Rosscott, Inc.

^ 3616106 Comments...http%3A%2F%2Fwww.notquitewrong.com%2Frosscottinc%2F2011%2F05%2F03%2Ffinite-canvas-better-frame%2FFinite+Canvas%2C+Better+Frame2011-05-03+07%3A02%3A32adminhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.notquitewrong.com%2Frosscottinc%2F%3Fp%3D3616

1. Joe
   May 3rd, 2011 at 3:37 am

   …Well I just had an awesome post, but 'IntenseDebate' whatever the hell that is, decided it didnt want me to post it. so there you go…

2. rosscott
   May 3rd, 2011 at 3:40 am

   It's the comment system on my site. Sorry for the mixup.

3. Joe
   May 3rd, 2011 at 3:41 am

   Let's try again:

   KISS: add javascript to the page, so that the arrow keys can navigate (and refresh the adverts, in a way that benefits the author).

   RE-Index: have a premium site that standardises the interface over many comics, proceeds go to the author, many interfaces for different tastes, for different Power Users

   Chapters: for comics with clear chapter boundaries, have a feed that updates when those chapters are complete, so I can read the whole chapter in one.

4. Jonathan Sala
   May 3rd, 2011 at 3:47 am

   The sites I waste the most time on would probably be Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube and Wikipedia. Also a special mention to TVTropes – I don't go there that often, but when I do I stay for hours and end up with 30 tabs open waiting to be read .
   These have a lot of the features you mentioned – they link to other pages, include recomendations, and Tumblr and Twitter have endless scrolling and live updates to the page, which get me hooked for hours.

   One of the things that frustrates me most is that webcomic archives take a long time to read, so loading a page for every comic takes even longer. I usually end up writing a script to download all the comics, which means I can read them when I don't have internet access in a viewer that I like. This takes more effort, though, so I only bother if I *really* like the comic straight away. An easier way to download or view archives would be nice.

   Another minor irritation with webcomics that include alt-text is that I can't read them on my mobile or I miss out on the alt-text. Most webcomics don't seem to have mobile-specific sites, so I guess they haven't really considered this problem.

   I like that MSPA saves your position in the comic, so you can close the page without having to remember where you were.

   I think I'm all out of discussion now .

5. tordirycgoyust
   May 3rd, 2011 at 3:53 am

   Re: infinite scrolling, Chrome and Firefox (probably IE too, I don't use) have an extension called AutoPager which searches for "the next logical page" and autoloads it at the bottom of the page. I work my way through comics archives ~5x faster (much of this is due to not having to make my brain switch context (and thus break immersion) at least 4 times every time I change the page). When I start at the latest strip the next logical page is the previous one, allowing me to almost seamlessly refresh my memory of what happened last update and thus keep track of the story easier (this fact alone can get me to visit a site and put up with the ads instead of just reading via rss).

6. Steve Napierski
   May 3rd, 2011 at 9:05 am

   Refreshing advertisements will get you banned from Google. Also, a lot of the ad networks would probably drop you, as well, for false impressions. So you really have to be careful about stuff like this.

7. Steve Napierski
   May 3rd, 2011 at 9:14 am

   Problem with this, is from a business point of view you're killing your ad revenue. Google, for example, works in 1,000 pageview blocks. So if you average 5 pageviews per visitor and now you switch to an infinite canvas, you could easily drop your pageviews to 1 or 2 per visitor. Thus in turn cutting your revenue significantly.

   Now I do agree that infinite canvas is better for the reader, but not so much for the creator. Twitter doesn't and most Tumblr sites don't even have advertisements and Facebook has such a high volume and other sources of income, so for them it doesn't matter. But for webcomics, it does. While I would personally love to remove ads from my websites all together and just be able to build layouts that are logical and fluid, they are a necessary evil.

8. rosscott
   May 3rd, 2011 at 9:27 am

   But there are other ways to promote “pageviews” than one comic per page. Having ads show up in an infinite “feed” at some rate for example would probably do the trick.

9. Steve Napierski
   May 3rd, 2011 at 9:40 am

   How about looking at this from another point of view. When you go to a site to read an article are you trying to read ALL the articles on the same page?

   The comic, blog post and reader commentary to me are all part of the experience. If I visit a video on YouTube, I don't want an endless array of content on that one page. I want the individual video. After that, it's the sites responsibility to give me the ability to quickly search for other content and/or suggest other relevant material that will keep me interested and remaining on their site.

10. Irene
    May 3rd, 2011 at 9:49 am

    Whatever you do, don't build something that scales down comic images. I have been to a lot of comic sites that do use the blog format, but I consider them unreadable because I have to click once to get the comic to a readable size and then again to get back to the blog page, which has been turned into a kind of menu. No matter that it works for some comics, people will use it for their wildly out-of-scale comics, and that will probably do more harm than good.
    Your ideas for seeing more related gag comics seem like they would work best for groups of comic artists banding together. That's interesting, because I've seen a lot of networks of story comics, but not so many networks of gag comics. It would be interesting to see how it would work – sort of a comics-only Stumble.
    One area I'm interested in, because I do a story comic, is innovations in finding your place without too much effort. I use the Piperka.net system when I read comics, and I'm also interested to know whether there's a way to keep these systems compatible with Piperka, because it does make use of the chain of individual URLs. There are comics I would like to read but never get around to because I can't add them to Piperka.

11. rosscott
    May 3rd, 2011 at 9:53 am

    I don't know if you can compare comics to news articles in that way. News articles take a while to read, and you generally only go to the site to read the article. Comics can be read much quicker, and as we know doing an “archive dive” to read through our backlog is fairly common in a way news articles are not.As for YouTube, unfortunately content is a big part of their usage. Related content lets people who wouldn't be likely to go read every comic dive into what they really want. Not “the comic before” but “the other comics like it”. I do a lot of comics about cycling, and the cyclists that come to my site want to see more of the same. YouTube only helps people search with a search bar. Every other piece of that site is to encourage more time and usage.

12. Lee Cherolis
    May 3rd, 2011 at 9:59 am

    Thanks for the article Ross! I'm getting ready to launch a new webcomic in June/July, this is extremely interesting and relevant to me since I'm about to set up the website. Obviously, I'm going to try ComicPress or Frumph's Easel plugin since I don't have a web-savvy bone in my body, And I've used Comicpress before. I fall into the "would pay for a nice website if I could, but can't so will take all the help I can get" category so the idea of a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development of new and exciting WordPress/or other themes made for comics is definitely something I'd throw money at. I just wouldn't be able to create one myself. I could draw what I think my dream website would look like and function like but I'm code-retarded.

    So I'll be watching this discussion with interest. You just have to remember that like 98% of webcomicers want nice sites but can't design them themselves and it's a great thing when those that have web skills take the time to help the rest of us out, you just have to know the size of this can of worms, what kind of Pandora's box you're opening. You've put chum in the water, consider me a circling shark.

13. Steve Napierski
    May 3rd, 2011 at 10:10 am

    Ongoing stories (ie. Multiplex) you're not really promoting the individual content, but the comic as a whole. But for "comics" like ours it is the individual strip, much in the same way as an article, that we are promoting. The hope is that this strip will be popular and spread so that more people will come to see it. I want them to go to that page and not quickly brush it off and move onto the next one. I'd like them to see the comic, read my post, interject their own opinion, share it with others and come back for more.

14. spkr4thedead51
    May 3rd, 2011 at 10:22 am

    I'm honestly surprised I don't see more book style comic sites. There are plenty of ways to simulate physical page turning and give the feel of reading an actual book of comics like we're used to seeing with traditional comics like Calvin & Hobbes, Garfield, and The Farside.

