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New Website Feedback
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Could we get the forum reply button moved back to the bottom of the screen? That's a far more natural placement considering one's mouse is almost certainly going to be drifting down while scrolling through thread posts.
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Several thoughts on the new forum UI; overall, my ability to reply on desktop feels like it's taken a huge downgrade, and I have some issues with mobile as well.
- The comment box takes up over half of the visible screen height, and even more is blocked overall when you consider the new title bar that stays up when you scroll down. I have about a thumb's width of space to actually read any comments while typing a reply, which becomes an issue if I want to work on my comment while reading through responses.
- This is by far my biggest issue, it's rapidly becoming extremely annoying; I can't even easily see what other feedback people may have given about the new format while writing this comment!
- That's not to say I don't like the ability to hide my comment, since I do like that, but I don't want to be required to hide it to feasibly read through comments. Just being able to reduce the height further than the current minimum would be nice.
- I miss the 'jump up / jump down one comment' options that were alongside the 'jump to first / jump to last comment' buttons previously. It was good for moving through sections of long comments (like how Bookworm can get sometimes) when I know the comment I'm looking for is somewhere nearby, particularly on mobile where I don't want to keep scrolling with my thumb.
- The clickable popup from the 'jump to first / jump to last' bar is pretty good for seeking, but you have to hold down the mouse to scroll and it's difficult to comb through a chunk of comments where you don't know which index it is exactly you're looking for.
- The popup is even worse on mobile; the title bar blocks off the top segment of it, so I can't see who is commenting or a chunk of what they're saying, making it basically useless beyond direct index jumping.
- The 'jump to first / jump to last' bar's buttons are blocked by the comment box. I either have to navigate the previously mentioned small gap of visible comments to find the page bar and click there, or click on the general button and use the popup (that is still mostly hidden by the comment box) and work that out. Unless I just hide my comment - but even then, the hide/unhide comment button continues to block the 'jump to last' spot completely.
- If while writing a comment, I ctrl+f something on the page and then press 'esc' to exit the search, my comment auto-hides and I have to click to open it back up. Keeping it open in those cases would be preferable.
- The comment box takes up over half of the visible screen height, and even more is blocked overall when you consider the new title bar that stays up when you scroll down. I have about a thumb's width of space to actually read any comments while typing a reply, which becomes an issue if I want to work on my comment while reading through responses.
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So that everyone is aware, J-Novel Club does not write the software or maintain the styles for the forums. We use an open-source project called NodeBB, available here: https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB . If you think that issues with the latest update to the forums are worth mentioning to the developers, you can use this page to report them: https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues . If there are any major issues occurring (such as the email spam, or something is broken) we will do our best to patch/fix the software ASAP, but for other issues, it's best that you reach out to the original developers. I will do my best to tweak the style based on feedback here, but it is lower priority and something that will be done sparingly, so that we don't break compatibility with future versions. @MasterLillyclaw for example, while your feedback is valid, and I agree with some of your points, we just don't have the time to dedicate to patching upstream changes to the forums at this moment in time.
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Also worth noting is that the Settings screen does have a Custom CSS option, and as most of the forum theme is CSS-based, it is easy to tweak some of those things on your own if you want. If you don't know CSS on your own, maybe we can start a topic for forum CSS tweaks, and I'm sure there's a few web developers around that'll write some CSS for you to stick in that box that'll do what you want if you ask (within reason - there's only so much you can tweak). For example, I posted one a page or so back that makes the header not be sticky at the top, but lets the Reply button follow you down the page so you don't have to scroll back to the top to get to it, in response to someone that said the sticky header took up too much space on their phone.
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@pcj In a somewhat unofficial capacity, I will say that if a topic were started suggesting site-wide CSS (and maybe even JS) tweaks that would be beneficial to all users, I would be much more inclined to add them, assuming that a lot of people agreed they are beneficial. Keep in mind they have to work for all themes though
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Over all, I love the new look and functionality. It makes it easier for me to find what books I might want after I find a series.
However, It would be great if there was a way to get from my library to the series page. When I'm looking at, say, Altina and I want to go to the series page -- maybe to see if there's a new book to buy, maybe to read the pre-pub -- I want something to click on. I can use my library to track which series I'm currently reading from J-Novel without having to memorize it or record it somewhere else. As it is now, I have to look at the title in my library and then click on "series", search, click on the series name to get to the series page.
D
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First off I like the new site.
The only suggestion I can decide on at this time is a request to add part of the calendar function to the series individual pages.
For example, I am looking at the series page for The Great Cleric I would like to see the upcoming release schedule just like you find with the calendar page, but only showing the entries for The Great Cleric.
That's my request.
Thank you for all the good entertainment to read. -
@quixzlizx said in New Website Feedback:
OK, I made a request earlier in the thread to have Calendar release entries sorted by release time instead of only by series title. So it ends up that this seems to be buggy behavior in Firefox, rather than working as intended.
