When we launched Anime-Planet V4 back in July of 2014, our goal was to launch a responsive site that would scale well for tablets and mobile phones. While better than V3's 100% zero responsiveness, it's safe to say the mobile experience still left much to be desired... especially when it came to updating your personal anime or manga lists.
Today, we're launching a fairly major upgrade to your mobile experience, focusing on the personal lists. If you like what you see, we'll roll out the same experience to other areas of the site, like when browsing all anime or manga. There are some other updates launching that apply to all devices (desktop, mobile and tablet).
Simplified and gorgeous mobile lists
We've entirely revamped how the status area looks on your personal list, on mobile.
You've told us that the majority of the time, what matters most to you on your phone is being able to very quickly update your episode counts and 'watching' lists on the site. To help enable this, we've streamlined the list pages, hiding some of the more advanced tasks (which will still show up on tablet and desktop), and turned the 'my list' elements into tappable widgets that are easier to use and prettier to look at.
Here's some before and afters.
WATCHED VIEW
WATCHING VIEW
ALL ANIME VIEW
MANGA IS UPDATED TOO!
Update your episode count by 1 with 1 click
For quite awhile you've requested a simple way to increment your episode counts, for when you go on a watch binge of this week's seasonal anime. Now, on your 'watching' list, you can now click the handy +ep button to quickly increment the count by 1. This button is available on all devices, from desktop to mobile.
See when new episodes are available
Another request we hear a lot is a way to quickly see if there's new episodes out for your favorite series. Now, on your watching lists (as well as dropped and stalled), we output the total episodes available after the episode selection widget. A "+" after the number indicates it's an ongoing series and more episodes are coming.
Once you 'catch up' and your episode count matches what's available, the total episodes available string disappears until new episodes are available. You can use this list view to quickly see which series you need to catch up on.
BEFORE you're caught up:
AFTER you're caught up:
New dropdown navigation style
Horizontal navigation on many pages of the site (including the 'watch online' page, season charts, and lists) now automatically turn into dropdows in mobile. For example, here's how you choose between your statuses compared on desktop and mobile:
DESKTOP
MOBILE
Set default landing pages for your anime and manga lists
In your edit profile page, you can now set the default for where your anime and manga links go. For example, let's say you want quick access to your "watching" list - not only that, you want to only see things that are currently airing. You can choose Watching (Ongoing) as your default, and then, any time you're logged in and navigate to your anime list, you'll land on that page. You can set the same values for manga, and these settings apply to all devices.
New mobile rating widget
The rating widget was virtually impossible to use on mobile, especially when attempting to tap a half-star increment. There's a new V1 that should make rating on mobile much easier. We'll look into alternate ways we can improve this moving forward.
Assorted other stuff
There have been a bunch of smaller updates that aren't worth screenshotting but are worth calling out, including:
Known issues
We've thoroughly tested these new features but there are some issues we're aware of:
Next steps
If you guys like this experience, we'll start to roll it out to other pages on the site, like browsing all anime. This is a V1 and we plan to iterate on this based on your feedback.
We're also investigating a ton of additional mobile enhancements to tables across the site, homepages, etc, plus some things that have nothing to do with mobile but impact mobile as well, like a global search experience and easier to find search in the header.
We're also experimenting with some new ideas on the top of the profiles to make them more streamlined in mobile, as well as reducing page load times on all devices.
tl;dr, lots of work continues, as our goal is to make the Anime-Planet site so easy to use in mobile that you don't need us to build an app.
Thank yous
Big thanks goes to the few beta testers we had on the feature:
50462562
KingArthur13th
rjsec4ever
faizal101
SacredTessaiga
Developers:
kweeket
Xesxen
me
Feel free to drop Kweeket and Xesxen profile comments showing your thanks if you like these features as they volunteered long hours to get this done. :)
Show your support
If you like these features and the direction mobile is going, please let us know here (so we can continue upgrading to this style elsewhere).
Also, the best way you can help out is by telling your friends who like anime to come check these features out - especially if they've been holding off on trying Anime-Planet because they're looking for an app or something with better mobile support.
And in general, if you love the site, there's many other ways you can help support Anime-Planet, such as adding an adblock exception, donating to support the servers, and more listed at the link! Anime-Planet doesn't have investors or corporate sponsors, and we're able to keep running based solely on the ads on the site and your donations.
Thanks for trying out these new features and we hope you enjoy them!
Today, we're launching a fairly major upgrade to your mobile experience, focusing on the personal lists. If you like what you see, we'll roll out the same experience to other areas of the site, like when browsing all anime or manga. There are some other updates launching that apply to all devices (desktop, mobile and tablet).
Simplified and gorgeous mobile lists
We've entirely revamped how the status area looks on your personal list, on mobile.
