This release focuses heavily on visual interaction, faster sticker discovery, and cleaner navigation through a completely redesigned sticker category interface powered by thumbnail-based navigation instead of traditional text tabs.
Alongside the frontend redesign, version 2.5.6 also includes backend API optimizations, reduced payload overhead, and smarter overflow handling to ensure the sticker system remains smooth and scalable across both desktop and mobile devices.
Complete Sticker Picker UI redesign
The highlight feature of version 2.5.6 is the full redesign of the Sticker Picker category interface.
Instead of using plain text category tabs, sticker packs are now displayed using fixed-size square thumbnail cover images for much faster visual recognition.
This significantly improves the user experience by allowing readers to:
- Recognize sticker packs instantly
- Navigate visually instead of reading labels
- Find stickers faster during conversations
- Enjoy a more modern messaging-style interaction flow
The new interface is optimized for both desktop and mobile layouts to maintain a consistent social-style experience across devices.
New Sticker Pack Thumbnail API
Init Manga v2.5.6 extends the owned-stickers REST API with a dedicated thumbnail field for each sticker pack.
Previously, the frontend needed to extract the first image manually from post content in order to generate pack previews. The new API now delivers optimized WordPress thumbnail images directly.
This provides several major improvements:
- Reduced API payload size
- Faster Sticker Picker loading
- Lower frontend processing overhead
- Improved mobile performance
- Less unnecessary image parsing
These optimizations become especially valuable on websites with large sticker libraries or heavy chat activity.
New More Packs dropdown system
Version 2.5.6 also introduces a completely new More Packs Dropdown system.
When users own more sticker packs than the visible tab limit allows, additional packs are now grouped automatically inside a dedicated “More” menu instead of overcrowding the category bar.
The new dropdown includes:
- Sticker pack thumbnails
- Pack names
- Optimized overflow navigation
- Active pack highlighting
- Theme-color background indicators
This keeps the Sticker Picker interface clean and manageable even for users with large sticker collections.
Improved active tab indicators
Init Manga v2.5.6 also upgrades the active-state system for sticker category navigation.
Selected sticker packs are now indicated through:
- Theme-color bottom borders on visible tabs
- Highlighted backgrounds inside the More dropdown
- Clearer visual selection states
- Faster recognition of the active category
These improvements create a much more polished and intuitive navigation experience, especially on mobile screens with limited space.
A sticker experience closer to modern social platforms
The new Sticker Picker is far more than a cosmetic redesign — it represents a major step forward in Init Manga’s social interaction ecosystem.
Combined with existing features such as sticker bookmarks, inline interactions, real-time chat support, and quick-access navigation, the platform now delivers an experience much closer to modern messaging and social media applications.
Users can now:
- React faster using stickers
- Discover packs visually
- Bookmark favorite stickers
- Navigate sticker collections more naturally
- Enjoy a messenger-style interaction flow
Continuing to expand the social ecosystem of Init Manga
Init Manga v2.5.6 continues the platform’s direction toward becoming a more interactive manga community ecosystem rather than just a traditional reading website.
The platform is steadily evolving beyond manga reading itself by expanding social interaction systems including chat, stickers, reactions, bookmarking, and community engagement tools.
Version 2.5.6 further reinforces Init Manga’s mission of building a modern WordPress manga platform that combines optimized backend performance with highly interactive user experiences inspired by today’s leading social applications.
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