    Alternatively, if you do a comic where you know for a fact that all the images are the same size, that should make it fairly easy to have a single page with a dynamically loaded image, with some sort of deeper navigation system attached (like a sortable, searchable, category limitable, etcable, infinite scroll on the side or bottom of the page)

15. enshogirl
    May 3rd, 2011 at 10:35 am

    Ugh, I absolutely hate the simulated turn-the-page on the web. It seems really gimicky and a lot of comics have done it. When I find a webcomic that use this as their only way to view (especially if it's in some sort of Flash) I don't come back no matter how good the comic is.

16. Steve Napierski
    May 3rd, 2011 at 10:40 am

    That sound cool, but why would you want to take a limitless canvas and confine it to the constraints of paper bound comics?

    As far as the dynamic content… From my point a view, my comics are not only the comic but a business, as well. I have to pay extra to have my images, CSS, flash content and javascript to be cached on an image server because of traffic. I do close to a terabyte of transfers for this content each month. That adds up quickly. If I did a single page, dynamically loading content type of structure I wouldn't have to ad revenue to recoup these costs.

    Think about it this way: For the site being just a little less convenient than you would like, you're helping to support the website that is given to you for free. I really feel that's a fair trade.

17. Phil Chan
    May 3rd, 2011 at 10:40 am

    Personally, I hate wordpress for webcomics. I think we've probably talked about this before, Ross… with a few exceptions, it makes every webcomic look exactly the same. That's not to say wordpress isn't a powerful tool. But that's all it is, a tool. Most webcomic creators only ever know the bare minimum of how to use the tool. It's like knowing how to use a pencil but only knowing how to draw a straight line with it.

    I'm all for innovation and you can count me in on whatever you comes out of this. But my fear is that if, say, a new wordpress template is developed, that would just end up replacing whatever is popular now. And from my perspective it's a new solution but the same problem, that everything will look the same.

    Regarding related content, one of the things you'd need obviously is a way to programatically connect two or more pieces of content. And that means you'd need some metadata about the comic, whether it be in the form of tags, or user preference, or something else for this to be meaningful to the end user.

    Sites like YouTube and services like Netflix probably have huge databases full of user ratings and search terms and complicated algorithms that they use to parse that data to recommend something to a particular end user. It's the predictive nature of their recommendations that keep people on for long periods of time.

18. enshogirl
    May 3rd, 2011 at 10:42 am

    I like where this post is going and you make a lot of good points.

    Generally when one breaks the WordPress/Comicpress model it seems like there is a lot of confusion and whining. I do a 4 panel strip webcomic where the panels are presented vertical rather than the "normal" horizontal orientation like everyone else is doing. Apparently people don't want to scroll. Could have forseen that, I suppose. For my comic I'd like to see the infinite scrolling thing. That way they'd have to scroll forever. It'd be like torture for them since the complainers hate the scrolling.

    I can see the downfall with the infinite scrolling vs ad revenue, for sure. I don't use ads on my site, so I could care less about that, but I know a lot of people who rely on the ad revenue from their webcomics.

    I think that the way we view webcomics needs to change on the web. Especially with things like iPads and smart phones without having to go the app route.

19. Steve Napierski
    May 3rd, 2011 at 10:43 am

    Install WordPress > Install Comicpress > Change Logo > Maybe change colors > Done.

20. spkr4thedead51
    May 3rd, 2011 at 10:44 am

    admittedly, I don't read an excessive number of webcomics, but I haven't encountered it for anything other than short works. for those few things, it was effective. for longer stuff, I can see it being too much.

    but I agree that flash in itself is a bit of a site killer in my mind.

21. Brandon J. Carr
    May 3rd, 2011 at 10:52 am

    I think an Innovation Summit is in order. Perhaps at a show that's friendly to online comics like SPX.

    b

22. Phil Chan
    May 3rd, 2011 at 10:55 am

    If a new tool/template ends up coming out of this, I think for the creator's sake, it needs to balance standardization, customizability and ease of use. Like you mentioned, a vast majority of creators out there aren't web designers/developers. So making it simple and easy to use while at the same time being flexible to an individual's needs is key.

23. Phil Chan
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:00 am

    I agree. But I personally believe that there are a lot of areas where webcomics should come together and discuss the state of things, not just web design.

24. rosscott
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:06 am

    OK imagine this:The normal post/page setup, but a special template page called the “ARCHIVE DIVE” or something where people enter into that “unlimited canvas” approach? That way for those looking to do nothing but read a ton, it's there, but for the rest get the normal front page with posts.

25. enshogirl
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:06 am

    THIS.

    And especially, make it an event where people AREN'T selling their comics and other goods. I was thinking the first year I went to webcomics weekend in Mass could have been a great opportunity for this.

    However, the focus was more on panels and tables selling t-shirts. :C

26. Phil Chan
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:06 am

    Uploading comic? Optional.

27. enshogirl
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:13 am

    This could work too.

28. Brandon J. Carr
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:18 am

    I haven't done regular online comics in years, but I'd enjoy being a part of this. I gots good idears sometimes.

    b

29. Katie Sekelsky
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:18 am

    I think the only thing wrong with an "infinite scroll"/auto-load thing would be that many comics need to be read in order. And scrolling down over and over just to get the to first one would be a pain. You could always have a separate page in the navigation where the oldest loaded first, I suppose. But that still wouldn't help people who, say, have been away from your site for just a month and want to catch up in order, without having to scroll extensively just to get to the starting point.

    Maybe a "Skip to [DATE]" field would solve this, but I'm not sure exactly how that would be implemented.

30. spkr4thedead51
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:19 am

    at this point, it's just a question of spitballing ideas. yes, it's an infinite canvas. but you have to limit it some how.

    and while I understand that there is a question of being able to support your work financially, I'm looking at this purely from the POV of design. commericalizing a design, or developing an ad friendly version, or optimizing bandwidth is something that can be played with. at this point I'm just throwing out ideas for how to design and present the comics themselves.

31. spkr4thedead51
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:21 am

    Or, if you can associate the sequential comics in your database, you can present them in bulk

32. Brandon J. Carr
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:23 am

    Right. Like you could do a whole storyline all on one page. Or all the comics about fish. Or all the comics where people are wearing red shirts. It can be a categorization system.

    b

33. Justin
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:24 am

    As a general internet user, my number one pet peeve is “photo galleries” that actually load each picture on a new page. I don’t know why I put up with it for webcomics, except for the fact that the comics aren’t available any other way.

34. rosscott
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:32 am

    Exactly! A page like this would help people catch up on a story / comic really easily.

35. rosscott
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:32 am

    Let's see what happens here on the site for a couple more days. Once it's germinated a bit, we'll definitely do something like this to start.

36. rosscott
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:34 am

    Relating content is easy enough. There are taxonomy systems build into every CMS nowadays, it's just a matter of highlighting them. Imagine, next to a comic is 5 thumbnails showing the first panel of related comics, all about coffee. Under it a link to the shirt you have about coffee and a link to buy it.

37. Phil Chan
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:37 am

    I think there's a value to discussing things electronically and a value to physically being together to discuss things. I'm all about meeting together just because I think it's a little easier to get results if you don't have to deal with technical hurdles. But there's no reason that you couldn't do both.

