(New) App Feedback
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@chocolatkey said in (New) Beta App Feedback:
When I have more time, I'll be looking into having the app on iOS have more of a native theme, right now I stuck with the material (Android) theme on both OSes due to lack of time, since we are using a cross-platform toolkit (Flutter) to develop the app. When everything else is done, I'll focus on style. I will however look into getting the scroll-to-top and back gesture to work, it seems like at least the back gesture is doable.
Understood. I assumed that was the case, just figured I should leave feedback rather than not saying anything.
No progress indicators when viewing the releases or series lists- releases page will have progress once I figure out how the design of it. Might just be BG, no percentage. Not sure what you mean by progress on series list, some kind of sum-total of progress?
I was referring to the little blue progress bar displayed at the bottom of the volume art for each item in the latest and series list in the existing iOS app. It helps indicate whether a part/chapter is new, in progress, or has already been read. The exact percentage progress of each part probably isn't required or all that useful.
No ability to resume reading from previous location in LN reader- the LN reader should be automatically jumping you to last position. If it's not, that's a bug.
Sorry, looks like a mistake on my part when I was checking this. I must not have waited for the scrolling to completely stop or something when I thought I observed this.
Tab state does not persist when switching tabs. e.g. Switching to releases always starts at the top, switching to series resets any previous search results or scrolling, account tab always resets back to Profile view.- I might experiment with having it persist in the future, but that's more a question of memory/CPU management and would be a problem on less powerful devices
Sounds good. I commented on it because that's the default behavior of
UITabBarControlleron iOS (tab navigation stacks are typically kept in memory). -
@cjh in case anyone else is confused about progress not saving, the behavior is supposed to be
- save 2s after you stop scrolling/paging
- save immediately on last page (to be added to novel reader, exists on manga reader)
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@chocolatkey just out of curiosity, what would be 'too long' and you link the apk?
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@Khaos Google Play says at the moment "Due to adjusted work schedules at this time, you may experience longer than usual review times for your app.", so I'm willing to cut them some slack. I don't really want to encourage APK installs from the get-go, but if Google takes, let's say over a week (so by next Tuesday) I'll be more inclined to encourage APK installation. No promises though
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@chocolatkey Just barely. On my device, before scrolling the last line of the page is cut off by the rounded borders of the screen (adjustable horizontal margins might be a thing to add in the future, btw) and a few pixels are off the screen, and after scrolling it's barely visible -- and also below the notch, but that's a known issue. I'd bump that 95% a bit lower.
I don't know why, but I find it uncomfortable. Maybe it's that when I'm scrolling vertically I usually scroll in smaller increments (which I know I can do), and the fast full-page scroll animation throws me off. Could you experiment with maybe something like a 60% scroll?
About the other issue, it seems to me that you're doing something like performing the touch actions (scroll, show/hide the interface) on touchend if there has been no movement, but you disregard the time between touchstart and touchend and if there was scrolling happening on touchstart. It makes for a weird experience on iPad, because my thumb is always on the lower part of the screen, and I accidentally trigger the scroll-down-a-page action a lot.
In volume and series pages, the share button does nothing. Also it's the Android share icon and not the iOS one.
A way to filter series by following would be nice.
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I am looking forward to the Android version.
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@chocolatkey said in (New) Beta App Feedback:
No progress indicators when viewing the releases or series lists- releases page will have progress once I figure out how the design of it. Might just be BG, no percentage. Not sure what you mean by progress on series list, some kind of sum-total of progress?
I personally love the design from the unofficial JNC reader by @Crimson-Wise available from https://crimson-jnc-reader.appspot.com/home with more details at https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/3353/yet-another-pwa-jnc-client/
Screenshot of the unofficial app below. Not shown in the screenshot, but it does also indicate that parts are no longer available by adding a clock icon and using grey rather than black text. Personally I'd go for a padlock icon for the official app. Aside from that, it is almost the perfect interface design to follow series and go to the right part.
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Until the font size and italic problem is fixed, the app is unusable in iOS 14. As of right now, it's only good for manga reading on both my phone and ipad. Also the original app is superior in my eyes since text-to-speech functionality is almost perfect, whereas it's almost unusable in the new app.
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Android public beta has been approved, although it's still not available in the Play Store for some reason.. hopefully in a few hours. https://bit.ly/3daVObW works for joining
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For reference, I'm using an iPad and iPhone, in horizontal mode.
When selecting a part, it goes into the novel with the menus (top and bottom bars) up, and on the first tap they disappear. So I have to tap twice to move off the first page. I would think entering a part would initially start with the menus off, or in their last known state?
Also, on any image page, tapping doesn't work once the animation finishes. The menu doesn't come up if you tap the middle-top, and changing pages by tapping doesn't work, you have to drag.
