Update - July 13th, 2021

Bug Fixes

  • Bug with grammar search and textbooks

Changes:

  • Reading Passages now have discussion topic links to community forum posts. Feel free to ask any questions or just discuss the reading passages with others!

  • New Onboarding - A new onboarding flow has been added for new users.
    (If any of you would like to test it and provide feedback, I can toggle it in your account allowing you to go through it. We would love some feedback on how to make it easier for new users to get into Bunpro. Just let me know in the comments or reach out via email!)

  • Grammar Points - Added a couple of fields that once we set up will improve the grammar point meaning tab.

  • Textbook Setting - You can now set or change your textbook via settings

Beta Changes:

  • Reading Passages are now globally available. We will continue to release more with the N3 batch expected by the end of this month!

July 2nd Update

Bug Fixes

  • Bunpro Logo on Mobile didn’t respect start page setting.
  • Stats page Breakdown by level counted removed reviews in its total

Changes:

  • Better feedback
  • Options dropdown for search now includes N1
  • Left & Right side mobile navigation
  • You can now delete notes
    • Deleting a note will remove the note icon from the grammar point tile.

Beta Changes:

  • Toggle Furigana Button
  • Superscript Bugs in vertical mode
    • Would overlap other text
    • Was horizontal

Forum Fixes

  • Bugs for Lightmode theme
    • Weird banner size
    • Warning button color
    • Dropdown color for do not disturb & logout
  • Email notifications are now active again

Grammar Point Consistency Changes

  • Replaced all /'s with ・
  • Replaced all ~'s with 
  • Kanji added for all grammar. Rare kanji will have a caution, rather than displaying the kanji in the title.

June 24th Update

New Stuff

  • Grammar is public.
    • Previously you needed to sign up and be logged in to see any grammar. Now anyone can see the Lite version of each grammar point without an account. This will allow you to share a link to a grammar point and have the open graph protocol preview show.
    • All grammar now have friendly URLs.
    • There is a “Share” option that copies the URL. You can find it below the Structure section.
  • New Mobile Side Drawer
    • Navigation on mobile was, to put it gently
awful. The new mobile side drawer should make navigation much easier. Please let us know if you have any feedback.
  • Versioning & More Transparent Updates
    • Version info with a link to the latest updates
      image
    • Additionally, the updates will include more transparency on changes and bug fixes. In the past they were simply notes as “Minor Changes” or “Various Bug Fixes”. This doesn’t give you any insight into the work that goes on behind the scenes. Going forward the changes will be listed out in more detail.
    • A public roadmap & release calendar - While not here yet, we do hope to implement both of these in the near future to better organize feedback and give you a sense of the direction of the site.

Beta Features

You can see more about these features in depth, give feedback or make suggestions here: Bunpro Beta [July 30th, 2021]

  • Reading Practice [N5 is live and N4 will be released in the near future]
    • Features:
      • Toggle vertical text
      • Highlight grammar
      • Click on grammar to get a quick overview
      • Detailed notes on the trickier/nuanced parts.
  • Review Data on Grammar Points
    • General info such as: when you first studied it, timing of last review and next review
    • Stats such as: Times Reviewed & Accuracy
    • Info on ghosts (if applicable) Ghost count & Ghosts vanquished
  • Mass Select Grammar

Bug Fixes

  • A Bug with notes in reviews
  • Bug with how reviews tracked total times correct/incorrect
  • Bug with Sale banner appearing when it shouldn’t

Changes

  • Audio now loads on demand in example sentences rather than being preloaded.
  • Page speed optimizations to reduce render time
  • Overall reduction in asset file size (roughly 3x reduction)
  • Remember me is checked by default
  • Dark Mode is now the default (if you use another theme, this will only affect you when logged out)
  • [Dark Mode] - Change hover color in navbar
  • Color change for example sentence name highlighting to make it more visible for those with color blindness
  • Switch to use Noto Sans JP exclusively with varying font weights.

