 2/1 and normally prereads would expire a month later, but clicking through shows it already expired.
The reader... oh dear ghu, the reader. The prose formatting is poor and cannot be changed. Layout options are either a too-cluttered multipage view, or a single page view that's far too wide for legibility. https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability Setting changes do not consistently apply when clicked, and sometimes require a page reload. The ability to switch parts from within the reader is a nice touch. And I agree with another thread - being able to copy and paste a segment from a part would make it much easier to offer corrections.
User section... overall a big improvement. A couple of suggestions:
- In addition to the 'New Books' section, it would be helpful to be able to sort the entire library in chronological order by individual volume.
- It would also be helpful if clicking on a title would take you to that title's page; if I'm looking in my library and realize I missed picking up a volume, that would make it much easier to grab it.
...Cats are the proof of a higher purpose to the universe.
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@Travis-Butler
Wow, this is impressive, I had a few things that I was going to comment on, but this post really takes the cake. I do agree that the news feed being gone is unfortunate, but what I will say is that while the catch-ups do take up a lot of space, I am really glad that this was added. It makes it extremely more efficient to find the catch-up titles.“Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.“- Stephen Hawking
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@mlindner said in New Website Feedback:
And even all the text formatting is broken. For example italic text is no longer italicized.
Yeah, I'm not sure why https://labs.j-novel.club/embed/xbembed-1.0.0-1613335146735.css needs font-weight:normal; font-style:normal under a * rule, but it's definitely breaking the default font-style of em elements in the reader in my browser...
Edit: Incidentally I'll add I like the smaller font size being used in the reader... Still getting used to it flipping two pages instead of just one though.