    Interventioncon is another con that is webcomic friendly…

38. rosscott
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:40 am

    IMAGE LOADING:
    What's easier? Loading an entire new page or one more image with a few tags around it? Sites like http://butdoesitfloat.com/ load images as you get to them, saving on initial load times and actually saving bandwidth. Amazon does this too, go to their homepage then scroll down. They can still be cached.

    ARCHIVE DIVE:
    I think it would be handy for story comics and gag comics alike. What would work great for gag comics, as said, is related comics. You could have related merchandise mixed in with that as well. For story comics it could be characters and links to their signature comics or blurbs about them for people still catching up. And you/anyone doesn't have to use ALL these ideas, but there's a bunch out there and I'm looking for more. Also, persistent navigation would help in many cases as well.

39. Phil Chan
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:53 am

    I think it's a good idea I just think the onus would be on the creator to utilize the taxonomy correctly. Because if you don't then you'll get comics that show as related but really aren't. In those cases, relating content becomes less useful to an end user.

40. Lee Cherolis
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:54 am

    +1 for a webcomics brainstorming meetup, i'd attend if able.
    +1 for a skype cast, I'd definitely listen.

41. Randall Crock
    May 3rd, 2011 at 12:00 pm

    This is a project I would be interested in doing as both a web developer and designer who loves webcomics. There are a lot of hurdles to overcome and deciding on how to go about making change is a great first step. Personally, I like the idea of the infinite scroll, and it wouldn't be that difficult to make a comic's archives begin from #1 and as you scroll, it loads more from the archive. I think a good way of migrating would be to keep the front page the same since a lot of people will just visit the site daily, pushing up pageviews, but when they go to read the archives they can do it more smoothly.

    One problem I foresee with this is remembering where you are in the archive. Some system has to be put in place to remember where on the infinite scroll the user actually is and bring it back up in case they can't read the entire archive in one go. It is possible to do it with cookies, but not everyone uses them, and just likes to bookmark pages.

42. Steve Napierski
    May 3rd, 2011 at 12:09 pm

    Funny part is when you see my new site design, you're going to give me a bunch of crap about, "But you said." Should be fun.

43. Jamie Noguchi
    May 3rd, 2011 at 12:11 pm

    This idea was buried in a response, but I really like the idea of a summit or some other face-to-face brainstorming session.

    The ad revenue thing is the only thing that really makes me hesitate about an infinite scroll kind of thing. An archive that uses it might be nice, but there has to be some way of recording page loads for ad revenue. Of course, if page clicks and loads weren't tied directly to ad sales and shit like that, I think we might see more experimentation.

44. Chris Impink
    May 3rd, 2011 at 12:24 pm

    My comic is a graphic novel, so the random scroll functions aren't applicable to me, though I like the idea for those who have content that support it.

    For my site, I use jQuery to swap the comic on the page rather than refreshing the whole page when the user clicks. Given that my page's frame is fairly minimalist this isn't saving me much bandwidth but it's certainly something. I've been meaning to set up prefetching of pages within the archives, (e.g. if you're on page 1, preload page 2, etc.) which doesn't kick in for the current comic so you're not spending extra bandwidth for the folks who are just reading the current page. Haven't gotten around to that yet.

    This doesn't innovate for the user experience, of course, but for linear comics the basic premise of next/previous buttons ain't broke. Anything more is special effects, and they can be great – but it'll take some finesse to keep them from getting in the reader's way. For example, infinite scrolling galleries are a great interface for tablets. I'm not as sold on them on the desktop, as popup galleries tend to annoy me on io9 and the other Gawker sites because the close button ends up flowing outside the browser's windowpane and you have to scroll around to find it. Presentation issues like this are arising rapidly with the meteoric growth of smartphones and tablets, and finding a new navigation method which addresses this fragmentation of the audience may be a ways off as the devices settle into more standard configurations.

45. dgriff13
    May 3rd, 2011 at 12:29 pm

    all great and innovative thoughts. My favorite is the rating idea.. that would make an awesome plugin. There's already a "related comics/articles" plugin or setting that used tags to link you to a couple similarly-tagged comics. A little 5-star-rating a la Netflix (I get addicted too, GUH, time-suck!) or even a thumbs-up, thumbs-down to click on would help new readers find their favorite content on your site.

    As a reader, the infinite scroll seems like the best thing ever. As a creator with my own site, I cannot get passed the importance of pageviews, and the lackthereof with an infinite scroll interface. And maybe that's only cuz it's been ingrained into my head from services like Project Wonderful. Unless you can count "pageviews" as "individual comic views" somehow.

    How do you feel about commenting, then? Assuming you'd like to keep the interaction there, just easier (like facebook: type, and hit enter.. but this would require signing up for the website) I actually tried using AJAX to make commenting easier for my readers (no re-loading the page), but had to nix it to keep my pageviews up. That's my dilemma, as you can see.

    While we're making the website easier for our users… how about we make DESIGNING it easier for that 98% of us who find CSS/HTML to be the spawn of satan? Imagine throwing a site together online, like you could in Dreamweaver or Flash? Click and drag, upload images, right-click to link a button to a URL. *swoons*

46. rosscott
    May 3rd, 2011 at 1:09 pm

    There's a difference between being Devil's Advocate and the Devil. I have a feeling we agree pretty well.

47. rosscott
    May 3rd, 2011 at 1:16 pm

    Two posts my friend Kerry tried to make that didn't go through (sorry IntenseDebate is failing me):

    (1)
    —-
    I tried to reply to this above, but the JS seems to be broken for me… not sure why. Anyway:

    @Jamie Noguchi : I don't see that the ad issue is unresolvable with an infinite scroll, though making it work in a way that's appealing to the user is a different story. I'm sure the same javascript trickery that allows for the simulated infinite page could refresh a fixed advertisement frame every so often. Some possibilities include inserting them into the stream of the infinite scroll, having a fixed sidebar whose content fades out and back in every time a new comic is loaded at the bottom of the page or several variations of that theme. I'm not at all sure I'd like any of this as a reader, but it seems totally technically possible to combine infinite scroll and "page views" for advertising.
    —-

    and

    (2)
    —-
    I've thought for some time that for story comics in particular, a combination of a linear thumbnail bar that can be clicked to load the comic into the main frame, and scrolled forward and back in time through the archives might be useful. Combined with a "high speed scrub" widget, you could combine fast archive navigation, visual recognition of specific comics via the thumbnails, and still maintain the effective utility of a forward and back button. There's a quick and dirty sketch of what i'm thinking about here : http://instagr.am/p/D0ust/ (sorry for the shitty picture and the shitty sketch… hope it's at least sort of comprehensible). Clicking the thumbnail to load the full comic could certainly be a full page refresh or an ajax operation depending on the other design constraints (namely, maintaining sharable URLs and refreshing ad content) and the thumbnail bar itself could be handled in various dynamic ways — Coverflow style, scrolling based on mouse position (which i dislike a lot, but, there it is) keyboard control, or as i sketched it with slow and fast scroll and jump buttons. The addition of the "high speed scrub" tool would let people jump around quickly and in direct relation to the number of comics, so if you know you were about half way through the archives, you can do that quickly and then use the thumbnails for more refined search.

    It's also not at all impossible to add functions like allowing users to bookmark their current position, tag, mark as favorite or rate the comic, share it, and storing that information to be displayed along with the dynamically updating comic name, number and date of publication below the navigation controls.

