New Website Feedback
-
Is there some kind of estimate when the new reader will be usable? It's still not usable for me (can't scroll quickly with keyboard, last page of chapter not viewable/readable, among other issues).
-
@daiz said in New Website Feedback:
The new home sidebar looks pretty bad, IMO.
You have this whole design consisting of filmstrips, and you slap a sidebar next to all of it?
Why not just add an additional strip? It would look a lot less busy-design wise.
Too many entries? Well how about focusing on delivering more precise and relevant information to the user? A reason many liked the old sidebar is because it provided part release information on the homepage, and that's you could have focused a strip on. How about latest released parts? And if the user is logged in and following series, latest released parts for the series the user follows?
As an unfiltered show-all, the sidebar is literally just a worse version of the full calendar page, so it'd make sense to provide something more focused - and in this case it could be focused on recently released stuff that's already out, as the calendar is better serving the purpose of what's coming up, so link to that for that.
Also, why is the "latest titles" strip limited to just five entries again? It used to show all new licenses. I know there was the issue at one point where it got to less than five titles and the thumbnails got huge, but the solution to that shouldn't be setting the amount of titles shown to a fixed amount but rather just enforcing a max height or something. Or just set it to a five title minimum but don't cap the maximum.
I disagree. The sidebar was one of the best aspects of the old site and should absolutely stay. (IMO they should get rid of the rest of the front page and have just a "news" section and the "coming soon" sidebar take up most of the page.)
A lot of modern site designers have obsession of appearance over function. "Cluttered" is way better than "looks pretty". Websites aren't artwork, they're a user interface.
If you're going to modify the sidebar, personalize it, show only titles that people are currently following, but it should just function like the old sidebar IMO as that was almost perfect (though I'd suggest to make it scrolling and autoload additional titles as you scroll rather than having to click a button repeatedly to show additional days titles).
-
On the new reader, I really don't like the fact that it is showing two pages side-by-side (or 1 way too large page).
Is there a way to change page width on the reader ?
-
@manusdei A thinner single-page option will be added soon
-
@mlindner The point I was making wasn't to get rid of the functionality provided by the sidebar, but rather that adding a sidebar when you could just use an extra filmstrip on a page that's already all about filmstrips is unnecessary extra clutter.
-
@daiz said in New Website Feedback:
@mlindner The point I was making wasn't to get rid of the functionality provided by the sidebar, but rather that adding a sidebar when you could just use an extra filmstrip on a page that's already all about filmstrips is unnecessary extra clutter.
No, what's clutter is the presentation - too little white space and the elements are a bit too large, making the whole thing look cramped and butted too closely against the filmstrips.
Doing the information as a sidebar best suits both use cases I can see for the front page:
- The filmstrip design appears to be focused on presenting 'new' stuff - an introduction to the site and its titles for new users, presenting new announcements/titles for current and new users, showing new final volume releases, catchup series.
- However, this information is useful once, for the most part, for current users; they know the existing titles, and showing new acquisitions and new releases is only meaningful the first time or two they're shown. The rest of the time, it's effectively dead space.
- For current users, the important stuff is the stuff that's regularly changing or needs regular access. Site news (one thing I think is still missing from the new design). New part releases. Direct access to the catchup titles is arguably convenient.
If we put the new part releases as part of the filmstrips, we create a problem. Putting it at the top interferes with the main purpose of the filmstrips, selling the site to new users. Putting it at the bottom means current users have to scroll through lots of dead space to get to the only part that's meaningful to them on a daily basis.
Putting it on the sidebar strikes a good balance. It's right there and easy to access for the current user, but it doesn't crowd out or overshadow the showpiece filmstrips for new users.
...Cats are the proof of a higher purpose to the universe.
-
@travis-butler The thing is, you could always show different things depending on if it's a new visitor, a returning visitor, a logged in user, a logged in subscriber, etc. Rather than trying to cram everything for everyone into a single view, adapting the content depending on the viewer would be a lot better solution.
For current users, the important stuff is the stuff that's regularly changing or needs regular access.
And what's the most critical thing that regularly changes and needs regular access for current users? Newly released parts, especially for series they follow. Which is what I suggested the homepage could have as a filmstrip in the first place. For stuff that's coming up, just directing people to the calendar should be sufficient, as it provides a much better view that can be filtered for that exact purpose.
Additionally, there also users like that primarily care about digital volume releases, so for me the homepage sidebar is literally just useless clutter on the homepage since it primarily consists of part releases, features everything (ie. a lot of stuff I don't care about) and on the off chance that there's an upcoming digital release there (does it even show those at all? I'm not sure) it's very hard to differentiate from the sea of part releases.
-
@daiz Gotta agree with you there. I currently only follow Bookworm (I haven't caught up on Altina yet...) and the column on the right side is better than nothing but I really, really wish you could filter it and only have it show followed series. I do not have as strong of an opinion whether it would be better to be a column or a "film strip" like the others but I think it would be a little better looking like the rest of the front page. (If you could choose, that would be nice.)
