MangaDex v3 is live, and a general site update!

[crazybars]

@Teasday

I think I found a serious bug or some inefficient code, both the legacy reader and the new reader heavily lag when you press the chapter select drop down section on the pages of longer serialized manga like Detective Conan. It actually is laggy to try to select chapters this way.


https://www.mangadex.org/chapter/324560/9

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Sorry for being a thorn in your side, but the Ergonomics of how you designed the new Manga reader is just not very good from a web design point of view. I have so many criticisms, not trying to be mean, I just don't have much eye movement so your website literally will hurt my eyes with the amount of darting around to navigate your new Manga Reader system.


>> Apparently I got it wrong. It's not that the new manga reader is inconsistently resizing images incorrectly ( I will get back to that). Your reader simply doesn't do a good job of remembering the settings you set for it, so essentially it kept reverting back changes whenever I changed manga, chapters or whenever it sneezed. On the same machine, mind you, it just forgets in bizarre ways, that's not good but I can't really help you there.

BUT I CAN TELL YOU no I do not want to keep on re-entering my settings for the New Reader on devices I'm not logged into, or god forbid repeatedly type my 20 digit passwords into my I-phone or auto remember my account settings on multiple devices (that's a security risk) . Or you know, I HATE BEING FORCED TO USE THE NEW READER WHEN I'M NOT LOGGED IN TO MY ACCOUNT?!!!!? (Again, this is me not being angry, more frustrated than anything.)

>> Your image resizing options do not have more user friendly options to easily resize images or at least replicate the Legacy Manga Reader's settings. You have 11 deep options listed, I had to go through and modify 8 of them to figure out what they do, and EVEN THEN I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT SOME OF THEM LIKE FIT TO DISPLAY CONTAINER DO. I had to spend 20 minutes to figure out 933 Maximum Pixel width is pretty close to what the Legacy Manga Reader was using as container max pixel width on my laptop. And that was using a pixel counting program on a laptop. I have no idea if I will have to spend another 20 minutes to figure the Legacy Manga Reader settings on the rest of my machines. That's the whole problem, I have to DO IT AGAIN when it resets or forgets, or do crazy things like use a PIXEL COUNTING PROGRAM?

>> For the new manga reader, shoving the chapter drop down select box and the page select drop box to the right side alongside the options buttons (which are SUPPOSED to be RARELY touched like on a TV RIGHT? ) wastes people's time as well as web page space. The Manga chapter and page section at the top for you legacy reader below your header is the most efficient you can get and not waste space because the average user still needs to use the top of their browsers to manipulate the web address bar to copy and paste and use the Mangadex quick search and various header functions.

>> Oh and separating the page select drop box into a PAGE BAR and a separate MOVE TO PAGE NUMBER option is excessive. That is not more efficient because people usually forget the exact page they were on so that function is rarely used as intended. Page Bars also have to repeatedly be turned on and off if someone cares that they are blocking part of the manga image. A page drop select bar is about as efficient as you need, the move to page number function could be shoved in.

>>>Ergonomically, why didn't you just shove everything to the top of the Manga reader page next to the header like last time? Put the Chapter Title link, page select drop box and Chapter select box where it originally was, then shove all the info and option report buttons etc back to the top.Your image is no longer offset to the left ever, all the useful functions, info etc are easily accessed at the top and image resizing is easier.

>> No, giving a forest of key commands for options does not justify shoving everything that's not the header to the right. In fact, key commands make it easier TO NOT TOUCH THOSE BUTTONS, so why were they shoved into the right side? You said it would look weird if you centered the image right? Yeah, then the question becomes, why did you separate those buttons from below the header and moved it to the right side.

*** I hope you are exhausted, because finding so much wrong was exhausting too. Good luck I guess? I say it was premature to force this Mangadex V3 reader on us, I wouldn't care so much if it wasn't being forced as the default new Mangareader for Mangadex, which I now have to log in and change religiously.

*Edit: Edited for Spelling error

 

[Kiriha]

>blocked kronix
>still can see his post
welp

 

[VawX]

In less than a year this site already improved a lot leaving old batoto to dust mmm...

