Move and implementation of the new reader should happen Wednesday/Thursday EST operating hours (for the Australians out there wondering wtf ;_;)

Yeah my resolution is tiny. Deal with it :|

Do give your thoughts about what it could use to look/be better as a whole, rather than solely on functionality.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/c258g0br3xykxiu/Ri8IafO1ia

There will be different sorting options (alphabetical, by release date, maybe more) for stuff eventually.

The post right below this one is still being updated every so often. Feel free to look it over to see what we're up to with it where screenshots are unable to explain.

Edit January 28, 2013 19:20 GMT: Updated the gallery with all new screenshots. All screenshots now show the latest variation of the dev reader.

In the Series list especially, but maybe also the Scanlation group page and tag listing, having a small dropdown or tooltip of a little series synopsis/description might be handy, as well as including the mangaka/author/whatever and maybe tags (for series/scanlation). Would make searching to a certain series easier, i.e. if you have an idea of the contents, but not the name. Searching by tag in most cases would probably be more efficient, unless it were something really generic... like, "Oh there was this yuri story... what was it again?"

I spy that separate doujin listing! Yayifications! Having doujin able to be sorted by copyright would probably be ideal, too.

Some colour in the tags might be nice, too; like make NSFW bright red or such, or other "key" tags so people can pick them out easily. Assuming, of course, NSFW remains a tag.

Otherwise, this is looking spot on.

^ Pretty much second what he said. New reader looks clean and tidy.

I like the new site. It looks easier to use. How could New Authors and New Scanlators be added to the "Add A Chapter" part? It looks to me like putting New Authors and Scanlators is not an option here.

last edited at Jan 19, 2013 9:37AM

Everything that can be labeled is handled in the back end as a tag. Everything you saw in the preview, whether it be series, volume, author, etc., were tags. This changes nothing much on the front end (what you're seeing on the reader) but it a bit of a change in the back end handling.

Please whatever you do, make it an an opt-in. I like the current layout, and this just doesn't look as nice, it's shiny but I don't think it works as well.

It's entirely different coding. Could possibly be done, but not preferable.
The biggest reason the reader is being reformatted is because the old (current) reader wasn't coded for the expansion we've put it through. Some of the front end organization is a total mess and some of the back end handling is confusing and unorganized as well.
If you can be a bit more descriptive why you prefer the old layout, maybe things can be changed on the new one if it's a good idea. Otherwise we'll have to rely on a post-initial-release examination by everyone rather than simply on screenshot previews.

Specifically, the separation and rounding of the page on the reader is worse considering the screenshots, the way the header is separated from the page with the background instead of being one whole page with the image in the center looks bad. The lack of the current drop-down menu links is troubling, I think those are useful. The reading list reorganization is good. Recently added works tab is not there and that is really one of the most important pages. Thumbnails in the series page too. The booru item looks disconcerting, I am not a fan of those but I hope you know what you're doing. The tags being at the top instead of the bottom of the page when reading a chapter looks bad, and they should be in a separate box than the other elements, like they are now. Download Chapter/page would be nice to retain. Page navigation, again the separation of the page from the rest of it looks bad, it would be better if it was one page with the elements in it rather than a bunch of them just scattered around. The bar at the top would be nice to scale all the way across, and the image scale to a about what it is now, maybe slightly bigger. I would like to reiterate this the navigation menus at the top of the page are great and keeping them instead of dropping the main site bar there would be best, and the background and layout could use some work. I think you're overdoing the modifications really that it would be best for it to be more plain and together like it currently is than what you're doing with the design. Also if the current system is going by the wayside I would like to have a copy of the code/setup for private use, I really am quite fond of it and would like to set it up on my home server, not for any commercial gain just for personal reading.

I plan to recreate almost all features the reader currently has (like recently added page you mentioned). If you don't see something, its most likely I just haven't programmed it yet or a screenshot of it wasn't take.

Dropdown lists, while they were good and I liked them initially, we just outgrew them. We have too many series, artists, etc listed for their design to still work. I plan to have the search field have a auto complete, to reduce the time when you know what you are looking for. Which was the function of the old dropdowns.

Well the lists themselves aren't what I was really saying, the links at the top to reader/directory/series/groups recently added/random chapter was what I meant for the top.

I agree it looks clean & tidy. Given the massive amount of series' & tags, I am liking how the navigation appears to be handled. The main functional aspects appear to be retained, so I like that as well. However, this is one of those cases where I'll need to use it for a while before I can say more.... I'm not much of a website designer & infrequently use many of the items your are heavily overhauling.

Thanks for the update.

I can't tell from these screenshots, does it still separate series by volume? Perhaps use a series with more than one in your screenshot.

The new series screen looks very similar to the current reader, including breaking up chapters by volume.

http://i.imgur.com/uXH9OK0.jpg here is an example of it

Preview of the screen to suggest tags for a chapter, etc. http://i.imgur.com/AAQEM84.png

omnscient0 wrote

Preview of the screen to suggest tags for a chapter, etc. http://i.imgur.com/AAQEM84.png

Impressive concept/idea/feature to say the least.

Over all I like it. As long as we still have thumbnails for series and volumes.

One DUMB thought.... The read / to read lists... Is there a way to have the too read be everything on the site that you have yet to read? For some people that have read almost everything to everything that would be helpful.... silly... but helpful...

Fuzzypuff wrote

One DUMB thought.... The read / to read lists... Is there a way to have the too read be everything on the site that you have yet to read? For some people that have read almost everything to everything that would be helpful.... silly... but helpful...

I don't think that is a good idea, it totally changes the use case of the feature. Currently the "to read" list is keep track of chapters you already discovered. The proposed change would change it to discovering new chapters.

that was kind'a the point... because discovering new things is more interesting then knowing where you were... well to me any way... Like I said it is a kind'a silly idea...

You could always write a bash script to add everything to it and then manually delete the ones you read.
It would have to be something like:
firefox dynasty-scans.com/path/to/readlistaddlinks/*

Fuzzypuff wrote

that was kind'a the point... because discovering new things is more interesting then knowing where you were... well to me any way... Like I said it is a kind'a silly idea...

The feature itself isn't bad, it just changes the scope of the current feature drastically. It is something that could be implemented in the future, but it would be totally separate from the "To Read" list.

Maybe we could have a separate Unread list that contains everything not currently on the user's Read list? I don't know if it's viable, but it would be kind of interesting, I suppose.

Seravi wrote

Maybe we could have a separate Unread list that contains everything not currently on the user's Read list? I don't know if it's viable, but it would be kind of interesting, I suppose.

Or just subtract the read list from all chapters, series, etc, and show that in a submenu.