New Website Feedback

[Kyon7]

@strangeattractor Yes, the animation on the main page is SUPER annoying.

[Khaos]

When in the list of titles or in the series details, would it be possible to get a larger cover image when clicked on? Don't know if full size would be possible but even if it is just to the same size as the images on the homepage would be nice.

[crowdcontrol]

Is it possible to redeem Mangas on the beta website? I noticed when I tried to buy Bookworm Manga, it allow me to redeem using credits

[Kalessin]

This post is deleted!

[Rahul Balaggan]

@crowdcontrol

Unfortunately not.

said in Manga Ebook FAQ (UPDATE: 21 August 2019 - KINDLE BOOKS ONLINE):

Q3: What about premium editions? I've got credits to spend!
A3: At the moment, there are no manga premium editions. This may change in future if we can get DRM-Free distribution approval, but will be on a title by title basis. Please note that no additional content will be in any premium editions vs. the standard ebook.

Q4: The site says I can get premium.
A4: This is a known bug with the site. We're working on a way to disable premium when it's not available and apologise for the inconvenience and confusion.

[MasterLillyclaw]

@Rahul-Balaggan Is that only pointed out in that members-only-access thread you linked? That seems like the sort of information that should be accessible to people before they purchase a membership, not after, especially since the bug makes it appear that they’re purchasable to a non-member.

Like in “What is a Premium E-book credit and how do I get them?” on the FAQ: say “Any Premium E-book can be purchased for 1 Premium Credit. [This applies to novels only; manga cannot currently be purchased with Premium Credits.]” Or something like that.

Even after the bug is fixed and the premium button isn’t available, I think that would lead people to ask “why is there no premium button for manga? Do they take Premium Credits?” So it would still be worth being written out somewhere non-members can see.

[Rahul Balaggan]

@MasterLillyclaw

Yes, it is in the members only section.

[chocolatkey]

@Khaos That is planned

[FalseAim]

I've been using the calendar page a bit recently and have a few comments:

• The titles on the calendar aren't the full titles of the series, but instead nicknames. There is lots of empty horizontal space for each title, so I think the full names should be used.

• A few of the releases have no volume listed: A Lily Blooms in Another World, Bibliophile Princess (manga), The Temptation of Marielle Clarac, and A Very Fairy Apartment all just say "Volume" with no number. Ascendance of a Bookworm is listed as "Bookworm Part 3" in the title and "Volume 2" as the volume, when I would think it should be "Part 3 Volume 2" in the volume column. Similarly, there is a listing for "A Very Fairy Apartment 4", where I assume 4 is actually the volume number, and shouldn't be part of the title.

• It was mentioned earlier that there is a new format for links, and that the old links will just redirect. The new calendar still uses this old link style, while the titles page uses the new style. As it is, some of the links redirect incorrectly. Grimgar, Marielle Clarac, Korokoro Connect, and Lily Blooms all redirect to the series page, not the individual volume. Bookworm Part 3 Volume 1 redirects to the overall first volume. Parts that aren't yet out redirect to a 404.

• It was also mentioned that the limited options for filtering are by design, but I'm going to request that be changed. I think all options should be available (club and heart, hiatus as its own category, followed and not followed) and these options should be checkboxes instead of radio buttons. There's no reason we shouldn't be able to mix and match our sorting. Also, all options available for filtering on the titles page should be available on the calendar page, and vice versa

[LegitPancake]

@FalseAim Lily Blooms in particular is a one-shot so it shouldn't have a volume number.

[FalseAim]

@LegitPancake Good point. It should probably leave that section blank, or say "One-Shot". If all it says is "Volume" it just looks like a mistake, and I wouldn't assume it means it's a one-shot. Not that one-shots are all that common on here, but still.

[hopebestman]

Do you wanna hear good things as well idk but i was checking AoaB's page and i saw volume 10 and other future volumes. Their JP released date and their cover etc. That was nice touch. The following series' future volumes it would be useful time to time and now we dont need to check wiki fandom or other sites.

Although i have one question, are those full volumes or just volumes that you lisecened but not traslated?

[Rahul Balaggan]

@hopebestman said in Beta Website Feedback:

Although i have one question, are those full volumes or just volumes that you lisecened but not traslated?

