Currently my only planned method of contribution (although not set up yet) will be to have a way to upload Mokuro output for me to add to the site.
Me being bad at the actual visual design side, and learning CSS from the past decade as I go, and learning Javascript as I go, there’s a lot of room for improvement.
Are there any specific areas that you see where you feel “I can improve upon this”? (Don’t hesitate to be completely honest!)
My current ongoing tasks
Some things I’m working on, or looking to focus on, some being long-term projects, are:
1) Update the HTML and CSS to be mobile-first in design, then support larger screen devices on top of that.
Since I don’t browse the web on a smartphone, small-screen support is mostly hacked in at the moment.
It wasn’t that long ago that I learned Chromium has a tool to view a website at the size of various mobile devices and at portrait and landscape orientations:
There will be a lot of work to get that improved. Suggestions and mock-ups are always welcome!
2) Update Javascript function/variable names to be consistent.
As I jump between writing code in VB.NET, Javascript, Typescript, Python, and Ruby on different projects, I’ve only ever solidified my naming format in VB.NET. For Manga Kotoba, this has resulted in mess:
3) Clean up the CSS organization.
As I try out different things, my CSS is all over the place. I’ve also moved some from the external CSS files to the HTML template as per Google’s recommendation (which helps avoid things jumping around on the screen when the CSS file first loads). I also have CSS that’s carried over from the old site where I had frequency lists before, but isn’t used by Manga Kotoba, that I need to locate and clear out.
4) Improve database queries so I can reuse more queries and have less copy and pasting.
(Not much to say here without getting technical.)
5) And of course I’m always adding more series to the site:
I have over 50 volumes I need to run through Mokuro and Ichiran.
I have 42 volumes that ran through Mokuro yesterday and are running through Ichiran today.
I have probably about 100 post-Ichiran volumes waiting to be added to the site.
6) I’m working on a “per page” method of viewing vocabulary. (It will replace the current setting to toggle between frequency and paged vocabulary lists.)
This one needs a bit of work to look decent before moving to live.
7) I’m trying to find a way to utilize kanji lists:
I don’t have any concrete plans for what that will actually look like, but I really like what Migaku’s Kanji GOD add-on for Anki has for learning status:
I’d love to have something similar for Manga Kotoba, but specifically giving percentages of known meanings and readings.
The difficult parts here are:
a) Kanji “meanings” are a poor thing to measure knowing. This is because oftentimes, the meaning is an arbitrary word intended for use in mnemonics, and that gives it a degree of separation from the kanji.
b) Measuring known readings fails when you consider some readings are more common than others. Even if I could identify more common and less common readings, for each user that will depend on the kind of material they read.
8) Website colors.
Manga Kotoba’s layout started out based on an old site of mine:
But Google has some recommendations, such as darkening the orange color for better contrast with the white text.
It’s easy enough for me to say, “If someone can’t see white on orange, they probably can’t see well enough that they are reading manga,” but I’m still waffling on whether to darken the orange a bit.
There’s also my inconsistent progress bar colors:
9) Various other things not ready to mention yet as they may not go anywhere.
