I like the changes. There needs to be more though. The drop down of myfavs/mycomic is super slow and the web comic management pages needs work. right now you move the page up and down one by one. its really archaic.
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
There's a NEW DrunkDuck on the way, with a bunch of improvements!
Yeah hi. I was thinking about the PQ system and thought it would be a clever idea to introduce some sort of search feature. Something along the lines of "Show only PQ's from person X". So if you guys could do that, then that would be great.
Incidentally, a forum search bar would also be nice.
The forum designs we've seen have a search function. :]If you're talking about the search bar, located at the top of the site, then that only searches users and comics; not the forum.
However, I just saw a forum search bar in the newest Redesign blog (#4), so that made me happy.
I'll throw in the PQ sorting idea into the suggestion thing at some point >.>
The forum designs we've seen have a search function. :]If you're talking about the search bar, located at the top of the site, then that only searches users and comics; not the forum.
However, I just saw a forum search bar in the newest Redesign blog (#4), so that made me happy.
Yes, by "we've" I meant me and Oz, we've seen more of the redesigns than has been posted publicly. So I was trying to answer your question, not be snarky about something that was there you missed.
…uploaded comics will be re-sampled to a standard .png format.
from the latest (March 4th) Redesign Blog entry has me slightly concerned: not really looking forward to having my pristine, super-optimized 8-bit lossless pngs resampled with lossy compression, which I'm guessing is what's going to happen. I hope I am mistaken! Resampling is…really not ideal from the creator's standpoint. And I guess animated .gifs won't be supported?
It's meant to be jpg, not png. -_-…uploaded comics will be re-sampled to a standard .png format.from the latest (March 4th) Redesign Blog entry has me slightly concerned: not really looking forward to having my pristine, super-optimized 8-bit lossless pngs resampled with lossy compression, which I'm guessing is what's going to happen. I hope I am mistaken! Resampling is…really not ideal from the creator's standpoint. And I guess animated .gifs won't be supported?
Dunno what went wrong there.
And it is ONLY meant to happen when images are above a certain file size. 350KB was mooted.
If the images are below that then there will be NO changes.
I will have to bring this up again with Kinh, but we did discuss all that pretty thoroughly.
So all images above 350kb are converted to jpg's?
I don't really see why this is necessary.
Personally it doesn't suit me; most of my comics are often larger than 350kb, and, due to my style, when exported as jpg's are both horrendous to look at and twice the size.
At least I'll have a main site to fall back onto, but I'm probably not the only person on this boat.
Also, I love that in the new forum design, 1337 master is the most recent poster in every thread.
So all images above 350kb are converted to jpg's?As Kinh says in his post- things are balanced out to also make viewing the site smoother on mobile devices.
I don't really see why this is necessary.
Personally it doesn't suit me; most of my comics are often larger than 350kb, and, due to my style, when exported as jpg's are both horrendous to look at and twice the size.
At least I'll have a main site to fall back onto, but I'm probably not the only person on this boat.
But a significant issue is also server space for thie site. Jpg provides the best combination of quality/file size/and compression for complicated images of any format.
As a professional graphic designer I know very well how to use all image formats that are commonly used on the web, what formats are best for what sort of artwork and how to get the best quality, file sizes, and compression in whatever I use * - for print as well. But that's because it's part of my job, 99.99% of people out there don't have that sort of experience, so stuff like this server processing is there to take the pain out and make things easier for them, rather than simply providing a cut-off and not letting people upload the work if it's oversize.
-I was easily able to get your latest page under 350kb as a jpeg with no visible loss of quality.
I checked out both versions on my 21UX Cintiq monitor as well as my 32 inch Samsung LED monitor and both were identical.
What program are you using to save your file formats?
-often this is the issue, not the formats themselves.
-I'm working in Photoshop CS4.
————–
This is what your unmodded full size art looks like:
This is what the compressed jpg format looks like:
This is what the unmodded art is like at 300% of its size:
This is what the compressed art is like blown up to 300%:
-You can only notice the artefacts when the art is enlarged bigger than what you'd actually see it at on the web.
-All these are saved here as PNGs so that no new artifacts were added.
I've already had this argument with Ozone (and I think back then it was 250 or 300kb?) so I'm going to wait and see how well the images shrunken down. Only 23 of my 113 completed pages (including the ones not uploaded yet) fall above 350k so the only one I'm worried about is an upcoming doublespread.
