New Website Feedback
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@MasterLillyclaw The J-Novel Heart sub-label is Shoujo/Romance stories. Stuff like Bibliophile Princess, Marielle Clarac, Bakarina, etc.
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@TheGrimLich Thank you for confirming! Is it mentioned somewhere on the site and I'm just blind, or is it more of a "figure it out/see it mentioned/people just know by now" sort of thing?
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This is super exciting, except it will not let me log in, I just get an error code page. Perhaps this is just because I am on my phone?
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I would be good if there was a release time on epubs as well.
Seirei Gensouki comes out today, but when I go to the sections where it is (like the user library or the series page), it doesn't have a time, just today's date.
I have to go back to the current website home page to see that it comes out in 3 hours. -
@MasterLillyclaw It's been a few months since the sub-label was established, so the announcement might've been pushed off the front page. I'm not sure if there's somewhere else on the site it's been announced, though; that would be a question for site staff.
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I find how the library has "NEW!" on some books to be highly annoying. There doesn't appear to be any way to get rid of it, and it's pretty much useless information (at least to me). I rarely pre-order books from JNC, and if I wanted to be alerted of when they came out, getting an e-mail like you do when a pre-ordered book comes out on Kobo would be far nicer. And even if I did really want the library to highlight the newly released books, I wouldn't want it to keep showing me for who-knows how long. Showing it the first time that the page loaded with them would be more than enough. It would probably be more useful if it showed newly available books (so it included ones you just bought rather than just ones you bought who-knows when that just became available), though overall, I'd just prefer that it wasn't a thing.
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I noticed a rendering bug on iOS (Firefox/Safari): when the sidebar menu is open, the modal overlay overlaps the sidebar, so the sidebar can't be interacted with. Any attempt to do so just closes the sidebar. (Screenshot on Firefox mobile, screenshot on Safari mobile, expected behavior from Firefox desktop.) Not a CSS expert so I can't identify the issue, sorry.
Apart from that and some of the other issues already mentioned above, I'm a big fan in general of the new design and functionality. Thanks, Daiz and co.!
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@ennithree Can confirm this problem as well on my iPhone.
Also would like to ask if it's possible to allow the viewing on the desktop version of the website on chrome. When I click the "Request Desktop Site" button on the Chrome app, the website looks the same as before.
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Just a request to the developers of the new site and to JNC itself.
It would be best to prioritize the reader rather than anything else right now since the main function of the website is to read prepubs.
It would be good to have the reader up within the week so people would start using the beta site more than the current one. Of course I'm not expecting the reader to be completely done within the week. I'm more hoping of a beta reader that is slightly better than the current one.Just a simple one for now that deals with the top 2 problems of the current reader.
- The Dark Mode only darkens the web page and not the reader itself.
- The reader does not fully utilize the space of the whole page. Even if you turn on the Double Page Display it's still not fully utilizing the whole web page.
At the minimum at least fix the Dark Mode so that we could say that we have a new beta reader which is slightly better than the current one.
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@BartzBB I'd rather they take the time to overhaul the reader completely rather that apply a few bandaids. In addition to your points, I'd also like more font/spacing/margin options, for example. In the meantime, Mercury Reader (Chrome/Firefox) or Safari's built-in reader view work well enough for me on desktop.
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@Nosgoroth
I agree with you that band-aid solutions aren't good. But currently the beta site is useless without a reader. Even just the bare minimum improvements would do so long as they place a beta reader so users can then properly use the beta and give more feed backs. -
@BartzBB you seem to think that throwing in a proper reader would make it usable, some people happily reading stuff on it, developers getting feedback from actual usage, win-win, etc.
tl:dr: No, they do not need to prioritize getting more testers on board now.
My view on it is very different:
- People don't report that much (at least looking at forums. Maybe support@ gets extensive reports hourly).
- Some parts have long-ass words, mostly screams (like "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa", but over 1 line long) that don't wrap and flow to the next page instead of next line. This was brought app on forums few years ago, with Sam certainly seeing it and me commenting on what exactly happens and how to fix it. People only re-report it
like once a year(maybe they don't, cant find more recent threads now, which is even worse because the bug is still there) and surely more encounter that. Incidentally, it can be fixed without any side-effects just by adding a simple CSS rule. - Another example is this thread. The bug's been around for years and I'm pretty sure it affects pretty much any user without lightning fast internet, best seen on the bakarina example linked (correct me if I'm wrong on any user part) but looking at forums you would think it's just a one-off thing (see chocolatkey's response despite being here for at least 1.5 years). Some may've stopped reporting things after years of things net getting fixed and the plan is to stop doing not getting fixed part but you still won't get a lot of people rush to volunteer beta-testing just because of you told them that somewhere on Discord.