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Styled text (italic, bold) scaling too large has been fixed, and will be in the next build.
@flarecde having to tap twice is a bug, I'm testing on the ipad simulator and I see it. Not being able to change page when when tapping on an image is a known bug, and is in the "known issues" list as "Can't toggle interface/change page when pressing on image in novel reader". I would suggest using the vertical reading mode for now, the horizontal novel reader is definitely going to be improved but the vertical reader is a lot more functional right now.
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Android beta is finally fully available! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=club.j_novel.butterfly
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I really like being able to read the prepubs of things I've purchased! It is very convenient for the lazy me who doesn't always want to pull up my laptop to read something.
General feedback for the Releases layout, it currently doesn't feel very aesthetically pleasing to me. The Series format (larger pictures, multiple columns) is nicer, although I think for both pages the really long-titled series make it look a bit wonky - series like Wataru and Instant Death Cheat stand out (more so on the Releases page where the text has to literally shrink to accommodate them, but the Series page having text covering half the image also feels out of place). Series nicknames could be used there instead, as the full title is always on the covers anyways.
Then again, I don't mind the way the Library is formatted, so something more like that might look nice on the Releases page as well - slightly larger pictures; gray background to distinguish different series; and instead of "date published + date purchased," it could show "volume and part + how many days ago it was released."
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The Android version seems to have all the same problems as iOS, but no other big issues besides. I have some feature/change requests, but I'll hold onto them until the known issues list gets whittled down some.
The built-in screen reader for Android works fine with this, about the same as with the website reader on mobile, for anyone curious.
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I noticed that in paginated mode, when the font becomes big enough (I'm at 160%) only one paragraph per page is displayed, even when there's enough place to display 2 at a time. Like with the following page from part 6 of Instant Death Vol 2 (in order)
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I think it would be better if when displayed, the reader's menu covered the text rather than pushing it down as it does now. First, because it feels a bit clunky but also because it makes setting the right display setting a bit more difficult.
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Also, the area which triggers page-turning is a bit too big especially on the right side of the screen which can make displaying the menu without turning pages a bit of a hassle.
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It's a nitpick, but trying to go to the forum page for old volumes does nothing, which is obvious since there isn't a forum page to link to, but a message explaining that no page exists for early volumes could be useful.
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Finally, it would be cool to have a filter for currently in catch up series in the Series tab.
Other than that the app is great, the filter to display only followed series and the fact that we can read purchased volumes in-app, especially so.
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Didn't face many problems trying to read a novel part... other than trying to find the vertical/horizontal switching button.
Small things:- I found myself wanting was a non-greyscale color theme, like a tan bkgd with black text. Or maybe just a fully customizable set of bkgd/font colors, with some presets...
- The thing about being able to long-press for tooltips is a useful tip that may be useful to tell ppl up front... but I aint a UX guy.
- The reset button on the settings page (font size, etc.) isnt functional. I assume this is probably known.
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- > LN reader renders very roughly in paginated mode (use vertical for now)
Unless you think users should only use the app for bug reporting/suffering and not actual reading you should set vertical as default one at least. I would be nice to see some screenshots showing what it's supposed to look like so people can know that things like this or below is supposed to be reported and not what developer wanted.play store has some screenshots
- Unavailable titles don't stand out enough, you should dim the date and/or picture too.
- (again, screenshot above) Order of multipart releases could be improved.
- Toggling full screen in the horizontal reader causes complete freeze for non-insignificant time.
- Android's navigation bar on the bottom doesn't get hidden in full-screen.
- Pressing next/previous button keeps current percentage instead of properly resuming the part you switched to (and switches back to horizontal); attempts to navigate to non-free/expired part aren't handled properly.
- Some of gestures can be easily misinterpreted: flinging the page and then tapping to stop will trigger full-screen or page-up/down, pinch zoom is easily interpreted as swipe (extra annoying with manga).
- The icons (and name) of the apps are too similar. You should slap 🅱️ on top for now since people are somewhat likely to keep both (though idk if anyone actually does that).
- > LN reader renders very roughly in paginated mode (use vertical for now)
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@Raitoiro said in (New) Beta App Feedback:
This image shows my only concern, that the status bar at the top of my phone screen gets overlapped with. Other than that, I like it so far.
For the future, I'd like a tab dedicated to the series I follow, but I can wait.
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Just had a quick look at the beta app and noticed some series missing from the Series page in "All" view (at least for me). Examples: Clock Strikes Z, Deathbound Duke's Daughter, Fake Princess, Wild Last Boss. They show up when filtering for novels or searching, they're just mysteriously absent from the default view.
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@cosm1cfall It doesn't overlap most of the time, it's just that the text is way too mobile so when I swipe down to display the notification menu of my phone the text goes up under the notification bar at the top of the screen, but the rest of the time it's not a problem.
