Farewell forever, old Comixology code base – and all the info you gave us

After a few weeks of being pummeled on social media – including by typical digital comics readers like Patton Oswalt – the Comixology team has tweeted acknowledgement of some of the issues that users are experiencing – and given some idea of things that are still working and others that will be fixed.

“We understand how important improving the web reader experience is and are working as fast as possible to implement those improvements. This is our top priority right now,” they wrote on Twitter.

Among the features that users have been complaining about that still exist: Guided View is still available in the Comixology app, (and works in some desktop situations as well.)

Also, you can still see all your purchases by going to your Account page, although it will be made easier to find since so many people complained it was missing.

However, there are still a lot of issues. We’ve covered the problems with the new Comixology experience extensively, as well as recommended other services for digital comics.

The rollout from a UX experience has been a PR disaster, however, today’s Twitter thread gives a clearer explanation of why it happened: Comixology had its own code base, unlike other stand-alone Amazon purchases like Audible and Zappos.

That original Comixology code base was a thing of beauty if you were a comics fan – not only did it have information on all the credits for every comic book, but it gave recommendations and kept collections organized in a way that comics folks knew and understood.

But it was literally not up to Amazon’s code. The new Comixology is based on the same code base Amazon uses for everything, and while the UX at present is very disappointing, Comixology/Amazon coders are used to working with it and can hopefully upgrade the interface. (And you can check out Zappos and Audible for ways that standalone sites reskin regular Amazon listings.)

But how fast can that happen? Well, here’s today’s tweet thread:

1/ Update from the team on the Comixology 4.0 rollout:
🧵 ⬇️

2/ We want to take a moment to address the transition to our new app & comics webstore experience. We know this process has been far from seamless and we’ve heard your feedback.

3/ We understand how important improving the web reader experience is and are working as fast as possible to implement those improvements. This is our top priority right now.

4/ We’ve already rolled out an update to the Fire OS app, and are working on a bug fix for books that aren’t loading in HD. We’re making a number of other updates, prioritizing fast incremental improvements to ease the hardest pain points.

5/ Soon we’ll be rolling out updates to our New Releases filter on the New Releases page across web & app so that the filters work correctly. In the meantime, we’ll keep the “More New Releases” category up to date with all new releases for the week.

6/ While we work on these and other refinements, we wanted to highlight some things that we’ve heard customers couldn’t find but which are still available in the new Comixology experience:

7/ Guided View is still available in the app reading experiences. Just double-tap a panel to enter or exit Guided View.

8/ https://tinyurl.com/2zhcmhds All your purchases are available via the account page on the web, along with DRM-free downloads for books purchased prior to the 4.0 update. We’ll be adding navigation to your account from the main store page soon.

9/ Moving to the new codebase and away from our dedicated web experience was a tough call, but it’s an important step towards our long-term goals – to share our love of comics, manga and graphic novels and to reach more lifelong fans.

10/ We hear your feedback and we recognize that there’s a lot to be done. We appreciate your patience and support while we do everything we can to bring you the experience we envision. More to come. – The Comixology Team

While this update will do little to assuage the many angry customers out there – or issues with nnon-US readers –  at last it shows that they are aware of the problems and working to fix some of them.

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2 COMMENTS

  2. Very cynical about their “share our love of comics”. The new app shows no evidence that the designer has even read a comic.And there doesn’t seem to be anything here about the inability to access any of my comics on the app.

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