software Discuss the new Story Enhancement Theme

[Myr]

  

This is a soft launch for a new theme for Stories. If you go to the bottom of any page and select Theme and then select "GA 2026 - Story Enhancement" you can test out the new Story Theme. 

This is an interim step to our big software upgrade that is coming in the next few months.  It clarifies a few controls and makes things a little more visual.  One big thing is that it changes the story listing to show book covers for when authors have loaded them. If you have turned on reading history, it also changes the link on the story listing to jump to where you left off on the story. (Resume last read chapter).  Some font sizes and spaces were also cleaned up.

 

When you load the story page, there is now a handy button to jump straight to the chapter 1.

We clarified the title search. And we added text to the filters separating out the most used ones and putting the lesser used ones behind the "More Filters" drop down.

 

On the reading page, we added text to the chapter text control and seperated them out a little bit visably.  We also made the progress bar a bit big and easier to see.

 

Please try it out and provide feedback here.

 

This will be made live for all members at some point in the near future. (You'd be able to switch back for a time if you desired)

 

[Krista]

Sometimes I'm oblivious, so forgive me if there is a setting that I've missed.

I wanted to see how big the text actually got in the stories. Massive, I must say.  There was a lot of clicking involved. It does save your 'reading settings,' as you move along. I know that is out of convenience, no one wants to adjust the settings every time they progress through a story.

I wouldn't mind seeing a: "Reset to default," toggle. Again, if there is something like that somewhere I apologize, I don't see it. As now I'm attempting to eyeball the text size after decreasing it back from the massive mess I had it in. *whistles*

I also must admit the stories that have pictures in their overall display structure are eye catching by comparison to those that do not. So, I would suggest with this system that authors go ahead and create Book title mock-ups or images. It does make them more visible to the eye-test.

Overall it looks organized, trimmed, and the accessibility features are enhanced a lot from what they were, which adds a lot of ease, especially settling back into a story you've already started reading and the reading settings already to your liking. Those features alone are a massive improvement. 

Edited 19 minutes ago by Krista