I can’t comment on whether all those volumes have already been licensed, however the volumes listed on the beta are volumes that have been released in Japan so far.

[stardf29]

Having all those JP volumes shown is nice for various informational purposes, but I think there should be a toggle to hide them for those who are spoiler-sensitive and don't want to look at later covers. (Or go the opposite way and hide them by default and have a button that shows them, whichever folks think works better.)

[Sylvanader]

I was so excited to see that the new site layout was being worked on. After poking around and using it for a while I wanted to point out a few things. I'm primarily using the dark theme while looking at everything.

Sorry for the wall of text.

General
With the heavy reliance on JavaScript I'd recommend showing a warning that it should be enabled to browse the site.
In the dark theme its rather odd that the J-Novel club brand color is not used at all.

Desktop:
1. Home
The overall layout of this page is quite nice and visually pleasing. Unfortunately it lost the "Coming Soon!" section of the original version. Being a landing page for the main site it was quite convenient to see what was released today and if anything I was reading came out. Since following a series is now an option, when a user is logged it would be nice to have the latest 5 updates for series you follow.

2. Titles
The filtering options that are provided seem to have somewhat odd constraints even from a potential querying standpoint. Overall the use of radials only make sense for "Sort By" as it is only possible to sort a list one way at a time. But, the use of radials for the different filters don't make as much sense as you can technically apply more than one filter at a time. By switching to using check boxes and what I'll call "additive filtering" you can remove the "Show All" option from each filter category.
I'll use "Title Type" as an example. Start by replacing "Novels Only" and "Manga Only" with "Novels" and "Manga". If nothing is selected you can potentially end up with a statement like

SELECT * FROM [titles] t

When you do select something you can build the alternate statement of.

SELECT * FROM [titles] t WHERE t.[TitleType] = "Novels"

Further still if you have multiple

SELECT * FROM [titles] t WHERE t.[TitleType] = "Novels" OR "Manga"

Using "Title Type" as an the example may be a bit overkill, but "Publication Label" and "Publication Status" could benefit a lot from the change. For "Publication Label" if you add "J-Novel Club" as another option it will give users the option to view only the main label novels or the Heart label novels. If it is decided that a new label will be created by J-Novel Club the query logic won't change, just another "OR" would be added. In turn this would allow for a filter that could ie. see "J-Novel Club" and "J-Novel Not-A-Fake-label" effectively excluding "J-Novel Heart".
On the other hand, "Publication Status" could be simplified. You'd now have the options of "Completed" or "On Hiatus". This would allow the user to filter for explicitly "On Hiatus" novels instead of being forced to see both without losing that option.
Since it exists, and is marked on the series pages it may be worth it to add a filter for "Currently Publishing" to the "Publication Status". If that is on a volume basis instead of a series basis when querying, ignore the suggestion.
Lastly, I've been unable to find a straight search bar on the page. Hope I am safe assuming that that is a future addition, otherwise it is painful going page by page trying to find the series I'm looking for.

3. Series Page
Existing Volume Entry

Once again the style of the page looks so good, but it can also busy at times. Overall each volume entry has so many font sizes, colors, button sizes, and button styles that its tricky to really focus on just one thing. By shrinking the "Currently Publishing!" tag and the "Show More" button to be in line with the size of the three other tags should help with the variability in sizes. As for the colors, adjusting the saturation of "Read Now" and the general "Subscription" color to match "Digital" could help with the appearance to a point. The "Subscription" color might simply be too bright for reducing the saturation to help, as it is hard to read the white text that is placed on top.
If I'm interpreting the intention of "Currently Publishing!" correctly it seems redundant. You can see the list of parts currently available and a non-expired publication date which would imply that the volume is currently being translated hence the tag being unnecessary. If I'm misinterpreting the "Parts Available" section and not "Currently Publishing!" then ignore the recommendation.

