(New) App Feedback
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@amit34521 Apple probably wouldn't approve the app if the options was there.
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@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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@chocolatkey from what I understand, play store says that any money transaction should go through them. Will that affect the redeeming book using credits? After all, we are not buying the credits on app just using the existing credits
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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.
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@LegitPancake It may be a loophole but I don't see it as 'shaky'.
As long as there is no payment being processed that is not Apple/Google and the app is not leading users outside the app to make the purchase then the terms are being adhered to.
So long as members 'just know' that you have to purchase credits from the website it won't be an issue.
I see the issues coming from users that don't know this and/or the users that just want to purchase within the app just because 'it's easier'. And then the app will get unjustified low stared reviews, along with a lot of unnecessary posts (complaining) on the forums.
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So I wan’t going to bring this up as I know paginated mode is a work in progress. But v0.4 and 0.5 have been unusable for me because the paginated mode are being split into roughly 5 pages that you have to scroll through (basically vertical mode split into 5 pages). In comparison, v0.3 and earlier split them into way more pages (often leaving a lot of white space), which was definitely not perfect but still made for a decent reading experience.
I’ve kept using v0.3 to get around this, but now there’s only 13 days left for v0.3 in TestFlight and it’s my understanding that you can’t use it past that date on iOS. I don’t expect a complete paginated mode will be ready by then, but I do hope some progress is made (or reverted) in one of the upcoming updates (or some workaround). Using vertical mode is out if the question for me.
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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.