    The exact details could be designed a number of ways, but the tiered navigation of archives from slow (next / previous) to faster (back / forward by blocks in the thumbnail view) to fastest (scrubbing through the whole run with the scrub control) should give users a lot of control over navigation without detracting from the other options. All of those controls could easily fade out or get hidden in a "drawer" until needed too, of course… i'm sure some pro designers could make it look and work great.

    my $.02
    —–

48. DaveB
    May 3rd, 2011 at 1:30 pm

    Some of those ideas sound cool but the problem with saying how great the features are at Netflix, Tumblr, YouTube etc, is that those sites have dozens, if not hundreds of programmers working to create those features and manage databases full of keywords and cross references and all that stuff. Sure they'd be nice to have, but all the whiz-bang features ignore the greatest thing about webcomics. There's no barrier to entry. Any single person can write, draw, and post a comic, no editorial oversight, not even any capital investment if they go with a webcomic hosting site, and they can potentially get tens or even hundreds of thousands of readers. The features you're talking about would require massive development time to create. Many of the sites that have 'cool' features like that are done in cripplingly slow flash and lack basic features like RSS feeds with is one of the best ways to ensure that I'll never read your comic. Unless someone like Frumph goes and makes some crazy plugin for Tumblr lets say, those things would be limited to a few 'elite' comics and the medium wouldn't advance as a whole. If someone does create a mass consumption CMS with those features, that would be great, but unless it becomes relatively standardized, it can be a turn off. WordPress/Comicpress works cause people are used to it and the navigation works, if I go to a website and their comic looks like one of those floating clouds of keywords, I'm not likely to invest the time to figure out how to read it.

49. Kerry Benton
    May 3rd, 2011 at 1:48 pm

    @Randall:
    No doubt… I think archive diving is probably a limited use function already… Seems to me that it’s mainly useful for allowing new readers to catch up over the course of a few visits.

    On the other hand there are comics I don’t read daily, especially those without an rss feed) but pop back to every few weeks or so to catch up… It’s always a bit of a pain to get back where I was… Usually the archIves are just links, so it’s often easier to just click the back button til i see something familiar, trying to avoid actually reading the comics in reverse order, and then repeat in the other direction.

    No doubt good for page views, but not particularly excellent UX.

50. SatansParakeet
    May 3rd, 2011 at 2:19 pm

    I almost never go to a webcomic site once I know I like it so I end up reading almost everything in Google Reader. The main advantage there is that Reader lets me know where I left off if I miss a few days or weeks.

    What I'd really like to see is a Google Reader or Tumblr site that was designed for webcomics. Something that would let me subscribe to the comics I know I enjoy, share them with other people, and find new items that are similar or my friends are viewing. I think the problem is that it takes a lot of users to make something like that work so it's hard to get it kicked off right.

51. Randall Crock
    May 3rd, 2011 at 2:40 pm

    I think one thing we need to figure out is the difference between archive pageviews and front pageviews. Which is more important to the creators in generating hits? I know fewer people will go back and read the entire archive, but is the sheer number of pages there worth trying for the pageview count? If not, then a hybrid system that allows the user to do infinite scroll / multiple comics per page for the archive, but a single page for the front would make sense.

52. JoshM
    May 3rd, 2011 at 3:25 pm

    Haha!

53. fluffy
    May 3rd, 2011 at 4:36 pm

    On my webcomic I have it set up so that it's easy to get weekly or monthly views, for those who want. I also used to have an "every comic in the series" view but that tended to crash browsers for the longer comics. People only seem to use the daily view.

54. Garth Graham
    May 3rd, 2011 at 4:43 pm

    This is something that has bothered me for a long time: people who love webcomics but don't want to use the webcomic website. They'd rather read it all in an RSS or some other kind of reader, but the site itself is useless to them. Am I the only creator who finds this mindset insulting? What's the point of a website if no one wants to go there anyway? People want the content, they just don't wanna go to your site to get it. Perhaps this is just a reaction to a ton of poorly designed webcomic sites. But maybe there's something there, as much of an insult as it is. Maybe webcomics shouldn't be individual sites but rather… I dunno… content submitted to a webcomic reader service. WebcomicTube or something. By pooling talent and content we could achieve the super slick interface we're all talking about, the kind that the big boys like YouTube and Tumbler and all that jazz use. Readers wouldn't have to find a bazillion different websites to plug RSSfeeds into their google reader. Just one unified reading software platform. Open to any creators who agree to the ULA, profits from whatever ad revenue to be distributed according to readership percentages. It's like….webcomic communism. *thinks on it* No, I don't like it already.

    On the point of page refreshes: I'm pretty certain my current site doesn't re-fresh the whole page when you click back to the previous strip: faster read time for sure, but also explains why my unique IPs and pageviews are almost identical in number. It's faster, sure, but it does severely limit ad revenue. Maybe there's a way to work around that, but I'm not web savvy enough to know.

    @Kerry That scrolling tiered archive thing is surprisingly like a system that I'm planning to implement in my new website design. Looking at your concept I need to change my navigational set up a bit. My current new design for my graphic novel style comic is: two page spread like you get in a printed work (sure it's 1200px wide, what of it?), thumbnails of all the spreads in the chapter below it which shows you where you are in the chapter and lets you navigate the whole chapter easily, and below that the standard "start, <chapter, previous, archives, next, chapter>, current" shenanigans we all live with. I'm ok with the previous an next bit, but I'm seeing a lot of opportunity all of a sudden to both kick out of that rut but still be instantly navigable without much of a learning curve… I'm going to have to doodle them out and get back to you all about it.

55. Phil Chan
    May 3rd, 2011 at 4:49 pm

    What if some of the features we're tossing around aren't necessarily in the webcomic itself? Using the Netflix analogy, the movies and TV shows on Netflix isn't content produced by Netflix, it's produced by various studios.

    What if there were an external site that aggregated a ton of webcomics? You'd have users rating the webcomics, maybe not just individual comics but whole titles. The site would recommend comics that you might like based on what your past viewing history is.

    But I think this is probably solving a different problem than Ross outlined above. You'd get new readers outside of your established readership but you wouldn't necessarily make it easier for readers to find content within your own archives.

56. Lee Cherolis
    May 3rd, 2011 at 7:35 pm

    @Garth Re: Insulting – I've wondered that for a while. Once a creator starts modifying their RSS feed, conceivably it becomes more important than the webcomic's main website. Are there any creators who have abandoned a website in favor of publishing a comic only in RSS form? I just find the thought depressing.

    I can't be the only person who actually visits each site for the comics they read? Can I?

57. Rossmom
    May 3rd, 2011 at 8:07 pm

    I can't contribute anything to this technical discussion. I can say that I think this has started a good discussion and I hope the discussion turns into action.

58. rosscott
    May 3rd, 2011 at 8:47 pm

    how long ago did it crash browsers? and did you have javascript to load the images as they scroll down instead of preloading?

59. Dracoprimus
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:00 pm

    I think the primary thing holding back innovation on web design is the revenue model.
    Since most ad services are based on page loads, web content design becomes more and more about maximizing page loads(Huffington Post is one of the worst offenders of this with their photo galleries).
    it's very similar to TV. Fitting in the comercial breaks even affects the writing. the pacing becomes more and more about creating dramatic moments just before the break, so that you stay through the commercials to see what happens next. I think the current worst abuser of this is American I dol.

60. delos
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:31 pm

    I liked the way this comic did things: http://paddybrown.co.uk/?page_id=31

    They just made a page per storyline. Obviously, this works better for story comics than gag comics but the reading was smooth.

61. Mark V
    May 3rd, 2011 at 11:36 pm

    A few relevant comics/sites:

    Nothing Better uses one infinite canvas per chapter and also posts pages
    individually via RSS.