Modified Volume Entry

The cluttered feeling is another thing to be addressed. By allowing the volume name and synopsis text to take up the vertical height of volume preview before the eliding a few problems can be solved. The amount of plain text can balance out the variability of the other items by pushing them into the margins instead of intruding on the synopsis. The amount of white text also helps balancing the variability by establishing a point that has fixed styling. The additional text also gives the user a bit more to work with when reading the synopsis rather than being cut off at a single sentence. Next, by forcing the "Show More" button to the lower corner it will stop moving horizontally allowing the entry to feel like it is growing in length instead of overall size. This will also make hitting the "Show Less" button easier as it would still be in the same vertical column.
The last issue with the volume entry is again with the "Currently Publishing!" tag. Assuming that it is necessary and not redundant, it might make sense to move it to the area with "Read Now" and "Buy". By doing so with the previous suggestions the entry can effectively be broken down into three sections, Book information (cover, title, synopsis), Release information (Digital, Physical, Prepub), and Reading Information (Read Now, Buy, Own, In Progress).

Moving on from the biggest part of this page, I want to look at the header area. For the most part it is good, but the "Discuss on Forums" button feels odd. To comment on the forums you need to be logged in, so having it follow the pattern of the "Follow" button would help. Ie. showing "Login to Discuss". Another thing about the button is that on series with more than one volume it only points to the discussion page of the first volume. This is fine for one off novels. This would require some changes to the forum layout, but having a sub forum for each series would give that button a perfect landing point for anyone to discuss the series on the different volumes.

The part of this page that feels off is the legend. It's useful if you can see it, however it goes off the screen after 4 volumes. Unfortunately, I don't have an recommendations related to that.

4. Calendar
The filter recommendations made for the Titles page and the color recommendations made for the Series pages apply here. There also appears to be a bug in "Followed Titles Only" where it can only find Manga that are followed and not Novels.

As for the rest of the page, the amount of information being presented at once is a bit overwhelming. Having this page default to showing the release for the next 7 days from today gives it a better short term use as you will start on today's date rather than the first of the month. This is not to say the full month view is useless. Having it as an option that you can switch to allows for the effective long term planning like it currently offers.

5. User
This page is fine for the most part. It'd be nice if the volumes showed their proper names rather than "Volume X". It'd also be nice if clicking the volume name lead to the Series Page so that you could read the synopsis if you wanted to.

Other than those nit picks there are simply two bugs I found. One is in regards to the Member tag. When you are a "Premium" member it shows the user as a "Regular" member. The other is the User icon, if the user name is too long it will reduce the width of the Icon. The best solution to that would probably be to elided the user name if it reaches that point.

Mobile
2. Titles
The "Back" button that appears in the header appears to be redundant as it functions identically to the "Previous" button on the page proper.
3. Series Page
The business of the volume entries are actually worse in mobile than it is in desktop, but that is probably due to the nature of mobile devices. The only thing I can really recommend is moving the "In Progress" tag to join the other bits of Reading Information.
When comparing this layout to the desktop version, it appears that the "Currently Publishing!" tag has been renamed to "In Progress". This should probably be standardized. Also the "Show More" button expands downwards on desktop but on an Android browser it expands upwards requiring the user to scroll up to read the text.
Lastly, I understand that screen space is precious, but maybe showing a little more than half a sentence from the synopsis would be nice.
4. Calendar
In the mobile view the information overload is even worse as you need to scroll through double the length of the desktop page to get to the same point. Once again starting with a week view solve the problem for the most part.

[hopebestman]

In tittles area, i couldnt find "search by name" area or "followed" area. When i wanna go the a series that i know its name, what should i do? Also, in calender i have a problem. Im following many series and i can see that some of them are in the calender. For example, Lazy Dungeon Master, Ascendance of a Bookworm or Series of Marielle Clarac but when i click the followed tittles only, i only see Marielle's series, cant see the other two.

[Tiko424]

It would be nice to be able to see the Version number of the book along with a stats of when the book was last updated in the user profile under your owned books. also if you are following it in your user profile it would be nice if you could get to the series though there even if you don't own one of the books yet. having a way to link to it though there saves time for looking for it in the future

maybe this could be automated as well by adding the version to the file for example..

ascendance-of-a-bookworm-part-2-volume-2-ver1.0.epub

[Tiko424]

This post is deleted!

[Sylvanader]

@hopebestman If it's worth anything your follow list is on the user page which also has a "search by name". Also I saw a similar thing in the calendar. My hunch was only followed Manga show up not followed Novels, and looking at your issue reinforces that.

[hopebestman]

@Sylvanader but i cant go the the page. In user side, its only shows that the books i bought.