 

[Baldog]

nvm

 

[Jordick]

@Guolker Oh, I don't know how I missed that when I tried tinkering the settings myself earlier today.
Thanks a bunch for that. ?

 

[Wart]

Can't say I prefer the new site to the previous one. As a primarily mobile reader, everything feels so much clunkier now.. Seriously wish there were still "Next Chapter" buttons at the bottom of chapters, too.

 

[HewoThereFriend]

Well though it seems to work for Opera, it seems to have completely broken on internet explorer, making it impossible to read anything and having ginormous gaps after the description section before the chapters show up. @RexNemorensis
Edit: did not realize that there was a way to read on the old version. Just went to read page 2 of the comments and found that there is a legacy reader available. Oh, and I do like the cat in the top left now.

 

[TheNamekianClown]

I use the PS4 web brower to read on the TV and this update broke the reader on it. Images just don't load and the bottom of the screen says page 0/0.

 

[Teasday]

@crazybars

>I think I found a serious bug or some inefficient code, both the legacy reader and the new reader heavily lag when you press the chapter select drop down section on the pages of longer serialized manga like Detective Conan.
Yes, even a perfectly standard HTML <select> element such as the one that the reader is using will lag a little on some machines if there's literally over a thousand options. The only code involved in it kicks in after you select a chapter, just opening and browsing it is 100% dependant on your browser implementation. If you can think of a way to optimize it, I'd welcome the suggestion, but I don't think that creating a custom dropdown implementation would be better in any browser. The only thing I can think of is just not displaying every chapter, but that doesn't seem like a very good solution.

>Your reader simply doesn't do a good job of remembering the settings you set for it
I've honestly no idea why that would be, unless you've disabled localStorage in your browser. Obviously, a setting change in one tab won't automatically affect another tab that's already open, but you probably weren't talking about that.

>I do not want to keep on re-entering my settings for the New Reader on devices I'm not logged into
And I'm pretty sure that few people would want the exact same settings on all the different devices they use. If the reader settings were global, then people would indeed have to keep re-entering all the settings every time they changed their devices to fit that particular experience. Just as an example, I use double page and fit to container on desktop, and long strip and fit to width on mobile. I would rarely want to use the opposite setup.

>EVEN THEN I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT SOME OF THEM LIKE FIT TO DISPLAY CONTAINER DO
It means fitting the image to the container, as in by both width and height so that it's always fully visible no matter the size and orientation.

>Your image resizing options do not have more user friendly options to easily resize images or at least replicate the Legacy Manga Reader's settings.
>I had to spend 20 minutes to figure out 933 Maximum Pixel width is pretty close to what the Legacy Manga Reader was using as container max pixel width on my laptop.
>That's the whole problem, I have to DO IT AGAIN when it resets or forgets, or do crazy things like use a PIXEL COUNTING PROGRAM?
That's unfortunate, personally I would have just eyeballed it to where it looked okay to me. I'm not sure I understand why you need it to be the exact pixel amount as the legacy reader. For future reference, the possible Bootstrap container widths are 1410px, 960px, 720px and 540px depending on your screen, and instead of relying on pixel counting programs you could you use your browser's developer tools to find them out.

>For the new manga reader, shoving the chapter drop down select box and the page select drop box to the right side alongside the options buttons (which are SUPPOSED to be RARELY touched like on a TV RIGHT? ) wastes people's time as well as web page space.
I'm not so sure that using the controls is such a rare occurence. Anyway, from what I've seen the manga pages are rarely in such a ratio that the sidebar in fact wastes space. Typically, the image is either small enough anyway so that the sidebar doesn't make a difference, or if the image is really huge, the sidebar actually nicely constraints the image a bit so that it will remainly mostly readable instead of being a huge horizontal block where only like ~1/10 of the vertical space is readable at a time, conveniently doing essentially the same job as the "maximum container width" option. Also, in my opinion the sidebar is fairly easy to hide and unhide when necessary, either by the button lining it or the shortcut key

t

.

