OMG TEH MATTHEW J COMICS!!!1!1oneone

[Firewalker]

Instead of a pattern background, use a solid background, then do your alpha transparency thing with the same colour background behind it, and save as a jpg or whatever, that's about your only option outside of making it a flash site.

[Matthew J]

New Comic For The MSIEers
(comic runs from tuesday, november 2 to thursday, november 4)

[Dark Prism]

DUDE! IDEA FOR A FOLLOW UP COMIC!

I'll PM you.


Oh, and yeah, I'm a writer so it's not surprising that I've got an idea.

[Andetus]

darn straight "CHEER!!!!" lol,

sniff, its so beautiful, i almost feel like the funny blue guy

[Firewalker]

Lol it's great, I love it. Just one thing, you could really work on your eye expressions... Other than that, pure gold.

[Matthew J]

thanks for all the positive response.  i tried to bring the geek-funny.  as for the comment about the eyes (and eyebrows), I am currently seeking guidance at the keenspace.com forums for help with expressions.  I'm in the process of it right now, so future comics will improve in that aspect.

[Nismorack]

It's an amusing comic.

But I'm still quite unable to navigate your site in IE. The buttons load, but then they vanish, leaving me unable to click next and previous.

Let's run the numbers again.

90% of the internet users, use IE. Now we can push that back to 80% for webcomic reader.

10 to 18% of that uses Firefox.

The rest use Opera, Safari, or whatever.

Now I know you're not planning on making it big. But it doesn't really help if people are incapable of navigating the site. Unless of course my IE client is borked. It seems that if I look at one page for a while, the buttons just vanish. Replaced with a white block. Which I can't click. Very strange. So it's not really the grey blocks that bug me. Just the dissapearing navigation.

But ah well. Zealotes are a hard case to convince. -_-

[Matthew J]

i get the same problem if i check my site on my work computer (where i am now).  i get grey blocks.  my suggestion: stop using msie.  have you ever tried firefox?  i mean, really just downloaded it and worked with it for a week?  it has almost the same exact layout as msie but with more options, built in popup blocker, and makes use of the full .png spec.  just give it a week's try.  who knows, you might like it.

link for the lazy : Firefox

It sounds like you really want to check out my site.  now, unless i decide to change my whole site style, which is possible with my fleating moods, you will have to just get firefox.  maybe you could just use it for the sole purpose of viewing my wonderful comic.  in any case, if there is a major site revamp and i stop using .pngs, i'll let you know.  for now though, i guess i'll just try and find a way to live without your wonderful support

finally, to bring my rant to a close, i would like to respond to Nismorack's comments and all those cah-razy numbers he's flinging around.  He claims that 80-90% of all internet users are on the MSIE boat.  This may be true, but how does this figure relate to my current traffic.  In the past six days, i have recieved 81 hits to my site.  out of those 81 peoples, only 43.2% of users were using any version of MSIE.  The rest, a majority of 56.8%, were using a different version of web browsers (inlcuding, but not limited to Firefox and Mozilla).  So, where as 90% of the general population is using MSIE, over half of my target audience (only in the last week, mind you) is using better browsers.

[Firewalker]

Howabout this? Instead of a pattern background (which looks horrible when tiled anyway) just use a solid background then make your buttons as follows:



Which one is a png? Can you tell in firefox? I cant....

So instead of making it hard for your viewers, just make a nice single colour background and life will be just peachy.

Now, the expressions, check out the following links, they should help:

http://www.saveloomis.org/fun/25.htm
http://www.saveloomis.org/fun/26.htm
http://www.saveloomis.org/fun/27.htm

Hope this helps...

[Matthew J]

Which one is a png? Can you tell in firefox? I cant....

it doesn't matter if they look the same in firefox or not.  i did the comic for myself and anyone who wants to read it.  the comics always look fine.  the buttons, if haloed, still work.  i am taking a stance here on MSIE.  get rid of it!  firefox.

Now, the expressions, check out the following links, they should help:... ...Hope this helps...

thanks, but i already know what expressions look like.  i'm trying for a more cartoony style, as you can see at my site.  i'll post any updates on the emotion front as they occur.

also, a comment to the problem of seeing only grey or white squares: keenspace.com and their system has a problem with norton and some msie firewalls (another reason to dump it!) that may be disallowing access to the image folder.  you can either turn off the firewalls or set them to allow keenspace or just not look at my site.  whichever is easiest for you.

ok, i know this is getting long, but i figured i'd edit rather than make a new post.  here are some eyebrows i did for my main character.  i'm still not happy with them.  comments, crits, and suggestions are highly welcome.

[Dark Prism]

Those eyebrows rule. I say don't do anything else to the character design now. I think it's got it own style, and that style is awsome, so don't change it.


Although, you may want to think about extending the comic to 6 panels. You can story-tell, so to speak, better with 6 panels.

[Inigo]

W00t for non beard-related facial hair!

[Nismorack]

Although, you may want to think about extending the comic to 6 panels. You can story-tell, so to speak, better with 6 panels.

Although more panels allows for better story telling. The comic is more directed at gags. Which involve, setup and punch line. Adding more panels can allow for more story, if the comic is oriented at that. Otherwise you'll just have more panels of talking heads.

I use the amount of panels I need to get the idea behind the comic out properly. Which can be anything from 3 to 8. It all depends on what you want in the comic. You don't want it to be too crowded. IMO.

As for firefox. I have used it. Actually I do use it. For testing purposes. Since I take care to make the sites I develop compatible for both FF and IE. My main issue with it, is it's general slowness when compared to IE (I'm talking about my own computer of course), and it's hunger for RAM.

Bottomline: Both have their advantages, and both have their disadvantages. Neither is perfect, or the absolute best.

[slocky]

All that I can say is differant strokes for differant folks. I, infortunately, tend to use IE more. I can't use FF from work, or I would. I feel that webpages should be browser independant though. With you trying to take a stand on the issue of IE lame browser, I support you. Normally the issue is with sites not functioning correctly in FF.

I did notice the "fields" in IE, but I didn't see the buttons disappear. I am using w2k at work though, so no firewall. I didn't even notice it until it was pointed out.

On a side note, browser high jacking and popup allowed me to convert my mom into a firefox user (nice for when I need to install drivers or something on her computer). I am thinking that I may go campaign on the benifits / value of firefox. I would love to see a revolution ^_^

slocky

[Dark Prism]

Firefox works with everything now. If you see a problem in firefox, you can rest assured that the problem is most likely in all the browsers.

The fact is, Firefox is outstandingly superior to IE, in every way.