Even better that what you say would be customizing your own home page to contain the information you yourself find important. My ideal front page would be: On top of it all a "film strip" with shortly upcoming and latest part releases of my favourite series, below that upcoming and latest LN releases of my favourite series, below that new licenses etc. Then maybe the rest at the bottom or hidden (if possible). Throw in a "latest blog posts" "widget"/film strip there and I'd add it too. I'm not going to start following a new series through a clutter of names of different series, I'll go to the series page and look for them with filters or find about them in conversations with friends but some people might be looking at the random cover pictures that appear on their front page and start following the series, so for them, seeing more series would be nice. Everyone has different priorities, so it would be cool if you could organise the widgets as you like.
The clutter really is a problem, I'm not certain which one is quicker when a new Bookworm part releases: going on the front page and finding Bookworm there or just going to "Series" and writing "bookworm" in the search. It's nice that we finally got something instead of nothing like that on the front page but I hope that JNC will continue developing it further.
On a different note: can we get a way to quickly navigate from our library to the series page of the series we own books from? Thanks!
-
@daiz Up to their design philosophy, I suppose... in my experience, morphing interfaces like that can be a real problem from a user perspective (what they see is not stable and changes based on status, meaning it's hard to learn your way around the site); from a support perspective (for the same reason); and from a development perspective (because it multiplies the number of variations they have to build and test, and adds lots more places for bugs to creep in).
-
@travis-butler Morphing/customizable interfaces aren't that bad to work with if you stick to one paradigm - namely, the filmstrips in this case. You just have a set of well-defined rows that can be on/off depending on user state/preference, and no matter what the configuration/order is, all you really need to do is make sure that each individual bit works.
-
@travis-butler said in New Website Feedback:
<snip>Completely agree with you here. The filmstrip is perfect for it's intended functionality. Putting it as yet another filmstrip would destroy it's functionality. @Daiz and others are caring way too much about appearance over functionality, an unfortunate problem on much of modern site design.
In general I hate filmstrips anyway, so adding more of them for key features is a step backwards.
-
I like the catch up titles and latest titles cover image links on the home page. That's usually what I'm looking for, and it's less clicks than it was before.
If I had to ask for something on the homepage, it'd be a quicker way to search for a series, maybe just a search bar at the top or something (I might be missing it, but I think you have to click into series on the bottom bar before you can search).
I'd also like a list of expiring volumes for the month (not in catch-up) if we are going to add more of those cover image links.
-
@mlindner I very much care about functionality first and foremost. That's exactly why I'm complaining about the sidebar, because it's a completely useless waste of space for me and of questionable value to everyone else too since you can't even make it filter to followed titles only. And if it did, then it wouldn't make for much of a functional difference whether it was presented as a filmstrip or a sidebar, in which case using the already existing paradigm rather than cramming in a new one would be the obvious choice to make.
-
Recording an issue for another member:
(Tested on desktop only)
When reading the final part for a volume, if you go to the next volume in a series the forum link will take you to the volume you started at instead of the volume you're currently on. Following the previous example this would take you to Volume 1 instead of Volume 2 (the volume you are currently on).
To test this, please go to the final part of any series and then click through the web reader to get to the next volume.
When you click on this button, it takes you to the previous volume's discussion.
This was tested with multiple series.
-
Posting a request here (yep, it's me again, I'm sorry!) since I don't see anything about it under planned or under consideration for future.
Would it be possible to add some way to tell which parts have been read and which have not been read yet in a prepub volume, kinda like how it works in the app?
It's one of the features I appreciate the most since with some series I tend to leave a few parts there and then binge them when I feel like it, but I can't quite always recall how many parts I read two months before. I had asked about this on Discord earlier today but thought it might be better to write down the request on the forum to keep everything together.It's not a particularly pressing of an issue for me, especially since it's available in the app, and I understand there are more important things to do, but if it were to ever get addressed in some way, I'd really appreciate it!
-
The novel display perfectly on Kindle. The manga displays very slowly.
The other device that I usually use is a Surface Tablet (Windows 10) with Brave. The horizontal scrolling works well, but the vertical scrolling and the window scrolling get mixed up a bit. The browser shows 1.5 pages at a time & zoomed in. I could not find the zoom controls.
I may need to try Chrome.
One small suggestion: please display the number of volumes in the country of origin or have the title in selectable text, so we can search for the information ourselves. Thanks.
-
@tube Note that we do plan to add a way to toggle showing only followed series on the homepage feed, similar to the new app's releases page
-
@tube On the calendar page of the new website, you can display just the entries related to the series you have marked as Followed: By using the "Followed series only" toggle. You can also set that option as the default for when you browse that page again.
-
@jhkghl678690iop Yeah I know, and chocolatkey said that something similar is coming to the front page too, so that's awesome.
-
Your library will now show you when new versions of premium ebooks are available for download!
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