    Not Invented Here is a comic that is primarily read via RSS (and where
    at least one of the creators prefers to read the web via RSS). Its
    feed is a good example of how to include things like book/t-shirt
    promotions as part of the comic posts.

    Oh No Robot allows text search for both within-comic navigation and cross-comic
    search. For existing archives with no transcriptions, they also have a tool
    to let your readers help with the transcribing.

    @Katie Sekelsky
    “Maybe a “Skip to [DATE]” field would solve this, but I’m not sure exactly how that would be implemented.”

    An easy solution is to add an anchor tag with a unique id (e.g., date, number,
    etc.) to each image. Bookmarks can then mark that point in the page via a
    hash (e.g. http://example.com/your/infinite/comic/#2011-5-3)

    @Chris Impink
    “I’ve been meaning to set up prefetching”
    Me too. This seems like the cleanest way to speed up transition
    times without sending too much data to people who are only going
    to read a few comics.

    @rosscott
    “I don’t have to scroll to the bottom just to find where the nav buttons got
    off to”
    One Scott McCloud idea that I hasn’t been mentioned yet is making the
    comic image link to the next page (in addition to an explicit next button).
    This makes “next” really easy to find and click on. Setting the title
    element of the link to “click for next comic” makes it easy to discover.

    Something I’ve been trying on Electric Puppet Theatre (eptcomic.com)
    is to offer two viewing modes: a “single page” mode with a fixed size
    image and a “double page” mode with facing pages scaled to the height
    of the browser window (this tends to fill horizontal screens pretty
    well). I would be interested to hear feedback on the two versions
    (each comic has a link at the bottom for switching modes). What I’ve
    noticed so far is: 1) most people use whatever I set as the default mode
    without experimenting with the other option. 2) the double page mode
    looks grainy on browsers with poor image resampling (mainly IE7 and earlier).

62. Kerry Benton
    May 4th, 2011 at 12:43 am

    I definitely understand that reaction to the RSS issue… not only does RSS (usually) defeat any attempt to obtain ad revenue but obviously removes the comic from context and, as you say, all that hard work you all put into the site design.

    I think there are a couple of reasons why RSS becomes so attractive for people, beyond the issue of one-stop access while they read everything else.

    I basically have 3 different ways I read comics — 1. yes, over RSS, 2. on my iphone in my Twitter client's built in browser and 3. on the site, usually catching up on several days or weeks of comics.

    I use those three a bit arbitrarily, but it largely comes down to how the artists update their comics and how they communicate that information. I read a couple of comics on RSS because that was the way I was given them by someone and I never changed it. I read questionable content, girls with slingshots and the system on my iphone, because i follow the artists on twitter, and they tweet when the comic is updated. That became my way of reading (I also happen to never use twitter except on my phone, which is just me).

    Basicaly, I have a tendency to forget to do things if not reminded, and I think a lot of people do… RSS and twitter serve as those reminders. The only alternative that would allow me to read on the sites themselves would be to keep a list of the bookmarks, check each every day, and read those that that are updated. The down sides to this (as a reader) are that there's overhead in that… I have to do it all at once, or else remember where I was later on, and then since people update on various schedules much of the time i'll visit and be sad that there's no update, which probably isn't the ideal state to put a reader in.

    So I guess, for me, the best combination is twitter… I get to know when it's time to read a new comic, and I'll follow whatever link is there. Now, this brings up the possible specter of having the primary screen readers use for your comic be a smart phone… some research into twitter client patterns might reveal the percentage of users that do that in order to decide if you need to prioritize and tune your layout for mobile, though I'll say that none of the three comics i mentioned above do that at all, and while the reading experience isn't perfect, it's still preferable to me than the alternatives.

    Quick note : The biggest change that would make reading on my mobile devices better would be splitting the panels into individual DIV blocks, or overlaying them with a grid of DIVs that are empty… this would let me double tap the frame and zoom onto the panel directly.

63. Kerry Benton
    May 4th, 2011 at 1:02 am

    Well, it wouldn't necessarily have to "follow" in the sense that those old geocities ads used to float and skip down the page… it could easily exist in a fixed div outside of a central scrollable area, but that's still a questionable UI, I think. Seems like the ad would always look like it's an outsider or something.

    Maybe interstitials – that is, an ad following every Nth comic while doing the infinite scroll – wouldn't be so terrible after all, though of course you'd probably want to select for horizontally oriented ads to make them less jarring. Horizontal ads seem less common to me, anecdotally, but maybe not…

    Shrug. Integrating ads tastefully is no easy task… the balance between making them unobtrusive enough to not be irritating, but visible enough to attract a reasonable number of clicks is pretty subtle, and I'm not sure there are any absolute rules for it.

64. Kerry Benton
    May 4th, 2011 at 1:16 am

    I agree with this a great deal.

    A practical question though… much of the discussion of handling ads in an infinite scroll type environment presuppose that an ad can be reloaded or inserted without the browser doing a refresh and without the URI changing. But that same type of action that could do that would also allow someone unscrupulous to inflate their page view count arbitrarily. So do the ad services handle this through making it technically difficult to simulate a page view, or do they instead just track the amount of time between subsequent requests and make assumptions based on that data? Or do they just make you agree not to fake it in the Terms of Service, with contractually defined or legal repercussions if you're found doing so?

    I've never worked with online advertising, so I'm genuinely curious… if there are legal hurdles to the kind of trickery we're discussing, those kinds of UI efforts are moot.

65. haddyDrow
    May 4th, 2011 at 6:12 am

    Kimecan is a webcomic and dosen't need clicking.

66. TemplarKnight
    May 4th, 2011 at 8:50 am

    I gotta say, when you mentioned changing things to a blog format, my first thought was rolling up a newspaper and beating you with it.

    Every single web comic I have come across that loads multiple comics on a page or operates from a blog format I have gotten frustrated with and abandoned, regardless of talent/interest. One comic was set up in such a way that I just kept clicking through it wondering why they kept having set ups that didn't go anywhere and suddenly realized there were 5 comics on each page and just gave up. The major flaw of Facebook and Twitter is you are reading backwards. That's all well and good if you just want to know what JUST happened, but if you are trying to trace a series of events, that doesn't work so well.

    Clicking has never bothered me, but I agree in some circumstances it can be tiresome depending on WHERE you're clicking. Some comics that jump around on the size and shape of the comic will require me to keep adjusting where I click. And when I'm surfing on my iPhone, it becomes tiresome, ESPECIALLY if the arrow is tiny(I'm looking at you Roomies-Joyce & Walky!).

    Two features I would really like in my webcomics are:
    Clicking the comic automatically goes to the next one: Shortpacked has this, and it is brilliant, especially on the iphone. It helps the new reader be able to go on to the next comic easily.

    An up to date search function: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has the best one out there. All the scripts have been uploaded and when I type in a word I remember from a comic, it pops up the script and I am directed to the comic I seek.

67. spkr4thedead51
    May 4th, 2011 at 11:15 am

    Is it any more insulting than reading a blog or news site via RSS?

68. Viraj
    May 4th, 2011 at 11:15 am

    I use google reader because there are so many comics I follow and they are all on different update schedules (some not following their update schedule at all).
    I will click through to a site when I know there is something more than just the image of the comic that I want to see.
    For example, Edmund Finney's Quest to Find the Meaning of Life – http://eqcomics.com/ has the alt text that pups up as a picture of Edmund writing in his journal. Also, when the artist adds a blog post under the comic that doesn't necessarily show up in the reader, then I will click through.
    But some comics like Dilbert, where there is nothing but the comic posted, doesn't draw me onto the site.

