Panel reading

Panel reading shows a page one panel at a time. The page stays in one piece: the view zooms in on the panel you are reading and dims the rest of the page around it. A panel as wide as the page is not zoomed, only lit. While panel reading is on, the page number at the bottom also shows which panel you are on, for example “Panel 2 of 7”.

Turn it on

In the reader, tap Panels in the bottom bar. The first time, a short guide shows where to tap; Show reader guide in the reader’s Layout sheet brings it back.

Panel reading needs the paged reader: in webtoon mode the button says Not available in webtoon mode. On a few devices it can’t run at all, and the reader says Panel reading is unavailable on this device.

Moving from panel to panel

• Tap the right edge for the next panel and the left edge for the previous one. In a comic set to right to left, the sides swap.
• Tap the middle to show the reader’s controls.
• Swipe to turn the page.
• With Settings › Controls › Volume button navigation on, the volume keys step through the panels.

Looking around a panel

On a zoomed panel, drag with one finger to move the view over the part of the page that is out of sight, for example to read a caption that sits just outside the panel. Let go while moving and the view glides on; touch the screen to stop it.

Once the view reaches the left or right edge of the page, the next sideways swipe turns the page. Where the page already fits the screen from side to side, a sideways swipe turns the page at once. Once you move the view away from the panel, the rest of the page is no longer dimmed; the dim comes back with the next panel. To zoom closer, pinch with two fingers.

Settings

The panel settings are in Settings › Panels and apply to every comic:

• Center each panel: the view moves the page so the panel sits in the middle of the screen, even at the edge of the page. Off, the view stops at the page’s edges, so the screen stays full of page.
• Panel zoom: how close the view zooms in on the panel you are reading.
• Dim the rest of the page: how dark the page gets around the panel; 0 % keeps it as bright as the panel.
• Transition time: how long the move to the next panel takes; Instant cuts straight to it. If animations are turned off in Android’s settings, every move is instant.
• Show whole page first: each page opens as a whole so you see its layout, and the next tap zooms to the first panel.
• Show whole page last: after the last panel, the page appears whole once more before the next page.

When a panel is missed

ComicDrive finds the panels on each page itself, and on complex pages it can miss a panel or show panels in an unexpected order.

ComicDrive also looks at the large areas of the page that the panel finder did not recognise, and where it finds drawings there, it adds them as steps of their own.

Whatever the finder gets wrong, you can still reach every part of the page: drag to look around a zoomed panel, and swipe to turn the page. If it finds no panels on a page, the page number at the bottom says No panels found, and a swipe turns the page as usual.