The sad thing is that this might hit pretty hard any comics that use a "one chapter per looong scroooling page" format.
(I just hope the redesign will do something nice for chapter-based comics because I don't want people to start each new chapter from the last page spoilerama).
People who end up with large-size png files may want to try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pngcrush PNGCrush, which is a free program to find the best possible optimization for a png file without any visible quality difference. I haven't used it myself but I consistently hear good things.
As Kinh says in his post- things are balanced out to also make viewing the site smoother on mobile devices.
Does this mean we might see a mobile version of the site sometime in the future? That would be nice. DD is a bit of a pain on my ipood.
Also: MORE with the horrible lack of contrast! Can't we at least have a proper black text for the forums?
Mes pauvres yeux! Why does Wowio want me to go blind? : (
We've lobbied strongly for black text. Supposedly it will be done, it would be useful if the mock-ups they are posting reflect changes they know will be done. But if it takes a long time to change something I guess that's time better spent on coding.
Actually in Kinh's first post, doesn't he say something about darker text?
Edit: Nope, just that some of the images don't reflect current changes.
Anyway yeah, I'm pretty sure we're getting black text.
As Kinh says in his post- things are balanced out to also make viewing the site smoother on mobile devices.
Does this mean we might see a mobile version of the site sometime in the future? That would be nice. DD is a bit of a pain on my ipood.
Also: MORE with the horrible lack of contrast! Can't we at least have a proper black text for the forums?
Mes pauvres yeux! Why does Wowio want me to go blind? : (
The admins had brought this issue up as well, and I'll reiterate here what I told them. The sample images posted do not represent the final, definitive look of the pages. Especially when it comes to text font colors, that's something that can be easily adjusted at the last minute and most likely will be darkened from what you see here.
And it is ONLY meant to happen when images are above a certain file size. 350KB was mooted.Ah, that's a relief, thanks.
If the images are below that then there will be NO changes.
I will have to bring this up again with Kinh, but we did discuss all that pretty thoroughly.
Yeah, I stopped using .pngs on color images when I realized that it darkened all my colors obscuring all the effects I was going for.Well, for B&W at least, you can–with the right program; I use IRFanview for this–save them as 8-bit images, lossless compression, and you'll still have a pretty compact file size. No compression artifacts that way: the lines stay perfectly crisp. That's what I do with my comics, which are all b&w.
I did use it for B&Ws for a while until I realized just how ugly it made the lines look.
So I saw the new proposed user page and I have to say it's too crowded, and space isn't used effectively. I've created my own mock-up that admittedly addresses more issues I have with the redesign other than with the fact that the user page puts near-useless features like trophies above our comics or the fact that user pages are going to be even longer than most are now.
Here it is.
The Comics thing would work similar to the netflix rotating dvd cover art thing. Maybe users could even have the option to select which top 3 comics they want to show up in the front. That "See all" link below the comics banner would display just the thumbnails with the titles similarly to how they show up now on the user page now.
You can still edit most of your options on the user page here but it takes up much less screen space.
It's just a lot less crowded than what's currently proposed and I think makes the site look a little cleaner (and for this page, returns the most focus to the comics!).
May I suggest a FIRST and LAST page for the search results as well as the numbers and such?Excellent idea!
Being able to jump all the way to the end or beginning can help speed up a search sometimes.
So I saw the new proposed user page and I have to say it's too crowded, and space isn't used effectively. I've created my own mock-up that admittedly addresses more issues I have with the redesign other than with the fact that the user page puts near-useless features like trophies above our comics or the fact that user pages are going to be even longer than most are now.First up, please save that as an 8bit png, it took ages to come up on my screen… doesn't matter how fast your internet is, if there's a slow connection anywhere in the chain that is what the speed will be.
Here it is.
I really like what you did there larry- apart from the horrible grey background. We don't want any of the old nasty greys in the new look of the site. Even black would be better than grey.
Anyway, it looks good. The recommended comics list will probably be gridded with mouse-over descriptions instead of vertical so that will save space.
Next time when Skool and I conference with Kinh we'll ask about your design.
I'm not sure at this stage if changes that significant can be made since the new site is well under construction but I'll ask anyway.
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