Introducing Natively - Now with Movies & TV Shows, Korean, Spanish, German and More!

Hopefully I still remember which anime I found easier and harder by then! It’ll have been nearly a year since I started watching Japanese subbed anime at that point!

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I dunno, I think that’s a step too far. Fundamentally, your interaction with the language in a visual novel is meant to be through reading; I see the voice acting more as a bonus aid than the main focus. I’d consider anime the reverse. There are also plenty that are totally or largely unvoiced. If forced to make a singular assumption, they’re certainly always going to have reading, but some won’t have listening at all.

Further, I think for the purposes of difficulty assessment, anime or any other listening includes issues of speed and keeping up with something on its own terms, where visual novels pause line by line. Moving at the user’s pace is, to me, a really crucial element for grouping VNs, if they are to be grouped with anything, with other media where you do the same.

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Another suggestion to expand on this, if we could compare by year, that could be cool. :slight_smile: To see how much we read in previous years vs current year.

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After some further reflection (and some users requesting it), I’ve deleted the initial backfill for days read. These were days that were automatically marked as ‘read’ based on the date finished for your books. Some users understandably just aren’t interested in marking them.

If you would like me to reinstate your backfill, please let me know! Going forward, days read must be manually marked… there won’t be any automatic processes that mark them.

And for those of you who have already gone back and marked your days read manually, don’t worry. I only deleted the backfill for days read marked before the oldest day read you marked manually. I also inspected it to make sure it looked right.

As a side note, I’m happy to see people going back and marking their days read! :slight_smile:

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The gradings page (Login | Natively) doesn’t show the top navigation links for some reason.

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yikes! Thanks for letting me know. Strangely didn’t hit my error alerting system, which it should…

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That bug should be fixed.

This bug is also fixed @pocketcat @chrisosaurus. Using the dialog will generate the ‘pages read’ activity. I still have to backfill and add those reading sessions that were missed because of this, so for people that did hit this bug, your recent ‘pages read’ will be slightly off until I do that backfill.

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FYI I got prompted about cookies again and as before I couldn’t customize them so I had to decline them entirely.

Also, random question. Do you plan to add a dark theme at some point? I’m using the website on my phone with my lights off right now, wishing the site wasn’t so bright!

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Thanks for letting me know. I’m going to be switching away from that cookie consent banner… even though I’d prefer to not waste time on it. It’s just bad :frowning:

Yes, I’d love to… it annoys me too! Not sure when I’ll be inspired to do it, but perhaps I’ll figure something out with the rebranding. It should be in the next couple months at the very least.

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I have a small suggestion. Right now, the only way I know how to find the request a book link is to search for something that doesn’t exist.

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Maybe there’s a better way, but at the very least I’d recommend putting it in the footer menu as well.

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Also, just a nitpick, but “request book” feels more accurate to me than “add book”.

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I think that probably makes sense. I don’t want it shown too prominently except for the end of search results, but I do know that some people just do not notice that button… as their mind simply sees ‘no results’ and nothing else. In the footer would be a nice secondary option for people who miss the first button.

Right, I’ve gone back and forth on this, but don’t have a terribly strong opinion. I went with ‘add’ simply because I want people to think they aren’t limited and will be able to add whatever book they want, which is almost always true. ‘Request book’ is probably more accurate, you’re correct, but may suggest a more limited ability.

Of course, as I write that all out, I’m now favoring ‘request book’ again like yourself. I’ll probably to switch it back :grin:

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A mid-sprint update: the new homepage is live!

As a result, you’ll notice that the fonts have been updated everywhere which means there will be slight misformatting in certain spots. I ask you to bear with me for this change… it’ll take a little while to get right (I’m in the process of updating styles for a lot of webpages), but I think it’ll be great on the other side :slight_smile:

If you have any questions or concerns, do let me know.

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On the front page, when selecting the japanese level, I can scroll past N1+ there’s a blank option that gives no book.

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hah, you’re so right! Will fix, thank you.

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Today I noticed the new artwork in the footer, the person reading a book with moon in the background, wow that’s stunning!

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I’m so glad you like it! I agree, it’s great isn’t it? All compliments to Andrei Moldovan, the designer who I’m working with. He’s inspired :slight_smile:

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On Our Grading System | Natively, you may want to change “Adv. Beginner” and “Adv. Intermediate” to “Upper Beginner” and “Upper Intermediate” or something like that. Having “Adv” is weird to me because there’s actually a section labeled “Advanced”. I’ve also seen things like “Pre-intermediate” and “Pre-advanced”, not to mention stuff like “elementary” on the JLPT Wikipedia page. Like I said, I would just avoid using “adv” outside of the advanced section itself.

Also, just a few other comments. First, I really like that the library now says the number of volumes when it’s a series (e.g. 12/28). However, it would be nice if you could find some way to show this information even when you’ve only read one book in the series. I just like to know how many books are available, even if I never plan to read more from a given series. I’m not sure I have a good idea how to do that since the rows for series and individual books show different data, but it would be nice.

Also for that page, it would be nice if there was a way to go directly to the series, at least for the series rows. Right now (as far as I can find) there’s no way to get to the series without going through an individual book first.

Related to that, on a specific book page I find the placement and phrasing for the link to the series to be really odd. For example:

I’m not sure where I would suggest moving the link, but the current placement feels kind of “hidden” if that makes sense. Maybe just a coloring change would be enough, I’m not really sure what would be best. Additionally, I don’t really get why it says (Book #1) in parentheses when the link is to the series, not to the first book, and I already know that I’m looking at the first book from the page header.

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Thanks for all those notes! I agree with all your concerns.

I like that. You’re right the ‘Adv.’ is a little confusing.

Hmm, I hear you. I’ll think on it. I could simply put 1 / {number of books in series} in the ‘volumes’ column. It’d be a little confusing as it’d somewhat look like a series row and not a book row, but I could play with it and see what I think.

Right, I thought about making the title text a link, but I was finding that I’d accidentally go to the series page, especially on mobile. I could figure out something though.

Yeah, you’re right on each of those counts. TBH, the book page is going to be completely overhauled very soon (perhaps this sprint depending on how the reviews update ends up). Any book on the site with a lot of data is a bit of a mess right now. I’ll probably be switching to a tabbed interface for gradings / reviews / user statuses / overview … etc. The new designer (Andrei) will be spending a bit of time there.

That’s a long way of saying I’ll keep those specific thoughts on that series link in mind. Will change.

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Unlike requesting a new book/series, apparently you can’t request a specific status when requesting new entries for an existing series. I didn’t really think about that, until…

For some reason one book was excluded and the other was added to my wish list. I really wish they would just always be excluded by default for me. :sweat:

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I’m sorry! I totally missed that one by accident. I always try to exclude them for you (which is why one was right), but I missed the other one. By default, I do put them in wish list.

At some point, I will add that ability to that modal…

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