Version 5.2 (The Biggest Update Yet)

[petrjahoda]

■ New features
- A new look. Every tab, every sheet and the reader are redesigned. Each tab opens with a summary at the top, with Edit right beside it.
- New Statistics. Tap Edit to pin the cards you want, and open any card for a page with a chart to explore. New Time to Finish card, and Highlights for your records, streaks, goals, books and tags. Reading Recap now opens from Reading Time.
- New widgets: Current Book, Statistics and Recap. The old widgets are gone, so add them again from your Home Screen.
- Customize Toolbar. Hold the reader toolbar to choose and arrange its buttons, with the tap areas on the same page.
- Customize Bookmark. Hold the One-Touch Bookmark to restyle it and move it anywhere on the page.
- New reading bar styles for EPUB books in Reading Bars.
- Go to Page is now a page ruler for EPUB and PDF: drag to any page and tap Go.
- Your Notes puts highlights, notes and saved words on one page, with search and Select.
- The Reading Wrap is rebuilt, with Share Wrap. Hide from Wrap in Edit Book leaves a book out of it.
- Recent Activity on the Roadmap shows which features changed lately.
- Project Gutenberg has categories, sorting and a language choice.
- Details shows how many words an EPUB has.
- On iPad, the audiobook player shows the chapter list beside the controls.

■ Improvements
- Tap the Library title to switch collections.
- Add Books replaces the + button: files, iCloud Drive and book servers in one place, and every book source lists its books on one page with the same filter.
- New books in your library folder appear by themselves while Auto-Refresh Library is on.
- Large libraries are faster: sorting 10,000 books takes less than half the time.
- Covers fill every slot. A cover close to the book shape is trimmed to fit, any other sits on a blurred backdrop.
- Themes & Settings holds the theme, text size and fonts in one place, and the Text Size slider previews as you drag.
- Slim side rails replace the edge sliders for brightness and text size.
- Default Reading Style is regrouped into three pages and adds Font.
- Comic and PDF settings follow the same design as EPUB books.
- Book Details, Edit Book, Search, Car Mode, App Settings and the Help Center are redesigned.
- iCloud sync shows as a thin line under the status bar.
- A refreshed glass app icon.

■ Fixes
- A library scan that cannot read your folder no longer removes books, and books that iCloud offloaded stay in the library.
- Choose from Files in Edit Book opens in the book's own folder.

■ Localization
- All new text is natively translated across all 20 supported languages.

[HendelTBD]

The constant stream of tweaks and fixes and features is the thing I love most about a really great reading app. Only letting myself check the App Store once an hour, can't wait! And thank you.

[petrjahoda]

Hi Hendel, thank you for feedback :-).
Still in 'Waiting for Review'.

[HendelTBD]

Just got my hands on the 5.2 update, love the new look!

[Docuro]

I really like the new outfit of the App!
In library mode I did not find the option to Show the books in two columns as before. Is this option gone with the new update?

[petrjahoda]

Thank you for the immediate feedback, as I am waiting for what the response will be on it.
As for those two columns: it is gone, but let's make it simple: grid, list, compact? I suppose iPad right? What about a slider for 1-2-3-...?

[Docuro]

Yes, you are right. I use the iPad in list mode and I Only asked because I got used to the two columns. But I can get used to the new look, too. And there are a lot of new possibilities to get used to something new….

[petrjahoda]

OK, but it is already on the todo list

[mikepmiller]

Thanks for the awesome update! I really like the look and feel changes you've made in 5.2.

One small request: Is it possible for the Bottom Reading Bar to respect the customizations chosen even if it's hidden during reading mode? To be specific about my use case, I prefer to have the bottom bar off while reading, but when I click the book to see all the menus, I prefer to see both my position in the book and the number of pages left in the current chapter. Right now, I can choose to see both of those if I leave the bottom reading bar visible during reading. But if I disable the bar while reading, only the current position in the book is displayed when the bar is visible due to showing the menus. (Interestingly, the style of the bottom reading bar is respected if it is hidden but not the visible data elements.)

Thanks!!

[HendelTBD]

Page Ruler is nice and smooth, is it possible to show the page content behind it (maybe only when finger is scrolling at a reasonably slow rate)?

[petrjahoda]

Hello mikepmiller and HendelTBD, can you please contact me with it via support email in the app? Also, can you add a screenshot to it, as I am not 100% sure about the request.
Improvements can be of course done, I just want to be 100% sure, what it is about :-).

[culytera]

I like how much snappier the UI feels overall. Particularly when scrolling through the library because this was noticeable in the older versions.

1. Info shown under books
- I'm going to miss the scrollable info at the bottom of each book. Was that the cause of the performance issues before?
- Now, the only info shown depends on the sort option. For Length/Progress/Read Time this is great, but for Recently Added/Changed I don't particularly care to see the specific dates they were added or changed. I was expecting the dates to show as subsections instead of being below each book. Before there was a slider on the right that adjusts to the sort. Now, that slider only shows up when sorting by Title/Author/Series/Progress.
2. Covers
- I like that the covers' max display size is bigger, but due to the dimensions of the covers in my library, the text gets cut off.
- This isn't a problem for typical books unless the author's name is too close to the edge of the cover, but the fanfiction in my library have covers with text that are rather close to the edges so they get cut off.
3. Adding books
- Adding books in the older version was easier compared to the current version.
- Now, the only way to access the Add Books screen is in the All Books view and when you're at the top of the list.
- When the view is a collection, Add Books changes to Add Books to Collection. I initially thought this was a bug after updating the app because my library was filtered and the Add Books function had disappeared entirely.
4. Bugs?
- The name of the collection at the top disappears when changing tabs and when scrolling through the list. One way to bring it back is to tap the status bar to scroll to the top.
- Grouped books overlap the Add Books button since the button is too close to the book list. Of course this isn't an issue if the book list has subsections.
- When opening a book, the app will sometimes go back to the beginning of a chapter. I'm still unable to recreate this bug consistently, but this only occurs when Scroll is off

Also I would appreciate a disclaimer somewhere on this forum that you used AI to develop the app and to what extent it was used in the development considering you're charging people to use the app. Plus the link to the roadmap leads to nowhere on this post.

[petrjahoda]

Hello culytera, nice feedback :-), so let's go through it.
1.
- by scrollable info, you mean tags? (if yes, that the answer is yes, this was one thing, that was slowing it down)
- about that sorting and showing options, that can be put back, I will wait for some more feedback and put it back. This was done by opposite feedback: "when sorted by Date I want to see that exact Date, because why otherwise should I sorted by Date?"

2. The covers are made fill for the ratio, when it is around 15% of the ideal 3:2 image. When not, it is made fit, and the rest is filled with colors (see with rectangular image). I was battling with it, because even I have different covers (tall, slim, etc.) and when simply covers as they are were shown in grid for example, it looked kinda junky. So, from aesthetic point of view I decided for them to have all the same ratio and deal with images like described.

3. I liked it also, but I got a lot of feedback about those settings and plus buttons on the bottom right (ugly, not properly placed, ...) that i decided to do it otherwise. And the change to 'Add to Collection' is intentional. First it tells you, that you are in a collection and second ... it add books to the library AND to the desired collection you are in. Collection is only a filter above all books

4. The name of collection disappears when changing tabs or scroll... please anyone has this same problem? I am trying everything I can and I cannot reproduce this.
Overlapping yes, how can i missed it, going to fix it.
AI info added, roadmap fixed.