I'm hoping that with my focus as Creator Community Manager I'm able to bridge the gap between you in the team in the future. The Tapas team is very hard working and incredibly dedicated, but also small - while that is not an excuse, I understand how and why it could happen. It's a full time job to keep the community up to date and happy.
I think you guys will like the update, I've been having a lot of fun playing with it. If you want some screenshots of specific things, let me know.
That's some great news <333 I'm very excited about some of those changes (the comments in the sidebar is such a treat)
I wasn't sure about it at first, but once I realized it means I can comment or read comments at any time I want, I was sold >.<
These changes look great! Props to the staff for listening to feedback and trying to get the best of both worlds.
One question though - with this change, will covers only show up while browsing for the series? The test pages only show the little icon, which might be a cache thing since it's an old one.
The covers will replace the square icons if the creator updated them. On my test server I'm working with old data, so even if these creators updated to covers it wouldn't be visible on my screenshots.
Covers will be visible in the List on the right next to the episode, as well as the series overview.
Wow a big thank you to the Tapas team! 
I'm excited for the new updates, especially the more visible Support button and comments.
I'm most looking forward to the ability to place my novels under multiple genres! 
Also love that banners are back, cause I know quite a few people were a fan of those (as was I as well). And Endless Scrolling instead of the webtoon style...fantastic. Great feature all around.
It's also great you guys have also compiled this in a changelog, easy for us to look through. No surprises this time, leaving us looking through the website like this:
Yes, thank you for Dark Mode! It's very much needed for novels (hopefully eventually we can put in comics as well.)
Will there be an option to swap the comments and series info toolbars to the left? I can't stand having toolbars on the right side of the screen.
Yes, weird choice. I understand @ratique explanation, but to me, it makes way more sense to have selection on the left: first you select, then you read. Tapas comics are read from left to right.
There are already the arrows to change pages that are weirdly (and terribly annoyingly) placed on the wrong side (in this case, left) on the current design.
I wonder if someone in Tapas is not at all sensitive to this kind of ergonomical considerations? It's pretty distracting...
For the comments though, right side looks good to me; you read, then comment. I, however, understand it may be a bit problematic in the sense that it blocks the vision (it's nice to have the right side 'open'), but I suppose they disappear at will (not sure).
I don't find it very distracting after using it for a while, but I'm looking forward to getting your input once you guys can test it.
I'm not sure we would be able to separate the series selection and the comments though - that could be rather confusing and take up a ton of space.
Overall my response will be, test it out for a bit, see if it hinders your reading experience or if it just requires some getting used to. Depending on overall feedback I can review with the team what can, can't or should be done.
Oh, I'm so happy about this. Series info page is nice to have, but ever since series links changed to showing the info only, my views have gone down so drastically. There's been no point in putting up ads as well, because people arrive at the info page, look at it and leave, instead of being immediately drawn into reading like it used to be before the change.
A question, however: I see the series info as an overlay in one of your screenshots, will it be something accessible from episode view only as a quick overview, or will it replace the standalone page we have right now?
Definitely excited about endless scrolling.
Comments on the side remind me of how pretty much every social media currently has them, but I'm actually curious to see how this will work on Tapas. Seems useful.The distance to scroll down to comment section was a bit uncomfortable, it might be better if they are neatly on the side like this.
It still seems funny how everything switched from left to right, but as somebody who uses browser tabs in a vertical bar on the right, I'm not complaining, less distance to move my mouse 
There is a stand alone page also! It was a little hard to describe. If you add /info to your URL in the future, it will go straight to your series info page. It looks just like the overlay I shared in the screenshot, just as a full page. I'm pretty sure I managed to navigate to it from the episode also, but it was much easier to get to the overlay version, so I'm pretty sure most readers will rely on that one.
AHHH!!!! This is so exciting!! \(^-^)/ 
Thank you so much Tapas staff for all the awesome work you do and for helping us feel heard and appreciated!!! 
A white background can make it difficult to read, so our team added multiple reading modes for you to choose from to the novels section. The options are gray, sephia, dark and white and can be selected in the Style menu located on the toolbar.
Thank you for not just adding the typical dark mode, as someone who prefers reading on off-white/gray colors, this made my day - such a cool feature!! 
This whole update looks amazing, thank you so much for your wonderful work!! 
