This might be the last offline comic reading app that still seems to be alive. Really nice and modern so I hope you’ll keep working on it. Unfortunatley the app lags on my iPad Pro 12.9 (2017) when scrolling through a collection with currently only 25 comics. Also it hangs a few seconds before the collection opens. I’m currently on the iOS 12 Beta so that might also be a reason.
Edit: I just noticed that the search seems to be case sensitive. I don’t think that’s how it should be, right?
I also have a few suggestions. Mainly the ability to change a cover and not only from within the comic file but also to choose an image from the camera roll since not all of my comics have a nice cover embedded in the file. The other suggestion is to be able to change file names (not that important).
Edit: I have three more suggestions. In landscape mode an option to display two pages side by side which is very nice for reading comics (I know this feature from kybook). Second is different page turning animations, most important would be instant / no animation for me. Last one is being able to set a timer for when to automatically turn the page for you. These would make this app perfect for me
Hope that will be possible!
Looking forward to all future updates!
Wow, that was an amazing feedback, thank you for your suggestions. Let me go through everything.
We have not yet updated panels for iOS12 compatibility. It is weird though that the library lags while scrolling… we will definitely check this out. One question about this… which layout are you using? Big covers or list? (you can switch between them in the top right icon, next to the search bar).
You are totally right about the search being case sensitive. We will try to squeeze this on the next update which should be coming very soon.
Selecting your own cover is something we have in mind but it is not in the near future. Same goes for 2 pages in landscape, we have this feature already in our roadmap (this one will likely be introduced soon).
We are not big fans of page-turning animations. Our ideal scenario would be no animation, but the app takes some time to render each page, that is why you see a fade in. My opinion is that we should be able to load pages faster so no animation is required.
We have never thought about the timer… I take note of this feature. Thank you for suggesting it.
I hope I have answered all your questions/suggestions. And thanks again for contacting us!
It lags the most using the ‘big covers’ view. Here is a video.
I’m excited to hear that!
I would be satisfied with a black screen dissoving into the next page once it’s loaded since I find every motion distracting. Naturally the best way would be to cache the next few pages.
It’s nice if your in bed or the bathtub
Glad you’re considering it!
Thank you for uploading the video @stacph , we definitely need to tackle this issue.
One more thing about the covers… I know it would be a ton of work, but you can modify an existing cbr/cbz from your computer (or even create your own). But until we add a feature that allows you to select a cover, you can do the following:
Open the cbr/cbz file using winzip (for cbz) or equivalent, or using winrar (for cbr) or equivalent.
Add a new image (jpg or png) you want to use as cover. Make sure the title is correct so it becomes the first one when sorting by filename.
Save or compress again the file.
Same way, to create new comics just add a bunch of images into a folder, compress it to a zip file and rename the extension to .cbz
Hello @stacph
Panels v1.6 is coming in the next couple of days packed with new feature. We have also taken some time to improve the library performance. Please let us know if the difference is noticeable and the library now performs better.
Hey there!
Just a simple few things that come to mind as the new update rolled out (1.6.0),
Performance on my iPad Air 2 is very laggy and choppy when scrolling up/down on the ‘All titles’ page with either big or small grid enabled (landscape mode). Just a heads up!
As for any other issues, especially with using split screen on iPad: there is a design flaw when tapping the + button to add .cbr files, and I cannot close the ‘+ menu’ without changing the size of the actual app to full screen. Maybe adding a ‘close/done’ button to tap on the top right/left of the ‘+ menu’ would work?
I do LOVE the new iPhone single tap/hold to zoom in, but I feel the sensitivity is super high and makes it difficult to focus on an area, so if a slider could be made to customize the zoom sensitivity would be freaking awesome. Thanks man! Love this app!
That is a great piece of feedback. We’ll keep working on performance on further versions. Please keep letting us know how it feels. We only have access to a limited set of real devices. We’ll try to get less powerful iPad and try to reproduce that.
About the split screen issue, thanks for letting us know! I think we might have a solution to that. That should be easy to add to the next release.
We’ll also try to tune the zoom sensitivity. I agree that it might be too sensitive. Let’s iterate on that.
Performance on my iPad improved a lot. It’s still not perfect but it’s close! I really like the new feature for the iPhone. I first thought it wouldn’t really work and it felt a bit sensitive but shortly after it was really comfortable and easy to use! I like it very much! Keep it going guys, awesome work!
@stacph ya know what?! I actually agree now! It’s funny how the longer I use the one handed zoom, the better I get with controlling it. I think it’s a learned experience haha thanks for making me realize I needed to be a little more open to the concept. Such an amazing comic reader! Great job to the creators!
I have few suggestions as well for the zoom feature maybe locking the page so that when you zoom in it goes to each corner and not outside of the page. Another is to use the magnify glass that iOS has built in like this photo
@Greg Absolutely agree with limiting the panning so the zoom does not over-extends the page.
About the magnifying glass, that was our original approach (before coming up with the zoom control). For some reason, it didn’t feel 100% right, and after a few iterations and many tests, we ended up preferring the zoom control over the magnifying glass.
I’m always for having options, so I’m all for it. If you do make it so that you can’t navigate over the edges then please leave an option to change that, because I really like to zoom over the edges since that allows me to put the part I’m reading in the center which is nice since I don’t get to see what’s happening next.
So for that it would be nice to keep the zoom while switching pages but I can’t come up with an idea that would be intuitive and comfortable
thanks for making me realize I needed to be a little more open to the concept. Such an amazing comic reader! Great job to the creators!
