(New) App Feedback
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@LegitPancake said in (New) Beta App Feedback:
There is precedent for other apps in redeeming already-bought credits, such as Audible. Though it seems like a shaky loophole that may get the app flagged. Better to be safe than sorry.
Given how JNC already have difficulty getting their all updates approved on Android, I'm not sure how much clout they would have in citing precedent from bigger name apps if the app got blocked due to in-app purchases rubbing Google/Android the wrong way.
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Random feature requests/things that came to mind while using the app:
- Some way to purchase premium volumes with credits in-app. I assume this is already planned in the long term, but the first post doesn't have a todo list, so I might as well write it down (I'm fine with a redirect to the site if Google is the problem);
- An alert or some other way to easily know when a volume becomes available for pre-order and when it's published;
- Related to the former, some way to separate series under prepub follow from series to be alerted about for pre-order/download. To explain, for instance, I buy Potion LN, and only read the finished volumes. Keeping it in follow right now works as a reminder for me that a new volume is being translated so I can check when pre-orders are up, but with a separate function for that I'd rather keep the releases tab cleaner, with only titles I actually read in prepub showing up there. And there's also the opposite situation of novels I only read in prepub without buying in volume which I wouldn't want in the pre-order reminder list.
Not sure how broadly useful these would be outside of my own selfishness, but just getting it out there won't harm.
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@mirkosp Go back one page in this thread, we talked about using credits in-app, and this was concluded:
@chocolatkey said in (New) Beta App Feedback:
amit34521 we won't have anything financially-related in the app in the near future due to the policies of the app stores
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Yeah, figured that could be a problem, which is why I suggested a site redirect. Having something like "check this volume on our site" that simply opens the browser and goes there would work out in that sense. It wouldn't be inherently about the purchase in that case, but it's faster to get there like that.
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@mirkosp Even that might be an issue.
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Posting after a few days because mapping vol 4 part 1 shows up twice for me. I tried refreshing the list but it didn't change. I also closed and re-opened the app but that didn't work either. The app is version 0.5.1 and the splash screen says that it's been last updated on 2021-01-07.
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@mirkosp I've read stories from developers who have, for example, had a link to their homepage in the about section of the app, and because you can go from there to a page (purchase page) where you bypass in-app purchases, the app would be rejected. I know that making it easy to buy books in the app is something users want, and JNC has an incentive to do so, but I'd rather play it safe than deal with more app rejections.
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That's completely fair, don't worry!
On another note, a bug report (which might have been already addressed in earlier pages for all I know, but here we go again): when I'm behind and I'm catching up on multiple parts, I make use of that very nice "next part" button that's available in the beta, but I noticed that, if I don't finish a chapter which I started reading after reaching through that, the releases "progress bar" doesn't update. Normally there would be a blue estimate of how far I read the part, but in these cases it'll show as if it's still completely unread. However, if I open the part, it does resume from the point where I last left it. The green background for parts that have been completely read whole binging does work correctly from what I gather, though, so it's only the partial progress that bugs out.
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@mirkosp said in (New) Beta App Feedback:
However, if I open the part, it does resume from the point where I last left it.
This is a problem with reading too fast, basically, haha. There's an offline value that tracks your status, and that value is periodically sent to the server. The problem is there's no way to tell the app to send out data "when your phone crashes," or you close the app, or you switch to another app, etc. The offline value is what's used to resume reading, but the progress bar is based on information from the server, so that can lag behind based on when the last update was sent to the server before you closed the app.
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I see, that checks out with what happened in my case. I'll try to work around the issue, then - - doesn't really seem like something that can be fixed (barring more frequent updates, which might do more harm than good), and in normal use cases it wouldn't happen to begin with.
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YuriOta Vol.3 is not showing up in the app, despite two chapters being available already. I can read them in the app by using the "next part" buttons, but they're not accessible from the series page.
(I was pretty suprised when I saw the "next" button on the last chapter of Vol.2 that lead me to a "secret" chapter, heh) -
On Android 9, if I turn my external bluetooth keyboard on or off while the app is open, the app quits and restarts. Since there's very few places in the app where it uses a keyboard, I'd expect nothing to happen at all.
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@pcj on any screen in the app? And what device? I will try to replicate this later. Note that you should be able to use the keyboard in the reader
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@chocolatkey yeah, I can use the keyboard in the reader, that's why I was turning it on, so I could. :-) Yeah, I can reproduce on any screen in the app (well, I tried the following list just now: Releases, Series, Account, the volume list page for a book, part list page for a volume, the reader for a part).
Samsung Galaxy Tab S2, Android 9. Beta app dated January 7.
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Not sure if anyone's mentioned this before, but rotating between portrait and landscape does funky things, especially when I approach the end of a part.
Around 65% and later, moving from portrait -> landscape will drop me down to the very end of the text (the blue screen at the bottom). Then, rotating back from landscape -> portrait will jump me back to 65% regardless of where I was originally (meaning even if I was at 99%, it'll push me back to 65%).
It also seems to do funky things jumping back if I enter the part already in landscape mode and rotate to portrait from there. Just a lot of strangeness rotating between the two all around. For reference, my phone is an iPhone SE, iOS 14.4, though it was doing this in my older iOS versions as well.
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Perhaps the fact it's called Fanbook instead of Volume is breaking something in the app, because the "End of" on its own for Bookworm Fanbook 1 part 1 is odd compared to the usual behavior.
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For iOS users, the current TestFlight version expires in about a week. It is such an improvement already that I already long-ago ditched the old janky app.
@chocolatkey, are we going to get an update soon, even if for no other reason than preventing the beta from expiring?
A programmer is just a complex method of turning caffeine into source code.
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@mystyk Yes, there will be a tiny update so that the expiration is pushed out. See below.
@mirkosp I believe you received an answer on Discord already, but for anyone else who comes here wondering about this issue, it only occurs when a series has exactly 1 part across all volumes. This will be fixed in the next build.
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One feature that would make this great app even better would be the option to hide fully read parts in the Releases view.
I have my Releases view filtered to only show series I am following but I am not fully caught up with all series meaning that when a new part comes along I always need to check if I had already finished the previous part or not.
Another feature, which is more of a nice to have for me, would be if the series tab would indicate series with unread parts.
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A minor (for you) update to the app has been released (0.6.0), which is now available on iOS and will be available shortly on Android. Changes include:
- Network performance improvements (namely, switching to HTTP/2 with keepalive)
- Minor bug fixes
- Fix last page of part from series with only a single part as reported by @mirkosp
- Center covers in container in listings