69. fluffy
    May 4th, 2011 at 11:37 am

    It was very recently, but the series in question had 255 rather high-resolution strips in it. And no, I wasn't demand-loading the images, but you need to also have a demand-unload on the other end if you don't want the same thing to happen eventually.

70. fluffy
    May 4th, 2011 at 11:38 am

    I think most ad networks look for sudden spikes in traffic and do statistical analyses and manual audits to determine whether they're fraudulent or not.

71. Emily
    May 4th, 2011 at 12:32 pm

    I agree with just about all of this, and I'd add that I love RSS feeds for keeping comics in order (i.e. I'm not going to accidentally see a spoiler on the front page before clicking through to the archives to catch up on the last few days' worth). I do love content on comic sites, and am happy to spend time clicking around through cast pages, creator profiles, merch, etc, but for daily reading or catching up on a week's worth of comics, RSS works for its speed and sequence.

    I also second Kerry's comment above about twitter being a great happy medium between RSS and checking a site every day. Especially because twitter gives the reader extra content – like insights into the writing process, twitpics of sketches, etc., that don't necessarily make it into either an RSS feed or onto the site itself (Danielle Corsetto comes to mind – I read Girls With Slingshots daily via google reader, but it's made so much better by the previews and tweets about writing that she posts).

72. Viraj
    May 4th, 2011 at 12:59 pm

    I am sure this thought has probably been mentioned above. If I am repeating something, sorry.

    I love reading comics that have long story arcs. The problem is when someone shares a comic with me that was started 10 years ago. It can take a while to catch up. I wish there was a way (maybe with the use of cookies, i have no idea, i am not a programmer) other than using a new bookmark every time, to save where I am so I can quickly start reading when I have some free time.
    I don't mind clicking to a new page for every new strip. I was hoping that google reader would solve this for me, but it doesn't seem to be able to load all old strips from the beginning of some sites.
    The comic I have in mind is Commisioned Comic. Lots of entries since 2004. Taking me longer to catch up than it should since i am always forgetting to bookmark when I am done reading.

73. Kerry Benton
    May 4th, 2011 at 2:54 pm

    @viraj definitely possible to do such a thing with browser cookies and a bit of JavaScript. It’s something I’ve wanted many times before as well…

74. Emily
    May 4th, 2011 at 4:38 pm

    I brought this thread up with some friends today, and we ended up talking about reading comics in RSS. One friend said he had 40-50 comic feeds in his google reader, and most of those updated regularly. I took a look at my own greader subscriptions, and I have over 100 labeled "comics." Some of those are blogs about comics, and some are journalcomics or similar that update on a whenever-the-creator-can schedule, but I'd guess I have a good 50 that update daily to weekly. We do love us some webcomics, but I'm sure we're nowhere near the high end.

    The awesome thing is, there are enough great (or at least enjoyable) comics out there that we want to read that many per day and keep up on that many storylines. But as a result, whether we're using an inline RSS feed, clicking through to a site from an RSS or twitter link, or opening a ton of bookmarks in tabs, we don't end up spending much, if any, time on the website itself. Personally, I want to see an update when there is one, and dig into the website only every once in a while for an archives catch-up, to revisit an old storyline in a story comic or click through some old random one-off comics, to buy something, to find out more about the author or the comic, etc – stuff that takes longer.

    That got me thinking, when I used to get a newspaper I'd receive, every day, a few dozen comics in one place. Some of them I'd pay more attention to than others, some of them were one-offs and some were continuous, and there were ads on the page – and not a whole lot has changed. The comics I read now aren't all daily, and they're in all kinds of sizes and shapes and colors, but they still show up all in one place where I can read them daily. Yeah, I know, totally different and outdated medium, but I think it describes pretty well how I want to read the multitude of comics I like reading.

    Unlike the newspaper page, though, if I'm skimming over my daily comic feeds I can share `em, or click through to something on the comic's site, or to some "related content" on another site…. So that's where some of the ideas in the original post come in – if the daily feed gives me a link to "more comics about cycling" or "Character X's first appearance" or "Wow, I can't believe it's comic #500 already, check out the first one here!" or "Want to see the original sketch for this one?" then it's giving me an invitation to explore the site a little more. And that makes the daily read more memorable than a feed that just displays the comic image.

    I hope all that applies to more readers than just me, but either way I think the number-of-good-daily-comics-out-there is important to keep in mind – I do want to enjoy spending a lot of time reading a comic's archives or other content, but on a daily basis, speed and RSS-friendliness are essential.

75. Garth Graham
    May 4th, 2011 at 5:54 pm

    Oh, and because this hasn't been mentioned yet:

    Yes, Ross. I would back a kickstarter for a true Comicspress: an easy to use, versatile, program framework for creating excellent webcomic webpages. To do for webcomics what wordpress did for blogs. I'd get on that train. With money.

76. DJ Coffman
    May 4th, 2011 at 9:03 pm

    WordPress is a fantastic and powerful CMS. I was the first webcomic dude to start using it years before Comicpress theme. I wouldn’t give up the awesome tools and expandibilty of WordPress CMS, it only gets better… But I do agree that the Comicpress theme has become dated and it’s not easy to customize without knowhow.

    I suggest to some creators to experiment with some of the awesome slider type image gallery themes available if you want slick navigation that would be faster the php calling/loading. They even work great on iPhones and iPads too.

    That’s probably not the way to go if you’re worried about pageviews for ad money.

    Avoid Flash at all cost. It’s really lame and limiting.

77. aujustin
    May 4th, 2011 at 11:13 pm

    There we go, just read through all the comments and now I feel like I am ready to make a comment in the comments place. I have no idea what order all the stuff in my head is going to come out in, so leeeettt's do this!

    I am all about pageviews. Anything to get more pageviews is the way to go and because of that, I wouldn't be a fan of switching my sites to load comics in place or do an infinite canvas concept. However, there are great ways to generate pageviews using your archive, as have been mentioned.

    What you could do is, every day or so, use Facebook's API and grab those like counts and insert them into the WordPress DB. Then, using that data in conjunction with the tags on the comic that is currently being viewed, you could generate a "best 5 comics that are related to this comic" list that could be displayed somewhere on that page. For something like this, you better be using a good form of caching, otherwise you will be eating up a lot of CPU. This actually brings me into the next thing pretty well! Woo, I'm off to a good start!

    A lot of webcomic sites I see tend to have pretty long load times due to the lack of page-level caching. Because of this, clicking around the site will take that much longer because it has to dynamically generate a page. This is a real killer if someone is trying to fly through the archive of a new site they just discovered. Another gotcha attached to this is that the Random function of Comicpress will even further increase page load times. Even if you are doing page-level caching, that random function isn't cached, so it goes through all the WordPress code and figures out where to send you, then sends you there. Each random link click is two processed requests on the server.

    These speed issues that are inherent to a WordPress without proper caching can really slow down a quick browsing experience. From when you click a prev/next/random link to when you see that next comic shouldn't be more than 2 seconds. After 2 seconds, my mind starts wondering what's going on. And if that little delay happens over and over, that can be rough.

    Another issue is ad code in the header above the comic. Adsense code is asynchronous, so that code won't do anything to hurt the page, but some other ad code isn't as friendly. If a webcomic is running ads through a site that doesn't allow the rest of the page to load while it's fetching the ad, the page will lock up until that ad comes through. And if that ad comes before the comic image in the html, then it will be delaying that next comic.

