I'm starting to run out of ideas for things to add, so here goes.

A short while ago I started to write a manga reading program (before hitting a shitstorm of exams and assignments), building it incrementally and posting builds in the staff section of this site. Unfortunately most of our staff members read online, and only a couple gave feedback.

70 votes isn't really enough to go on, but... meh. With only 15% of voters saying they read online exclusively, I figured there was a reason to post here after all.

Before reading any further, note that this is NOT an end-all alternative to other manga reading software. No one program will ever cater to every user. Personally I desired a reader that loads everything into RAM and displays images at full size... and so I built this program around that premise. Full quality images loaded beforehand; sacrifice neither quality nor speed.

Latest version

Since it's written in .NET you may also need: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17851

The program is named J-Reader. The name is definitely open to change, I'm simply not creative.

Features:
Reads current monitor resolution and adjusts double pages accordingly
(if you have a second monitor it will be detected and registered; go to View > Monitor if the resolution is different)
Loads images to full height will scrollbar
Fullscreen mode to utilize your monitor's full height (menu bar can be hidden)
Supports using arrow keys to go from page to page. Scroll up & down pages with arrow keys or mouse
Zoom enabled for images that are too wide for screen
Supports .jpg/.png/.psd/.gif/.tiff/.jp2/.mng/.bmp/.wbmp/.ico
Supports .rar/.zip/.tar/.gz
Supports drag and drop for individual images, folders with at least one supported image inside, supported archives
Hotkeys to toggle fullscreen, hide the cursor, exit, etc.
Best of all, images are loaded into RAM.* (Killed all of the memory leaks... hopefully)
There's more to it than that, but the best way to discover what it's capable of is by trying it out

What it doesn't do:
No recursive searching for directories, only for archives. ie. it gets the files from the directory you point it to, but it won't search subdirectories.
No modifying of open images. There aren't and won't be any options to save images, convert them or do anything else. This is a reader, nothing more.

*This DOES mean it uses extra RAM, but the advantages are (generalized);
1. It reads from disk once when selecting a directory instead of reading every time you turn the page.
2. It goes MUCH faster; A decent HDD will read at 100MB give or take, whereas RAM can access data at several GB per second.
3. Less heat, power consumption, noise, etc. since a disk will spin at 7200RPM whereas there are no moving parts on your RAM (SSD's are exempt from this, obviously, though the difference in speed is still large).
Anyway, I'm not going to go into specifics there, but if you're IT inept just know that this method means you can read much faster and more fluently.


With that being said, I'm looking for feedback as to how I can improve this program.
Found a bug? Let me know. Have a feature you think would be good to have? Post it here.

Hm, I'll look into loading on right click. I just open it and drag & drop, so the thought didn't occur (which is why it was moved out of the staff section ^^ ).

If you right click on the image or the surrounding area and select "Previous page" it will take you back. It used to have navigation buttons, but they took up a lot of room. I was thinking about adding small navigation buttons on the menu bar.

If you click outside of the image it indeed doesn't go to the next page. Easy fix, but this was done by design; when moving to another window and trying to get back I'd click on the panel and end up moving to the next page. Still, if I add options to customize the program further this won't be an issue.

Starting from the next load... I've been wanting to save user settings too, so it looks like I'll be writing a .ini or .config file.

I'll start coding a little later today. Thanks for the input; if readers don't tell me what they look for I won't be able to cater to their preferences.

Actually, I do have a request for this one. Could you add a 'droplet' function?

As in, it'd be nice if I could drag a folder, zip, etc over the icon nad have it add to view queue/open it.  I've tried that but currently it's not supported :x

Tsk tsk. Ofcourse I DL'ed the latest version before writing <.<

It doesn't work. Or, to be more correct doesn't work as I intended.

It will open files if I drag them over the exe icon in program files, but who the heck is gonna do that?

What doesn't work, is dropping the folder/zip file on the icon added in the task bar (Under Windows 7/Vista). If you try that, you get a nice 'forbidden' sign and can't drop the files.

Also, even if drag and drop over a normal shortcut created on the desktop works, it won't work with the aumatically created shortcut: I have to manually do one for that to work.

I read that part, but the second one is wrong.

The file will be 'pinned' to it, and you must 'unlock' it to make wmp play it. Or, like me, you isntall 7 Toolbar tweaker and you get rid of that stupid behaviour, and have the bar open the file directly

Good luck~

make it be resizable :D

Hm, I just grabbed 9 chapters and dragged them onto the reader. It works for normal folders, but it doesn't seem to handle multiple archives. Oh well, fixed.
What I've done (in the next build) regarding the next chapter is read the previous input (ie. a folder, image or archive) and set it to prompt* for another file of the same format in the directory the last file was in. I'll also add the option to begin where you left off.
*Only occurs if Loop Mode is turned off.

thx for the effort,
the zoom isnt workign for me so idk if u have the feature, but a button to switch between full size and fit to screen size would be nice, also maybe some different resizing methods to choose from when u do.
also maybe a feature to rotate the batch of images that your view might be nice (maybe not good for my laptop, but i like to occasionally read it in letter orientation since the laptop is full hd screen, not sure how hard it'll be to apply all that to a program though)
but thx for the work put in, gonna stick with "first impression" or "impression: eyes" for now