May
Behind the scenes work on two big upcoming updates - Dark Mode & Covers
Welcome back to another monthly update. Summer is here, but that doesn't mean I am working any less on Kenmei. This month has been fairly productive, but no new features are being released, as most of them still need more polish and work. Nevertheless, join me to check out some of the previews of the work that has been done
📋Changelog🌙 Dark Mode
As promised last month, with migrating to Tailwind 2.0, I finally had most things in place to start working on Dark Mode, the most requested feature to date (requested almost the same day as Kenmei launched).
While it's not yet finished, I am quite happy with the progress I've done so far and it's already being tested by a small group of Kenmei users. I am hoping to wrap up work on it in June or at the latest - July. But till then, here are some screenshots of the UI, that will hopefully get you excited
This is very much a work in progress, so all the colours are still up in the air and will be tweaked as I continue working on it. But the work so far has been promising and I can't wait for all of you to try it out!
🖼️ Covers Mode
The other big piece of work has been going back to working on the covers mode. As some of you know, I've already started working on it months ago, but have paused work to focus on some other priorities.
But it felt appropriate, to take a look at it again and I've managed to do some considerable progress and I have a more clear picture of the direction I want to go. Similarly to Dark Mode, I am hoping to wrap up this work in July, at the very latest. Check out the preview below:
🛠️ Miscellaneous
As usual, I spent time in between big features on fixing bugs and refining the overall experience. There are plenty to fix and improve... you can find full details in the changelog, but here are some of the highlights:
Site Priority Ordering
Now that Smart Suggestion system has been around for a little while and we have a lot of sites you can track → I wanted to put some time to improve both. So I grouped sites into 3 different categories: Official, Group Sites and Aggregators.
With that in mind, I will now sort sites based on those categories. You will always see the site with the most recent chapter at the top, but when chapters are identical → Official sites will get recommended first, followed by Groups and finally Aggregators. Meaning, you can add series even faster, as the most appropriate source is most likely to be selected by default, so no need to switch away from aggregators all the time.
This also extends to Smart Suggestions → If both an Aggregator and a Group has the same chapter released, you will get recommended to switch to the Group instead of the Aggregator.
There are a lot more small improvements like these planned for the future, so you can look forward to those!
Logout looping bug
You might have noticed being logged out in the past few days. This was necessary to see if I was able to fix an issue for the unlucky ones, that would get stuck in a looping hell instead of getting logged out and redirected to the home page.
I think the issue should have been addressed now, after trying to get my head around it for ~2 months now. Unfortunately, I am not 100% positive, so if you are still experiencing this issue, a couple of weeks from now, do let me know on Discord.
For everyone using the site recently, I apologize for the inconvenience caused. But while we are in alpha, such incidents are more likely to occur, but I will always strive to minimise the impact of such bugs.
📈Progress Overview
The list of things I am currently working on hasn't changed from the last month. I am going to continue focusing on Dark and Covers modes, spending some time in-between working on the admin panel and of course Kenmei Premium + other bunch of things.
Current focus:
Dark Mode
Covers Mode
Kenmei Premium
Admin control panel
Migrating remaining UI components to use the new design
Catch you all in the next update, hopefully with some of the big features launching 👋
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