    Essentially, a misconfigured or not properly tweeked Comicpress site can really push people into really wanting/needing an infinite canvas concept. At least that's what I'm telling myself =) When I find a new comic, I don't mind clicking next/prev until I'm finished reading, unless the site is slow. I've definitely given up a couple times on sites that were way too slow to get into that comic reading groove required for archive diving.

    There are some fun things you can probably program for archive divers to speed up their experience. If you notice that a user has clicked the next/prev button 10 times in a row, they might be archive diving. So in that case, you could secretly preload the prev/next comic image for them (depending on the direction they are going) so when they do get to that next page, everything is already in the browser cache and its super fast! You couldn't do this for Random though because, well, yeah =)

    Getting rid of the clicking I'm not sure should be done for webcomics. For me, it's a nice feeling to click for the next comic and say "that image went to my eyes and was processed and is now read. i'm ready for the next one" Without that click, you maybe could lose a Pavlov's Dog type of thing: I click a button, I get a funny. I click a button, I get a funny. Actually, I would almost fear that the individual funny of each comic would be diminished because it's this endless stream of an infinite canvas. The clear separation of each piece of content would begin to be lost and you could even lose out on Facebook Like button clicks for old comics for new readers. Who knows! It sounds pretty scary in my head to move to an infinite canvas concept.

    Oh boy, that was a lot of words. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading my comment in its entirety!

78. Mark V
    May 5th, 2011 at 12:56 am

    @aujustin
    “You couldn’t do this for Random though because, well, yeah”
    Random is really “give me the next comic in a sequence that I can’t predict”.
    There’s nothing to stop you from pre-emptively choosing the next random page
    at the time that you serve the current page, in which case you can go ahead
    and ask the browser to pre-fetch it.

79. KMakato
    May 5th, 2011 at 1:59 am

    Honestly, the current way that navigation is executed in web comics works well, and for a good reason. It's like reading a book. You turn the page to get to the next part of the story or what-have-you. The way blogs are laid out is like a big folded up page, like a map. To get to the next part, you have to move the entire media, rather than a small section of it. Having the comic's image in the same spot on the screen and the 'Next' button always in the same spot allows you to pay more attention to the reading, rather than scrolling, centering the image (for those who OCD over that sort of thing), etc.

    Familiar layouts are like familiar surroundings. They're comfortable, reliable, relaxing.

    As far as bandwidth goes, I've seen some comics that have a 'lite' style while browsing the archives yet are rich in content on the main/current page. Simple is comfortable, yet functional.

    -KMakato

80. Lee Cherolis
    May 5th, 2011 at 10:23 am

    It has been mentioned but was probably buried in replies, so I'll mention again because it is an important point.

    I will also back a kickstarter. Kickstart that shit up!

81. aujustin
    May 5th, 2011 at 3:05 pm

    Ha, yes! If a user clicks random 10 times, they are probably gonna click it an 11th and you could definitely pre-generate that next random 11th comic on the 10th comic's page. It would take a little bit more code, but could be done. Then on that next random click, we already have the next comic and boom, you're there.

    Hmmm, what would really rock is if you could do all this without the user hitting any delays. So on that 10th random click, load up the page. While the user is viewing that, shoot off an ajax request and run a bit of code in the background that determines what the next random comic for that user will be. Once that request returns, insert the image to be cached into the page on completion. Then, the user clicks random and it could bypass the WordPress code if some magic cookie (nextrandomcomic cookie) exists. If it does, it redirects straight to that page without hitting any random comic generation delays.

    So essentially, do the CPU work for the next random comic while the reader is on the current comic. Precache the images and write a cookie with the url of the next random comic. This should only be done in the case that a user clicks random over and over again and wouldn't be good to do for every pageview.

    Whoops, that got technical.

82. Kleefeld On Webcomics #13: Innovation » MTV Geek
    May 6th, 2011 at 4:01 pm

    [...] Earlier this week, The System’s Ross Nover suggested the following: Let’s come up with some new ideas for the “web” in “webcomic”. What Nover pointed out was that the basic format that the vast majority of webcomics follow was developed several years ago, prior to many of the options that are now at creators’ disposal. Even though other folks have figured out best practices for webcomics before, that was essentially in a different environment, and it might not be a bad idea to take another look at things. Nover summed up his idea like this: [...]

83. tixcomix
    May 7th, 2011 at 2:04 pm

    I agree that Comicpress kinda makes all comics look the same, but I disagree that it is a bad thing. You know like a book. We know it has a cover, the text reads left to right and the pages turn right to left. So we can focus on the content. Many indie webcomics who have either made their own or mutilated one of the famous ones so far belief require me to learn something or look for something before I can figure out how to navigate it.

84. Digital Strips: The Webcomics Podcast : Digital Strips Podcast Episode 241 – Book of the Month Club Feat. Order of the Stick, Part 1
    May 9th, 2011 at 8:54 am

    [...] 9:31 – The System‘s Rosscott ponders web design issues/ideas in webcomics [...]

85. Eric
    May 9th, 2011 at 11:03 pm

    I have to agree with the point that, on non-story, few-panel comics, a scroll-down style archive works wonders. I can spend hours reading archives on any sharingmachine comic (TFD, nataliedee, plus a few others?) with very little clicking and full satisfaction of reading archives. Of course, srolling has its limitations, but adding it as an option would allow new readers a chance to very easily catch up/read through the archives.

    And, although not a good ad-revenue source, RSS feeds are great for keeping up with comics, especially infrequent sources.

86. The Webcomic Beacon | Episode #186 – Newscast for May 8th, 2011
    May 9th, 2011 at 11:20 pm

    [...] Rosscott On Webcomic Website Design (Original Source: Rosscott, Inc) [...]

87. Jinxtigr
    May 10th, 2011 at 9:42 am

    I was fascinated with your topic from the minute you started talking about it on the Beacon right now, I'm finishing up a second novel set in my webcomic's universe (and learning to draw) but you've catalyzed some ideas for when I do relaunch.

    I liked running daily but I got clobbered by it- burned right out, and part of the problem was that I wanted a cinematic effect but had to do (ideally) whole backgrounds and perspective workups for many panels a day, which didn't even really happen most of the time. I also scrambled around trying new art styles, usually ones that complicated things or added a layer of decision-making like going to color, and I had a thing that I had to hand-code each day where you could skip back to a given weekday and then step forward by clicking on the comics.

    The idea I want to try is this: chase the cinematic effect even further by stripping everything down so it's one panel, daily, with no sub-panels and always the same shape (Cinemascope/Panavision, 2.35/1!) with at most two or three speech bubbles at a time, and a camera that's mostly a Steadicam with few cuts, so the background is generally either the same or derived from the previous day. The fatigue of thinking up new sets and props constantly would be less and I could focus on characters and personalities, but it would look like a glimpse into a pretty expansive world once it got going.

    The thing is, it would draw on that experiment I did where you could jump back to a previous weekday, motivating people to check in and 'step through' a series of panels, or re-cap what they'd previously read, and get a sense of the progression that wouldn't exist within a single day's update.