- Right now you can see repeated report of app pretty much not working in dark mode and eating up lines near images. One core function almost not working, and some of content being silently left out. This is how broken things have to be to get things reported properly. And if you need public testing to notice core features being totally broken or site looking like this (3 screenshots in a spoiler below) on a browser with 10% market share and/or smaller screen you need to rethink your approach on development.
- Some parts have long-ass words, mostly screams (like "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa", but over 1 line long) that don't wrap and flow to the next page instead of next line. This was brought app on forums few years ago, with Sam certainly seeing it and me commenting on what exactly happens and how to fix it. People only re-report it
- This is not a beta site, despite what title and domain name says *. Beta is supposed to have close to full functionality and maybe some (or a lot of) bugs. Aside from major issues reported above (follow mostly not working, good portion of old timers not being able to access the user page etc) it completely lacks some of functionality (like parts being listed on the volume page) and overall it just doesn't work for the purpose of opening site and reading new part of your favorite/most hated novel thingy without going to calendar and scrolling all the way down because month is ending already (for all those 0 people who here who want my subjective opinion on how it's supposed to be: https://streamable.com/xyokg5, plus push notifs, some people like those).
Right now asking people to report all bugs (and also check this whole thread to make sure you aren't repeating) is like dumping some MTL garbage and asking someone to edit (I mean, some WN TL's do that but JNC was supposed to be about getting quality product, not suffering through subpar delivery. Maybe not the right comparison because you can't polish an MTL while this site may be different and react native app apparently wasn't.)
I do hope that this thread was more about giving a preview to curious people and maybe some testing later, not about serious testing now.
No one's really stopping you from testing the hell out of it and making whatever suggestions you want but don't be surprised if you're in a very small minority.
Personally, I planned to mostly stick to shitposting from the start.
* If some JNC developer does think it is beta in the current state I'm gonna excuse myself from those threads here for a while. (Admitedly, I would likely call it beta.j-novel.club without thinking, but preview., nightly., new. or .dev might be better).
- People don't report that much (at least looking at forums. Maybe support@ gets extensive reports hourly).
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@_08 said in Beta Website Feedback:
Some parts have long-ass words, mostly screams (like "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa", but over 1 line long) that don't wrap and flow to the next page instead of next line. This was brought app on forums few years ago, with Sam certainly seeing it and me commenting on what exactly happens and how to fix it. People only re-report it like once a year and surely more encounter that. Incidentally, it can be fixed without any side-effects just by adding a simple CSS rule.
Assuming the software supports it, the simplest fix is simply to separate every letter using zero-width breaking spaces, thus forcibly adding word-wrap beakpoints.
The CSS rule can be finicky.
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@piisfun said in Beta Website Feedback:
The CSS rule can be finicky.
[citation needed]
The way I see it, you just addword-wrap: break-word;globally to the reader and long words just start wrapping while short words just stay the same (yes, I did try it in the reader).Your "simple fix" requires instructing all the editors about some weird quirk of site and having them actually catch that each time (while keeping in mind possibility of small screens and large fonts).
edit: Even if it is "finicky" someone should've said that instead of making me feel like I'm reporting straight to /dev/null. And either way, it's irrelevant to the point about people not reporting actual bugs and seeing little response if they do.
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It would be nice if there were a way to go from your library to the page for a book series (e.g. so that you can buy another book in the series). Right now, it seems like the only way to get to the book series' page is to go to the "Titles" page and look for it there rather than being able to get to it from your library.
BTW, the fact that the download link in the library stays highlighted after you've downloaded the book is rather nice, since it's easier to keep track of which book you downloaded last if you're downloading multiple in a row.
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It's nice to see there is a flag for titles that are on "hiatus", but... right now on pages for the affected titles there is absolutely no mention of this.
Like for example: https://beta.j-novel.club/titles/novel/there-was-no-secret-evil-fighting-organization-srsly-so-i-made-one-myself
This page still happily mentions "More volumes to come in the future!" at the bottom, while realistically this will never happen (afaik the series was cancelled by the Japanese publisher).
A message like "This series is on hiatus (beyond our control). We don't know if there will be more volumes in the future, unfortunately." would be better I think.
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It would be helpful if when you go to the User and go to the Library if you click on something it brings you to that page about the book
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@GHDpro There's the same problem with Ao Oni but it's even more certain that that series won't be continued since JNC were the one who decided not to license further.
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@chocolatkey said in Beta Website Feedback:
@Drone205 In-app purchases will most likely never be a thing due to the Apple/Google tax
Could that be circumvented by not having the option to purchase credits, but still being able to spend existing credits on an account? With no money changing hands, it should just be exempt.
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@EmpactWB I think that might not pass Apple's review process. You wouldn't even be able to direct users to the website to buy credits.
Something like adding books to a wishlist should be fine, though.