>The Manga chapter and page section at the top for you legacy reader below your header is the most efficient you can get and not waste space because the average user still needs to use the top of their browsers to manipulate the web address bar to copy and paste and use the Mangadex quick search and various header functions.
>Ergonomically, why didn't you just shove everything to the top of the Manga reader page next to the header like last time?
The header is fixed, so I'm not sure that's quite accurate. One of the points of the sidebar is allows desktop users to use the reader without having to scroll or even see a scrollbar, all the while instantly seeing which chapter and page they're on as well as having a clear list of all the alternative groups for that chapter and access to various controls, the comment and report buttons and a link to the manga's main page. I don't think I'm wasting space - on the contrary, I'm taking all the empty space that the legacy reader left on the sides of the images and utilizing it.

However, it sounds like you might perhaps want a layout identical to the one on mobile widths, and that is an option I'm considering to implement, even though personally I find that mode much more restraining.

>Page Bars also have to repeatedly be turned on and off if someone cares that they are blocking part of the manga image.
Fortunately there's no cause for alarm, because when the page bar is on, there's space below the image specifically so that the bar doesn't block it in any scenario. Except, of course, in the case that the display fit allows the image to scroll vertically, in which case scrolling to the bottom of the page still allows the user to view the bottom of the image in full. To my knowledge, there's no reason to turn the page bar off and on repeatedly.

>I hope you are exhausted, because finding so much wrong was exhausting too. Good luck I guess?
Not at all, thanks for the feedback. I hope the explanations helped illuminate the rationale behind the design decisions.

 

[Teasday]

_{@Wart posted:}

Can't say I prefer the new site to the previous one. As a primarily mobile reader, everything feels so much clunkier now.. Seriously wish there were still "Next Chapter" buttons at the bottom of chapters, too.

Well you could just tap the page, or swipe if you have the tap disabled.

 

[FrameE]

Really mobile friendly, thank you for this big update!!!????

 

[Keimichi]

Idk about all the other issue, but one of the biggest reason why I’m using mangadex is due to how easy it is to track chapters I’ve already read.

Now it becomes really hard to tell on one glance what was read and what was not.

The most visible thing becomes the language icon rather than the “read” icon.
And the translation group is more visible than the chapter number.

The new update might be okay for mobile, but for tablet reading it looks horribly cluttered together compared to what it was before.

 

[attinat]

Thanks for everything you guys have done!

 

[Tinger]

looks nice but every manga I click a chapter to read just loads an empty page. As if I'm viewing only the background, and dont even get a page number, any of the buttons down the right hand side or anything. Google Chrome on Win 7

 

[Teasday]

_{@Tinger posted:}

looks nice but every manga I click a chapter to read just loads an empty page. As if I'm viewing only the background, and dont even get a page number, any of the buttons down the right hand side or anything. Google Chrome on Win 7

This sounds like what happens on unsupported browsers. Chrome is definitely supposed to be supported, though, so the only explanation that comes to mind is that yours is out of date. Try to update it.

 

[Cambri]

v2 worked just find for me, now on desktop and tapblet with v3 i have to change settings for an acceptable result... >_< and on my journey mobile I can't read anymore T_T (ok its an old windows phone 8.... but every other sh*t manga reader works fine.... Lol....)

 

[Raydnt]

Not a big fan of the new reader.
On mobile theres annoying red thingy that takes you to the top of the page which is really unnecessary.
One thing I think would make the reader better is to make an interface at the bottom of the chapter where you can change chapters.

And then sometimes, im even being sent to the top of the page mid chapter for no reason.
Idk if its because somethings wrong or im accidentally pressing the red to the top button.

 

[Tikibo]

The new reader is terrible, until you set your settings to fit your needs... Then it's awesome, but it could use some tutorial to get better understanding of all the options without trying each of them. Thank you!

PS: to people who use IE: time to move on.

 

[Airelda]

I hate the new manga viewer. It is either too small to read or to big to see the larger panels completely/whole. I can't stand having to scroll down to see the whole panel (top and bottom together on screen at the same time). It specially gets annoying when there is long vertical panels. Is there a way you can offer the old way of seeing the pages?

 

[mochi]

I hate the new manga viewer too. Feels very clunky and unresponsive, doesn't remember my view settings (long strip, fit width) even if I'm logged in, reduces the space available for the actual image. The previous reader was so smooth, simple and ergonomic!