We recently started working on more improvements for the Library and content organisation. We are still very far from releasing it, but we thought it would be nice if we shared some sneak peeks with you and get your impressions.
In the future, Panels organisation will be closer to what a file system looks like. We’re creating a 1:1 match between the file system and the Library, where comics are files and folders are collections. This enables us to support nested collections very easily. We’re also planning to enable access to the storage folder from outside the app.
Here’s a quick video of Panels supporting nested collections for the first time.
Let us know what you think
It would be great to just point to a source folder and then just let everything sync by itself eliminating all the manual importing, sorting, deleting etc.
Step by step. For now the scope is to enable access to the storage folder inside the app sandbox.
Using an external source is much more complicated than “pointing to a folder”.
Also, it’s very unlikely that we remove the manual import features. Not all the users are as power user to manage the storage manually.
Hi, I am a new member of the Panel community. Love the App and UI. I have felt the nested collection as something missing as have a lot of comics organized as such and am looking forward to the feature. Is there any ETA on the same?
We don’t have an ETA yet, though it’s still one of our main priorities. We are making small changes towards this direction in every build we’ve been releasing for the last few months (most of them invisible to users for now).
Nested collections have quite a lot of ramifications and has impact on many features. Also breaks some existing ones.
We still have a long way to go, but we want to ensure that everyone will be able to migrate their current libraries to this new library that, amongst other things, will support nested collections.
This can’t come soon enough. The lack of nested folders is the reason I still use ComicZeal as my main reader despite the fact that it hasn’t been updated for a long time. I like Panels, and have had it since day 1, but without Nested Collections, it’s almost useless to me.
ComicZeal does this perfectly, and is very good at importing comics into their correct folder, and creating new folders automatically when I upload several comics in the same series. Will Panels also support those functions?
It’s very unlikely that we add those features. We don’t like the idea of doing stuff automatically for you because not all of the users have the same workflow and they might want to organize their library differently. Panels already autocomplete the collection name when you create one while importing comics. We think that’s a good middle-ground that provides some degree of convenience without making decisions on your behalf.
Nested folders will come, but we think Panels offers much more than library customization. Panels focus has never been being a files cataloger or a file server. And probably will never be. If you think the app is useless without those features, it will probably never meet your expectations.
What an oddly passive aggresive way to reply to a customer who’s been a supporter of Panels since the day it launched…
Any automatic features I’ve mentioned could come (as they do in ComicZeal) with an on/off switch in the settings, anything that ComicZeal does automatically is something I’ve chosen to let it do automatically. Saying that you won’t implement such time-saving organizational features because “not all of the users have the same workflow” is the very definition of laziness and disingeniousness. The app doesn’t need to make decisions ‘on my behalf’ since I choose what decisions I allow it to make and under what conditions.
I never asked whether you’d include a file-serving functinality, so no idea why you’d even bring that up. As for being a files cataloguer - for people like me who keep hundreds of comic books on their ipads, Panels is woefully inadequate, and if you’re planinng to keep it that way ON PURPOSE, then you clearly don’t understand why so many of us have been asking for better catalogueing features.
You’ve lost at least one customer with your reply, and doubltless will lose any others who read it!
It wasn’t my intention to be passive-aggressive at all. I was trying to be as transparent as possible to avoid setting unrealistic expectations. Sorry if it sounded rude.
We put a lot of effort and hard work into Panels, and keeping a balance between adding features and keeping the app simple to use it’s not an easy task. Of course, we make conscious decisions not to add certain features. We can’t add everything anyone asks for. And we fully understand that means not being the first app of choice for some people.
But we stand behind our decisions. If we think that something shouldn’t be in Panels, we won’t add it.
Nevertheless, we listen to our users and we implement feature requests all the time.
I’m sorry to see you go, but I’m more sorry about your word choice and tone that IMHO, is the one being aggressive. This has always been a friendly and empathetic community. You’re always welcome if you tune the tone down.
I’ve always loved how you guys are open in responding. “We did this because of x, we will do this because of y, we won’t be doing this because of z.”
Indi development is a tough business and I understand that features have to be picked.
As a power user, I always prefer - add advanced features, disable them by default and give a toggle to enable approach.