You've told us that the majority of the time, what matters most to you on your phone is being able to very quickly update your episode counts and 'watching' lists on the site. To help enable this, we've streamlined the list pages, hiding some of the more advanced tasks (which will still show up on tablet and desktop), and turned the 'my list' elements into tappable widgets that are easier to use and prettier to look at.
Here's some before and afters.
WATCHED VIEW
WATCHING VIEW
ALL ANIME VIEW
MANGA IS UPDATED TOO!
Update your episode count by 1 with 1 click
For quite awhile you've requested a simple way to increment your episode counts, for when you go on a watch binge of this week's seasonal anime. Now, on your 'watching' list, you can now click the handy +ep button to quickly increment the count by 1. This button is available on all devices, from desktop to mobile.
See when new episodes are available
Another request we hear a lot is a way to quickly see if there's new episodes out for your favorite series. Now, on your watching lists (as well as dropped and stalled), we output the total episodes available after the episode selection widget. A "+" after the number indicates it's an ongoing series and more episodes are coming.
Once you 'catch up' and your episode count matches what's available, the total episodes available string disappears until new episodes are available. You can use this list view to quickly see which series you need to catch up on.
BEFORE you're caught up:
AFTER you're caught up:
New dropdown navigation style
Horizontal navigation on many pages of the site (including the 'watch online' page, season charts, and lists) now automatically turn into dropdows in mobile. For example, here's how you choose between your statuses compared on desktop and mobile:
DESKTOP
MOBILE
Set default landing pages for your anime and manga lists
In your edit profile page, you can now set the default for where your anime and manga links go. For example, let's say you want quick access to your "watching" list - not only that, you want to only see things that are currently airing. You can choose Watching (Ongoing) as your default, and then, any time you're logged in and navigate to your anime list, you'll land on that page. You can set the same values for manga, and these settings apply to all devices.
New mobile rating widget
The rating widget was virtually impossible to use on mobile, especially when attempting to tap a half-star increment. There's a new V1 that should make rating on mobile much easier. We'll look into alternate ways we can improve this moving forward.
Assorted other stuff
There have been a bunch of smaller updates that aren't worth screenshotting but are worth calling out, including:
- Some tweaks to the dropdown menus in the header on mobile (more to come)
- Images now properly scale down to the correct size on mobile, such as on the season charts and homepages
- Images now properly center with the header/titles on homepages on mobile
- Better 'you have no list' calls to action
- Plus other odds and ends!
Known issues
We've thoroughly tested these new features but there are some issues we're aware of:
- The Windows Phone experience is regrettably lackluster - our hands are tied on this for the most part due to how the OS/browser works on those devices (without much support for modern websites), but we'll look into if there's any ways we can make this experience better. The old status dropdown style appears on Windows Phone as a stopgap so you can still update your list.
- Firefox on mobile also has some issues with setting status, so we're showing the old dropdown style there until we can determine a fix. (No issues with Firefox on desktop)
- The spinning icon (which indicates that the action is being taken) is behaving strangely. Also, you might have noticed a big gap in the table rows. We're looking into how to make the spinner happen inline so we don't have to save a gap of space, and/or how to make the spinner type icon look better than it does now. Stay tuned on this one!
Next steps
If you guys like this experience, we'll start to roll it out to other pages on the site, like browsing all anime. This is a V1 and we plan to iterate on this based on your feedback.
We're also investigating a ton of additional mobile enhancements to tables across the site, homepages, etc, plus some things that have nothing to do with mobile but impact mobile as well, like a global search experience and easier to find search in the header.
We're also experimenting with some new ideas on the top of the profiles to make them more streamlined in mobile, as well as reducing page load times on all devices.
tl;dr, lots of work continues, as our goal is to make the Anime-Planet site so easy to use in mobile that you don't need us to build an app.
Thank yous
Big thanks goes to the few beta testers we had on the feature:
50462562
KingArthur13th
rjsec4ever
faizal101
SacredTessaiga
Developers:
kweeket
Xesxen
me
Feel free to drop Kweeket and Xesxen profile comments showing your thanks if you like these features as they volunteered long hours to get this done. :)
Show your support
If you like these features and the direction mobile is going, please let us know here (so we can continue upgrading to this style elsewhere).
Also, the best way you can help out is by telling your friends who like anime to come check these features out - especially if they've been holding off on trying Anime-Planet because they're looking for an app or something with better mobile support.
And in general, if you love the site, there's many other ways you can help support Anime-Planet, such as adding an adblock exception, donating to support the servers, and more listed at the link! Anime-Planet doesn't have investors or corporate sponsors, and we're able to keep running based solely on the ads on the site and your donations.
Thanks for trying out these new features and we hope you enjoy them!
