Chapter 8 Page 1
December 2nd, 2013We begin Chapter 8 Of Making and Unmaking with Page 1. We’re back from our vignette to the present day. Who’s that making a chalk drawing on the floor? What’s up with the drawing? Who’s that on the wall smiling? Why is his portrait on the wall after what he did? All will be explained in the coming pages.
You may have noticed our new layout. Many of our readers recommended a landing page for the comic. After giving it a lot of consideration, Diane and I decided to restore the landing page. We thought that this would give you, the readers, more options when you first come to our site. You can go to the start of the chapter, a particular page of the chapter, the Table of Contents, or the most recent page. Also, we have links to the most recent almanac entry and to our store below. I particularly like the idea of keeping that beautiful almanac image by Erin Mehlos on the front page more than just once a week. Let us know what you think.
We are also giving thought to removing the arrow key navigation from the pages. Some readers said that they use the arrow keys when writing comments below and having the arrows tied to turning pages caused problems. Let us know your thoughts on this. We may be removing the arrow navigation in the near future.
The SpiderForest comic of the week is Cooties by Nick Perkins. Cooties is an all-ages comic strip which follows a bunch of kids and their adventures dealing with school, friends, parents, the opposite sex, and the occasional paranormal/extraterrestrial catastrophe. One of the joys of webcomics is watching the quality of the art evolve over the pages. Cooties does this rapidly. It’s like watching one of those sped-up videos of a flower blooming. Check it out!
Hey since you are changing the layout can you do one of those things where there is an address that always drops you on the most recent page. I primarily access the web via cell phone and need to keep my number of pages loaded as low as possible. Thanks
Here you go: http://www.snowbynight.com/comic.php
If you ever need the link again, it’s on the chapter navigation box of the Landing Page.
As far as arrow keys. You could shrink the images or alter them, but please DO NOT remove them. Comics with no easy way to flip a couple of pages back and then forwards are HUGE pain in the rear. And don’t put it on the keyboard without back-ups for people with phones or tablets.
Oh no. We’re not taking the arrow navigation bar off the page. That will stay right where it is. We also have page set up so that the arrow keys on the keyboard flip through pages. It’s the keyboard arrow keys that we’re considering eliminating as it may be making it harder for people to type comments.
I’d like to see the arrows stay, please. Sometimes they help me out when I need to go back and figure out what happened a few pages ago.
The interlude was SO important! The character and motives of Bertrande have so many dimensions now! And she was so lovely when she was young.
To see somebody so smart and so passionate worn down like that–it’s completely believable. And of course she would have to become the natural adversary of a spirit like Snow, who witnessed a trapper drown just after telling her he loved her.
Ah 1’amour! Ah revenge! Who is going to teach whom a lesson in what?
And those feckless fellows–hardly a match for such women. Maybe the goddess had better just stand clear.
I’m with Phil, I don’t care for landing pages, but if you gotta to it, do it right! And this one looks very nice, I think :) I agree tho, a ‘latest update’ url would be really nice but not mandatory at all.
Keep up the good work :D
PS: unless you’re doing really really cpu-intensive stuff, I suppose. My internet feed is new and fast, but my desktop is slow.
The internet is nice in that, unlike printed works, it allows you to offer BOTH to your readers, rather than an either/or choice.
I personally hate ‘landing pages’. I like to go straight to the latest comic.
So, it would be nice if you also provided a url that always goes to the latest.
For example,
http://www.snowbynight.com/comic
I can then bookmark that url, and check in directly from time to time, without going through the landing page.
Which might not be a big deal on other sites… but your site iS SOOO HORRRIIBLLY SLLL.LLll….OOOOOO…ooWWWWWW
:(
if I didnt love the comic so much, I wouldnt even try loading it ;-) it can take 10 seconds to load.
FYI, I’m sitting on a major internet hub and I get a full 1gigabite internet direct to my desktop.
So it aint my end!
I’m talking to Diane. Adding a current page URL isn’t a problem. She can just duplicate the page and rename it. It just won’t be linked to by the other pages. But it would like to all the other pages. We could add a link to the current page above the “Browse the Table of Contents.” We could call it something like “View the Current Page.”
The slowness is a concern. I’ve asked Diane to look into this and see what we can do. It should not take 10 seconds to load a page.
This may help:
http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.snowbynight.com%2F
The link in the text says: http://www.snowbynight.com/pages/ch8/1.php and doesn’t seem to work.
But the 1 link and the image in the Current Chapter box, and the Current Page image, say: http://www.snowbynight.com/pages/ch8/pg1.php and it seems to work just fine ^_^
Fixed!
The link given does not work:
404: Page not found
This error is generated when there was no web page with the name you specified at the web site.
Troubleshooting suggestions:
Ensure the page you are linking to exists in the correct folder.
Check your file name for case sensitivity . Index.htm is not the same as index.htm!
Temporarily disable any rewrite rules by renaming your .htaccess file if it exists.
_____________
However, http://www.snowbynight.com/pages/ch8/pg1.php works!
A) A landing page is a good idea, but a latest page is also a good idea. The problem is having one or the other be required. It may be ideal to primarily use a landing page, but also have a 307 redirect or the like for the latest(with the redirector linked on the landing page as the latest).
B) I’ve gotten around the arrow keys in NoScript, so I don’t really mind they’re there for others, but many consider client-side solutions unacceptable.
A Latest Page creates a lot of issues. Say the URL is /latest.php. Since the page is constantly changing, it’s not helpful for sharing the link. Also, Diane has to go through and up date all the links with every page, which increases the chances that we miss one. So we decided to go with a landing page that feeds directly to the unique URL for each page.
Wait, so are you not using any kind of CMS for the comic? You’re just handcoding the page in every time? o_O
We use WordPress for the comments, but the rest of it is hand coded by Diane.
Er… solving those issues is exactly why I mentioned a redirect. /latest.php should not in itself show the latest strip, instead it should redirect to /pages/ch8/pg1.php right now, and then /latest.php is the only thing that needs to change when there’s a new latest strip.
Here’s a concrete example: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/ootslatest.html is a JavaScript redirect, which is slower than a 307 or the like, but serviceable.
Also, I appreciate the little touches, like the drapes’ mimicing of the chairback engraving, and the chalk-stick calling back to a wizard’s staff. Very smartly done!
I like the landing page a great deal. I’m assuming, though, that each new page will have an identical URL, so I can go directly to it from my browser’s suggestions.
Arrow keys… I have no skin in this issue. I read (and reread) Snow on a tablet.
Ah, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I can’t see the comic.
The link in the newspost is http://www.snowbynight.com/pages/ch8/1.php . It should instead link to http://www.snowbynight.com/pages/ch8/pg1.php .
Yep. It should. It’s fixed now.
In that picture on the wall, Peyre looks an awful lot like Blaise. I wonder…
Oh! I’ve been looking forward to this! The interlude was neat and all, definitely an interesting look into the life of early American explorers, but I couldn’t wait to see what happens next with our (if not heroes) protagonists!
Hey everyone!
I’ve been looking forward to this chapter ever since doing the initial edits to the script, and let me tell you it’s going to be an AWESOME ride. I can’t wait to watch the story unfold through the art!
(I don’t usually make posts like this because I know I’m all kinds of biased, but in this case it’s totally founded!)