[New App] Mango - *free* OneManga comic/manga reader for BlackBerry

[Andiamo]

What is Mango?

Love reading manga, but hate having to sit down in front of a computer to read manga scans? If you've got a BlackBerry, you're in luck!

Mango is a free manga (Japanese comics) reader for BlackBerry smartphones. Mango lets you read any series from OneManga's *HUGE* library of scanned manga translations on your phone through your carrier's 3G/EVDO internet connection. And best of all, you can't beat free, right?

Mango includes lots of thoughtful features to make reading manga on your BlackBerry as enjoyable as possible. As you read a chapter, Mango is always downloading the next image in the background, so you'll never have to wait for a page to load. Images are resized to fit your phone's screen width so you'll only ever have to scroll up and down. If you come across the occasional page with small text, it's also a snap to zoom in and view the full-sized version... just double-tap the screen or press the Z key. The Storm version of Mango supports touchscreen controls like swipe right to go to the next page, and for those without touchscreens, keyboard shortcuts more than make up for it. Mango makes it so much more convenient to read manga, that you might not even bother with a computer when you want to read manga ever again! ;]

Mango lets you view the details for any series straight from the app, including data like the artist, author, categories and genre, cover art, popularity rank, and summary. Mango's robust bookmarks system lets you bookmark any individual manga, chapter, or page, so you can easily go back to it later. Plus, Mango will automatically update old bookmarks as you read a series, saving you the trouble of having to go and delete duplicates. Oh yeah, and if you accidentally forget to make a bookmark before closing the app, that's OK. The Recently Read screen will show a list of the last 10 chapters you've opened.

I'm always listening to and responding to user feedback, so please go ahead and contact me whenever you feel like with suggestions or comments and I'll try my best to reply. Many of Mango's features came from user suggestions during the beta! If you enjoy using Mango, I do appreciate donations to fund my programming hobby!

Mango is completely free, so what are you waiting for? Download Mango today and unleash your BlackBerry's inner otaku! ^_^

Features

-Full mobile access to every OneManga.com series
-Preloads pages as you read so the next page is always ready for you instantly
-Ability to view series details such as artist, ranking, categories, and summary for any manga
-List search makes it easy to find the specific manga or chapter you want, without tons of needless scrolling
-Supports portrait or landscape screen orientations
-Server-side transcoding strips ads and other unnecessary data from OneManga before sending it to the device, resulting in less data usage and faster speeds, and near instant delivery for cached data.
-Advanced bookmarks system with low memory usage per bookmark, sorting, ability to auto-update old bookmarks with new chapter and page numbers, and the ability to bookmark any series, chapter, or page.
-Touchscreen controls including doubletap to zoom, click to advance page, and swipe left/right to switch pages.
-Pageviewer automatically scales down pages to fit the width of your screen, meaning you only have to scroll up or down.
-Various configurable preferences for convenience.
-Recently Read screen shows the last 10 chapters opened, in case you forget to make a bookmark.
-Automatic update notification

To-Do

Most of the manga reading functionality in Mango is done and polished pretty well, so future updates of Mango will focus more on the social aspect.
-Overhaul of server-side code and logging system (this is required for everything else to be possible).
-Full blown login and account system. This will probably be necessary eventually, as much as I don't want to require logins, using PINs for User IDs can only work so much. If I do add this, it will be pretty painless. First time you run Mango, you'll login or create an account, which consists of choosing a username and password and nothing else.
-Global as well as per-user stat tracking.
-Comments and rating system for individual mangas and chapters
-Achievements. My cousin suggested this and it sounded like an awesome idea, heh.
-Ports to other platforms. WinMo would be the easiest, since porting the existing Java code to .NET CE C# would be trivial. Android also uses Java but I think I might skip it. iPhone is a no-brainer... once I Get a Mac(TM). Maybe even a PC application for people who want their manga to preload.

Minimum Requirements

-BlackBerry 9500 Series (Storm), OS 4.7 or higher
-BlackBerry 9600 Series (Tour), OS 4.7 or higher
-BlackBerry 8900 Series (Javelin Curve) or 9000 Series (Bold), OS 4.6 or higher
-Compatible wireless carrier. Mango should work with most carriers. If you cannot connect, start Mango in offline mode, open the settings menu, and select the WAP2 connection method. Then restart the application and see if you can connect.

Screenshots
Please note that these screenshots are resized by about 40%. The pixel density on the phone is higher than the screenshots let on and it is actually very easy to read even small text.





Download

Mango is available through any of the following sites.

LeetSoft.net (OTA)
Use this link to download Mango directly to your BlackBerry over-the-air. All versions available.
Mango - Free OneManga Reader for BlackBerry
Mobihand (OTA, Desktop Manager)
Use this link to download Mango directly to your BlackBerry over-the-air, or to install Mango through the BlackBerry Desktop Manager for PC. All versions available.
Mango - Entertainment Blackberry Software
GetJar (OTA, Desktop Manager)
Use this link to download Mango directly to your BlackBerry over-the-air, or to install Mango through the BlackBerry Desktop Manager for PC. Storm version only.
Mango / free download

Support the Mango developer!