For the record, I'm on Windows 10
There are three problems in this Firefox screenshot (85.0):
- Like I mentioned, the releases aren't sorted by release time
- Some Novel entries are color-coded brown instead of blue
- The Digital release is color-coded green instead of purple
I hope this info helps.
I wanted to make an update regarding these bugs I've been experiencing in Firefox.
Problems 2 and 3 are still happening, but I've figured out that they only occur when I refresh the Calendar page. If I then click on Series and back again, the label color problems resolve themselves. So hopefully that information is useful.
However, there doesn't seem to be any workaround for issue #1 (releases out of chronological order). Is that on the bugfix list? Because it's not listed in the OP, and I know from this thread that I'm not the only one experiencing it. Thanks.
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@farmerdad the read button does this. It doesn't open the reader (like you’d expect), but opens the series page and scrolls to the volume.
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Question, How accurate is the Premium Bonus Content tag/mark in the Series page?
is it going to be reliable for future release?
in that image vol 9 seems like does not have the premium bonus because it has no tag/marking even tho judging from this thread all vol 1-9 has bonus content.
I assume this is just because not updated old record and in the future we can both using that marking for quick look and this thread for some detail of the bonus.
also thank you for the hardwork of compiling all those bonus data, honestly bonus content is my main reason for buying the complete version because I mostly only read a series once and I count the pre-publish version as one read. so the tag in the series page really help choosing on what to buy.
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@shyevsa Hello,
I moved your post into the website feedback topic, since the question you posed relates to the new website.
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@shyevsa It is not very accurate because it's using a field that we have to retroactively fill out for all our old volumes. For the time being, it would be better to use this topic to see what bonuses exist for each series/volume:
https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/305/premium-e-book-bonus-contents-list
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We have fixed the code causing the calendar to break in some browsers but not others
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It would be awesome of you to go through the two dark themes on the forum for small corrections here and there. Currently they are lacking contrast in some places to the point of the text being unreadable, like the "reply badges" when a message is in reply to another one on both "Darkly" and "Cyborg". The same problem is with the button that shows/hides quotes inside quotes and I assume a lack of contrast can be found be elsewhere too. Other places could benefit from added contrast too even if the text is not completely unreadable as is, like tags under post titles. <edit>Also thread titles on profile page.</edit>
Even better would be to tie dark theme vs. not to the setting on main site, but I assume that would be a bigger ordeal.
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On the whole the new website is an improvement> However I had some gripes:
- When I first used you website I couldn’t find info on how to use your site (couldn’t subscribe for example). I expected to find a help menu. Eventually I found it hidden at the bottom of the page which is not normally visible. I normally expect the botton of the page to be for quick access, not for new information not available elsewhere.
- Listing Series does not show page numbers at the bottom to click on (but the Forum does). You can’t quickly navigate the list (same as previous version).
- I had problems navigating the viewer with swipe on a MacBook. Sometimes too sensitive.
However overall I think there are many improvements.
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@dhinawan
Regarding your first concern. If your talking about the "How it Works" page the link is right there when you visit the website.Here's a screenshot. I don't know why but I couldn't insert the image.
As for your second concern, I totally agree with you. Right now all they have is a search bar but sometimes people forget the full title and only know the acronym or the short name of a series (people like me). I wish they add more ways to either search for a title or filter them out.
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I think my point still stands. I am just asking that the website follows the standards of many, many other websites (ie. important information is where I expect to find it).
On the second point, I think that as the number of entries increases this search system become less and less useable... more and more clumsy.
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@dhinawan Just want to point out that many web sites do place all their links for thinks like Help, FAQ, contact inf, newsletter subscriptions, blogs, ToS, privacy policy, sitemap, etc at the bottom of their site pages in what's basically a footer section.
Having a button to the FAQ along the top navbar would probably be a good addition to have given most people are coming to the site for subscription related reasons, but having the links at the bottom there does appear to be standard practice for most major businesses.
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It seems that some clarification is needed.
Firstly, I have not suggested its wrong or unusual to use footers. I have not suggested to not put useful links in footers. When I publish websites I do this all the time. I have suggested that key information should be highly visible and easy to access and should be where, in my experience, users expect it to be (in a menu first and foremost).
Secondly, this forum topic asked for “feedback” based on my experience which is what I have done. My feedback stands as is.
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I guess the challenge is you're saying you couldn't find a link to the help page, but what did you find on the help page (or the page you ended up on) that's helped you out that wasn't on the "how it works" page that BartzBB pointed out is front and center to the user when they load up the site?
The biggest challenge we've seen on the forums from the old site layout is people subscribe and get confused with what a subscription gets them (or they just join on the assumption that subscription means exactly the same thing it does when you join netflix), so it appears they've moved that from the footer to being more prominently displayed as you enter the site.
I'm guessing based on your previous comments that the issue is that how it works doesn't exactly outline that to subscribe you need to sign up for an account and then actually buy a membership plan under your user account options, which does appear to be something that can be improved.