    It goes with a theory of mine that for story comics, it is never about any given day having a complete and satisfying update (to flat contradict the Webcomics Weekly gagstrip guys, for whom that's true), it's about every day giving a convincing sense of a larger world that exists outside the context of the day's update. That is the whole thing with serial story comics. It's what you don't see that matters, you have to imply a much bigger world and can't just have a strip be selfcontained. If it's selfcontained you don't need to know more and it fails as a story comic…

    It's going to be exciting to put this stuff into action. It's sort of a twist on what you asked for- rather than a more elaborate or sophisticated form of webcomics, it's refining away some of the sophistication until the 'sequential art' is only sequential in TIME, but only makes artistic/story sense as sequential art (not as individual, out-of-context updates)

88. Drezz_Rodriguez
    May 10th, 2011 at 2:23 pm

    About comic websites: I think there’s still a bit of an aversion to infinite canvas because a lot of people saw Scott McCloud as being a quack when he brought it up. There were a few higher profile authors that scoffed at it, just like they did with micropayments.

    Handheld devices have changed a lot of things and made it more mainstream. The ability was always there – it is just starting to have a broader reach due to these new devices.

    You have stories like Daniel Lieske’s Wormworld Saga and Emily Carroll’s His Face all Red which don’t fall into the static single page format. I think a lot of people who do strip based comics have stuck to the template (which is what ComicPress was made for).

    Graphic novels don’t necessarily have to follow that mold – and now that apps are flying out of the woodwork, you’re going to see a lot more experiments in comic delivery and interactivity.

89. rosscott
    May 11th, 2011 at 4:39 pm

    But can't we make a BETTER template?

90. tixcomix
    May 11th, 2011 at 8:23 pm

    Not saying it couldn't use a huge overhaul. Themes that blur the distinction between theme and plugin always get messy. But I think Frumph has kinda run out of gas.

91. Lonely
    May 13th, 2011 at 6:32 am

    I saw awhile up on keeping track on where you are in the archive. One method could be like http://www.mspaintadventures.com/ They have a “Save/Load” function where you can go to the homepage, click load, and go to where you were. Perhaps a floating frame with it in the bottom.

    Also, as to adds, how about having them load after so many comic pages load? Or have them load to the right of the image? Or hell, after so many pages, automatically load a new page to get the count.

92. Peter Venables
    May 15th, 2011 at 9:55 am

    Ross– I am so with you on this issue. This is something that I as both a webcomic creator and web developer/designer struggled with. I think you are asking the right questions when you approach this problem from the user-centered design angle. What do users want to see when they use a website and read a a comic? There are multiple answers to this question, not just one as this thread has already shown– some want RSS, some want a whole website experience.

    Comic format has much to do with this also. A story heavy comic, in my opinion, should not start with the latest page first. it should start at the cover and provide a mechanism for a reader to store a bookmark where they left off. The original book paradigm isn't a bad one after all. gag-a-day comics, on the other hand, have a different entry vector and could, arguably, support a random entry point or start at the beginning of the most recent joke thread.

    These questions of use cases need to be nailed down before anyone tries to apply a technology or developed solution to them– that's the easy part once the right model is determined.

93. Newscast for May 8th, 2011 | The Webcast Beacon Network
    May 16th, 2011 at 8:04 am

    [...] Rosscott On Webcomic Website Design (Original Source: Rosscott, Inc) [...]

94. Mark
    May 19th, 2011 at 5:54 pm

    Hey. I came over here after listening to the Beacon episode.

    For your archives, why not try this idea from Tatsuya Ishida (Sinfest), where he uses Mediawiki: http://ninja-theatre.com

    I have no idea why he hasn't replaced the antique calendar-based archive from his main site with the wiki (which I think is superior). I've seen other wikis for individual comic titles, but they usually just give meta instead of using it as a tool to explore or search the comic itself (again, I have no idea why not).

95. Mark V.
    May 19th, 2011 at 10:26 pm

    @Mark “this idea from Tatsuya Ishida”

    The front page says “ye olde unofficial Sinfest Wiki” so
    I think this might be not be directly associated with
    Ishida.

    I agree that using a wiki for search/organization is
    interesting (although, with editing locked, there’s
    not much to distinguish it from a searchable website
    or the ohnorobot model).

96. Morgan Wick
    May 28th, 2011 at 4:25 am

    I think people would hate scrolling less if they could scroll forever with less clicking-and-loading, actually.

97. Morgan Wick
    May 28th, 2011 at 4:33 am

    Visitors should be more important than pageviews for comics – especially for services like PW where there is some human control over what matters. If the advertisement stays in a persistent place on the screen as you infinitely scroll or as the comic loads in a designated place on the screen, why should that be penalized over the oodles-of-pages approach?

98. Morgan Wick
    May 28th, 2011 at 4:49 am

    Several webcomics just don't put their comic image in their feed.

    I've tossed around in my head an idea for "designable RSS" – an RSS feed that can use something like CSS to design the area around the content, including putting in ads.

99. Morgan Wick
    May 28th, 2011 at 5:07 am

    Dinosaur Comics' equivalent to the random button is the little line on the top of the page with a random line from the second panel of a comic. It's already halfway here.

100. Morgan Wick
     May 28th, 2011 at 5:18 am

     I have a theory that the infinite canvas wasn't working because micropayments weren't working, micropayments being the only way I could think of to capitalize on content that didn't depend on serializing, and the infinite canvas being pointless with serializing except as a gimmick. Hand-held devices make things like micropayments more feasible (see that "web is dead" meme in Wired a while back), ergo, they make the infinite canvas more feasible.

101. Morgan Wick
     May 28th, 2011 at 5:19 am

     This was meant to be a reply to Drezz… stupid IE9 causing the scroll position to jump back and forth (Intense Debate may be partly to blame too, but still).

102. Morgan Wick
     May 28th, 2011 at 5:28 am

     One thing I notice is that many of these ideas work better for gag comics or story comics. If you're a gag comic that becomes a story comic later (of which there are many, many examples), you're probably capable of using very few of these.

     Infinite scroll: Works better for story comics if you can set it to start at the beginning and use it as a side page. Could work for gag comics using the normal blog order, but without much point.

     Something like Twitter where you have, say, a list of comics on the side and the comic loads on its own frame. I'm surprised there hasn't been more discussion of this in the comment thread.

     Related comics: When I read this, I immediately thought of something that one of the blogs I read has: http://www.linkwithin.com/learn This is an idea that works better with gag comics. Would require having the comic script as metadata, and possibly tags as well.

103. Mark V
     May 28th, 2011 at 7:47 pm

     @Morgan Wick “I have a theory that the infinite canvas wasn’t working because micropayments weren’t working”

     Dresden Codak is a good example of a successful infinite canvas
     comic. Rather than micropayments from a large number of readers,
     he relies on donations and sales of higher priced
     items (books/t-shirts/prints) to a (presumably) smaller number of
     readers. It is also interesting to note that there is no
     advertising on his site.

     See also http://dresdencodak.tumblr.com/post/3846428196

104. Lung Cancer Symptoms
     May 30th, 2011 at 6:59 am

     I’m very not as well acquainted with this subject but I do wish to take a look at blogs for layout recommendations and intriguing topics. You seriously described a topic that I regularly really do not care a lot about and crafted it rather fascinating. That is a nice blog that I will be aware of. I previously bookmarked it for future reference. Lung Cancer Symptoms

105. hiv symptoms in men
     June 8th, 2011 at 4:28 am

     I’m really not too acquainted with this subject but I do wish to have a look at blogs for layout recommendations and fascinating topics. You ultimately described a that I mostly really don’t care much about and created it really fascinating. This can be a nice weblog that I’ll take note of. find info at our site gkvmdkerivmdirnmvmgc

106. Joeann Stalma
     September 30th, 2011 at 4:04 am

     Thank you PBS for a wonderful new program. I’ve been doing our family History for the past 15 years and seeing what may be done is certainly inspiring. Many road blocks but eventually the story reveals itself.

) Your Reply...