Classic Theme Sunsetting

  • Classic theme still exists but won’t be supported in upcoming UI changes or across new features
  • We want to make the modern themes (light or dark) appealing so please provide any feedback on changes that will make the transition easier for you.

The future of Bunpro

You may have noticed the lack of consistent updates and transparency over the past year as well as the slow progress turning out new content. We have worked to eliminate the internal processes and factors preventing innovation and growth and will continue to do so going forward. Our goal is, and always will be, to make your Japanese language learning journey easier and hopefully delight you along the way.

We’re hiring

Just a small plug: maybe you or someone you know would be amazing for one of the open positions we have! Competitive pay, fully remote, flex time and a bunch of other benefits


As always, we value your feedback, suggestions and criticisms and will continue to do our best to iterate upon and improve Bunpro. :bowing_man:

54 Likes

So many features that are filling out small gaps in the site. Super excited for the future of Bunpro!

Edit - I think the reading passages are going to be super helpful for people to actually get a feel for what reading something completely in Japanese is like outside of single sentences. Making the transition between single sentences and a book is extremely difficult, so if this bridges the gap a bit it’s going to be invaluable.

19 Likes

The drawer/menu on mobile is neat although have to get used to it being on the left now.

But please bring back all the info during reviews on mobile that were above the reviews. The SRS number, done/remaining number of reviews, accuracy etc.
It’s really confusing without.
(Especially having no idea how many reviews left to do is super disorienting)


The exp bar needs some adjustment. I’m on 1080 x 2340 pixels phone screen and I can horizontally scroll, there’s a 0 more to the number.

1 Like

I like the new fonts (I’m not hallucinating and fonts are changed, right?).
user_furigana still can take significant time to load.

Case in point. 4 seconds

Can it be preloaded in background in advance if it’s so slow?

3 Likes

Thanks for pointing that out. I will look into the xp bar! The bug with review info on mobile is fixed. sorry about that.

@Maykeye You are right, they changed a bit!
I will take a look at the issue with that end point. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

4 Likes

Typo - a missing .jp

3 Likes

Fixed!
Thank you very much for pointing it :+1:

3 Likes

Thanks for the update! I love the new fonts, and everything seems to be loading much faster, love it!

2 Likes

This is great, I can now do one click searches
hooray!

I think we are stuck with no Testflight renewal

This is great, I think users will appreciate the amount of work being done behind the scenes that doesn’t get mentioned.

さようăȘら、ç«č :sob:
I mainly used this theme because the color contrast was best and showed up better on mobile. Dark mode is second favorite, so any way to brighten contrast is my vote :slight_smile:

Look forward to it, great to hear the team expanding. Super helpful program and keeps getting better, going 3 years strong for me :beers:

5 Likes

Guys

I think I love you


8 Likes

Very cool, looking forward to the Reading Practice functionality, that’ll be super helpful.

One question about that Mass Select Grammar part - will “Study” replace “Cram”? Is that going to work the same way or is that something different?

3 Likes

The hype is real! Thank you all for your hard work :slight_smile:

3 Likes

YES, THANK YOU! Everything else sounds nice too :3 thanks for always putting so much work into the page and making it better everytime, i want to try the reading practice!

4 Likes

The first thing I noticed was the new font! I love it, so sophisticated now :slight_smile:

Edit: @Jake maybe add the font change to the list of “Changes” in the release notes above?

1 Like

:sweat_smile:

Thank you for the suggestion on how to improve the other themes. I will see what we can do!

3 Likes

It works the same way as the cram select does to choose grammar, but functionally, they are different. With the mass select, you have the option to “Add to Reviews”, “Mark as Known” or “Study”. In the case of study, the chosen grammar are opened on the study page instead of the default next batch.

2 Likes

Glad you like it! I have added it to the list of changes :+1

3 Likes

The bottom bar pokes out a bit on a 4k monitor. It should probably be either fully hidden or fully visible.

This is a great update, good to see lots of progress being made!

I have tried the other two themes but they don’t really work for me so it’s a shame about this.

Awesome! I’m glad it was just a bug. The info’s indeed all back now :slight_smile:

1 Like