justfigures

I suppose any webcomic will follow a basic format - the comic logo name and a brief line describing the subject matter then the comic image itself which is topped and bottomed by the 'previous' and 'next' navigation, together with an archive page. I made a point when I started not to look at too many other webcomics, just enough to get the basic format. I can't see that I am much of a rival to xkcd, I am sure that they have their own loyal audience. Regards

Thanks Stevo, again some encouraging feedback and I have noted what you have said: I note what you say about 'hand drawn' - worth experimenting with. The garden one, number 26, yea, and it does actually work - it is possible to have a square with a boundary of 20m and an internal area of 40m2. Not with real numbers obviously - only possible with complex numbers. Profound statement followed by obscure and seemingly unrelated whimsical response - yes, not completely sure about those myself. The surprising aspect - again good point. Regards

That's great feedback, thanks for that. Regards

Thanks snowyswebsolutions and MG1878 WOW - those comments are really encouraging. I thought the actually content material would get a really negative response. As you spotted both of you I am no designer and don't pretend to be one. Yes MG1878 the site is rather bland and this is because I tried adding extra colour but it detracted from the actually sketches - which you spotted might be an issue. Surprised the images are slow to load snowyswebsolutions as I tried to keep the file size to a minimum - under 100KB for most of them. Interestingly - the site went live in its present form on Nov 28th, about two+ weeks ago, and I posted a link on reddit/r/comics around a week later and got sent around 2800 unique visitors generating 4400 or more page views in 24hrs until the post fell off the 'new' catergory. I did the same for my next comic update 3 days later and got around the same number, of which about 70% were new. Majority, that is about 80% from the USA, in particular California. Interesting to see what will happen with todays. They certainly like their geek webcomics over there. That does not mean that they will want to keep coming back of course and that is what concerned me, that they were just curious and didn't actually like what they saw and would not come back, it was that that made make a post here and ask you designers what you thought. Anyway what you have said has cheered me up. I will say that now in case the next post here is negative. But I can take it. Regards

Hi all I have just collected together some very deep, obscure and extremely geeky subject material in the form of simple line sketches (all my own work, although I might regret saying that) built a site around them and called it a webcomic. Yes well, like this type of thing or not and most people don't - its just an experiment to see what the traffic numbers are. Let's face it there seems to be thousands of them out there and I wondered if they are all chasing the same audience. Seems to be a bit of a tight nit community. Anyway, its here: http://www.slimfigures.co.uk/ Subject matter aside (or not whatever you decide is worth commenting on) - there is I believe a standard format for this type of site in so far as display and navigation set up. A format that this tight nit community would expect to be available. I would like some opinions please if you have the time. Thanks justfigures

The scanner was not expensive - a Canon CanoScan Lide 20 or 30 - its Okay and there is a few settings and options I can play around with. I will experiment.

To be honest my graphics software package is not that great, and my graphics knowledge is not much better as I don't have need of the mystic art of design that often. I will see what settings there are on the scanner. I'm happy with the file size of approx 180KB and I'm happy with the quality at that size. I have read some more on the subject and the advice is definitely for png format for line drawings so that is what I am going to go with. Thanks. Regards

Sorry I mean't - ...saving as 24-bit...

Hi davep and thanks for replying Yes you are correct I am saving as 25-bit png with file size coming out at 500KB. Experimented with 8-bit png as you suggested and the file size is down to 180KB with no apparent loss of quality. The jpeg was coming out at 150KB. My image software describes the 8-bit png as 'grayscale' but as my images are just monochrome line comic style sketches then that is probably correct anyway. My scanner does not scan to the png format - so it looks like scan to jpg on a large image size (say 2000 X 2000 pixels), then covert to png format and my smaller image size (550 X 550 pixels) in the image software - I will experiment. But definitely png it is going to be. Thanks again. Regards

Hi Most likely this topic has already been discussed many times and I am sorry if it has, but: What is the best format for images that consist of line drawings / simple comic strips / sketch format drawings in monochrome? Is it jpg or png? The advice on the web is a bit confusing. In jpg my images at 550 X 550 pixels are coming out at about 150KB and in png are averaging about 500KB and I only will be displaying one on a page so the file size is not an issue. Just the compatibility with other OS and the current / future conventions. (I don't want to be changing them in 2 or 3 years time.) Regards

Hi again I've decided to use the social networking link code from addthis.com. It requires JavaScript to work but is so easy to install. Took me less than 10 seconds to add to the same page that I've been trying to get Bookmarkify to work on for the past two days! Plus as the code is the same for every page I was able to place it into an include file that I have already set up for the copyright jargon at the bottom of the page and thus was able to place it on every page on the site, (at least 350 pages), in about 20 seconds! PS. still curious why Bookmarkify did not work. Regards

Hi - I wonder if anyone can help please I wish to add a sharing and bookmarking feature to some of the pages on my site. (Everyone is doing it now apparently.) But a query over the open source ‘sharing and bookmarking’ software Bookmarkify, from: http://www.gara.com/projects/bookmarkify/installation Has anyone got this to work outside of Wordpress? It says that it does work on any php enabled site but I am having trouble to get it to work. The installation is extremely simple, it is just some files bundled up in a zip file and the addition of two code blocks of php code on the page you wish it to appear on (the second code block is only one line and just calls the ‘bookmarkifyit’ function). I won’t post the code here yet because I am not sure if it anyone out there uses it or can help. I followed the instructions as set out on the gara.com page. But the error I get occurs at the point I call the php function in the page and I just get: Fatal error: Call to undefined function: _() etc, etc Anyone had similar problems? Or can point me to a better solution? Regards

I checked again, now it is on one line but you have no '?' between the file and the parameters!! Example you have; '...widget.phpselect...' and not '...widget.php?select...' Regards

If you 'View/source code' on the page you linked to you will see that the JavaScript formatting is all over the place, the pathway to the file and its parameters are not on one line as they should be. Regards

Hi again I assumed that is what you meant - that the JavaScript you had was OK but just not working when you added it via the WordPress CMS. Regards