Method 1: Voting! If you like Mango please rate it or write a review on the CrackBerry Store to help boost its popularity! More popularity = more users = happier me = more features! :P
Mango - Entertainment BlackBerry Apps - Crackberry BlackBerry Software Store

Method 2: Donations! If you really like Mango please consider making a small donation to support my hobby. I would greatly appreciate it!

Method 3: Become a fan on Facebook!

If you've got a Facebook profile, why not become a fan of Mango? Help make Mango more popular by spreading it around Facebook!

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Note: Please post Storm-specific discussion for the Storm version of Mango in this thread. For general discussion for all phones, please see the Mango thread in the general 3rd party apps forum here.

Please note: Mango and its developer are in no way associated with OneManga. In addition, I do not claim ownership of any manga content delivered through this application.

[dan1668]

Thank You!!!!!!!!!!

The zoom is kinda weird but other than that. Possible rotation of phone into portrait with fast zoom feature would be cool . By the way, nice finger tap zoom Its pretty cool.

[taiwaneezy]

fricking awesome... I'm always going to onemanga at work. I always hated clicking the screen in, then the page would zoom a few times instead of going to the next page.

[GENEius]

Wow another thing I was hoping to see some time soon! It was a pain trying to get the site to work!

[Virgil52]

This is great! Honestly my girl was thinking of getting the storm so she could get on Onemanga but I told her it was way too slow and not very easy to use. Thanks a lot!

[Bear7079]

are you planning to add markers for new chapters?
other than that it looks great.

[ryank311]

After a quick run through the prog, it looks nicely polished. Some things that you should look into adding.

- Jump to top or bottom of list: Some manga's have 500+ chapters and they are listed in order from most recent to least recent, so if I wanted to start one of those mangas, I would have to spend a good 5 minutes scrolling through all the chapters.

- Search by category: A lot of times when I'm looking for new manga, I don't know the name of it, and I'm just looking for a specific type. It would be great to be able to list only the "Slice of Life" or "Action", etc.

[Andiamo]

I'm happy to see the response so far has been very positive, thanks for the praise everyone.

@dan1668: If by weird zoom you mean how some pages are tough to read when zoomed out then yes I know what you mean, I hope to have a fix for that soon. I don't know about portrait mode; the app has pretty much been designed around the 480x360 screen resolution provided in landscape mode, and while it's possible it would also make the images smaller. As for "fast zoom," could you elaborate please? Thanks for the comment.

@Bear7079: I thought about something like this while developing but put it off. What I plan on doing is added a "Recent Updates" screen that just gets the first 20 rows at One Manga | Recent Updates. I don't think I'll be adding a little NEW markers in the series list, that would be difficult for my server since it would require queries and parsing of multiple OneManga pages (the home page for the series list and the recent updates for the markers). Thanks for the feedback.

@ryank311: Thanks for the suggestions. Trust me, I know how bad it is to scroll to the bottom of the chapter list, it's 10 times worse in the simulator since it doesn't do dragging very well. :P My planned resolution for this was the Find box in the chapter list, though as I'm sure you've noticed it doesn't work right. (If you type "Bleach 1" it goes to Bleach 199 >.<). I'll add Go To Top/Bottom items into the menu in the next version, as well as fix the search.
Category search: I can see this happening, OneManga already has the convenient All Manga | OneManga.com page, so it would be trivial for me to get the list on the sidebar and then parse the specific categories, such as Action Manga | OneManga.com.

Thanks again for the posts. ^^

[Devlyn16]

does it Support .CBR files for American Comics?

[Andiamo]

This app does not. Once I'm done and happy with it I'm going to reuse most of the imaging code to create an offline version that works with comics (American or Japanese) that are stored in the SD card. I haven't looked into the cbr file format yet but it shouldn't be too difficult to implement support for that, and it seems to be a popular format for comics.

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ETA for next release is about 1.5-2 weeks from now, since I am flying to Argentina tomorrow and I will have no access to a computer for about two days.
Next release should contain fixes for the bugs listed above, as well as support for BlackBerry Bold, Curve 8900, and 8800.

[Westifire]

I'll be keeping my eye on this app like a hawk.

Already enjoying it. Thanks.

[tmoney1046]

I love this app!!! Its so cool!!!

[trainh13]

I suggest a permanent zoom. Its a pain flipping through the manga and switching the zoom every page. I love this app though. Good job!

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Virgil52]

This is probably in my opinion the best app out there. It instantly made my phone 100 times better, its like using one addiction to feed another. So far this is fantastic, I'm reading some GTO even though I've watched the anime twice already. I wouldn't mind seeing a previously read section if possible. Since I can't really update Myanimelist.net on my storm easily I keep forgetting what chapter I was on. It takes just a minute or two to figure it out but it would be nice if possible. Thanks again for this amazing app, keep it up!

[rice604]

I like this app, it really makes reading manga easier on my storm. I just can't seem to figure out how to bookmark certain manga. So I can access them more easily. I can bookmark individual chapters it seems