comics looking VERY different online

Anastasia · Post by **Anastasia** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 9:42 am

I feel like I should know the answer to this, but I don't, so...

I uploaded a number of pages to my site and when I looked at them, they seemed off, somehow, the quality wrong... anyway, when I compared them to the actual files I uploaded on my computer, I saw that the online ones were crushed, squashed smaller, the pictures and panels compressed..

Now, this is the first time I used the "save for web" "optimization" option in Photoshop to lower the kb on all the files, although I did not change the actual size of the pages, usually about 600x800 pixels.

Can anyone tell me if this is the reason for my pages being visually compressed in this way, or, if there's another reason, tell me that? I'm baffled by this, and I'm really unhappy with the way the pages look online. They lose a LOT of quality, the pictures get squashed, and the lettering becomes very hard to read. Whatever it takes for me to fix it, I need to know what's causing it so I can remedy the situation.

thanks a lot....

Oualawouzou · Post by **Oualawouzou** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 10:42 am

Your latest comic (20051122) doesn't seem to work. Its size is listed as 700X1100 pixels or so, quite (needlessly?) large.

Regarding the quality of the comic, when you use the "save for web" feature, make sure to select a view that shows the optimized image (if I remember right, you can select to view the original only, the optimized only, both side by side and one other option I can't recall).

Also, if you had already uploaded an image then replaced it, the "old" image will be shrunk/stretched to match the old image size.

I found the images displayed in Photoshop to be clearer than when viewed directly in IE or another program. Found this out the hard way as well, when I found out at the end of a story arc that one character's speech was barely readable. Arg... So always double-check before uploading. You mention the images on your comp look better: which ones? The optimized or the originals?

When using "save for web", have you tried experimenting with various file types? .gif, .png and .jpg are three formats usually handled well by all browsers and one can be better than the others depending the type of drawings you're doing. Also, you can modify various settings for your images. For jpegs, it's relatively easy as you have a slider for "quality", from 0 (maximum compression) to 100 (very little compression). I'm not familiar enough with .gif and .png to give more advice.

Anastasia · Post by **Anastasia** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 12:23 pm

wow

I'm totally mystified, now. I really hope I can get some advice here.

Now it appears that the comics are loading up as the proper dimensions. That's one thing. Probably from the latest update when I loaded the rest of the pages.

BUT......

In Firefox, my latest comic is not loading completely, so that the last two panels are blurred out.

In Internet Explorer, it's not loading up at all.

PLUS -- just before this update, the last comic was 20051022, and in Firefox, that one, too, only loads halfway so that the bottom is still blurry, (as it did before)

AND, in IE, that comic is also not loading at all.

Which must mean that somehing is going wrong with whatever the last comic dated is.

Any ideas?????

Also; I see that my indextemplate and dailyindextemplate are not loading at all. Before this update, I was getting the graphics, but all in the wrong order and with no color background. Now, I'm getting nothing at all, except the comic page.

I could really use some help on this stuff. I can mail the template html to anyone who wants to look and see what might be wrong, or even post it here, I suppose, but it doesn't make sense to me. Things seem to be working sometimes, then not working at all, or only working partly.

I didn't expect this to go off without a hitch, but I just have no idea of how to fix these problems, because I have no idea of what's causing them. This thing with the latest page loaded not showing up is particularly disturbing, becaue it means that even with an archive I can't update the comic. !!!!!

And the previous last page, 20051022 is not showing either... how in the world will I manage to fix that? There are a good 30 comics up after that one, and it's stil messed up.

well... any help will be greatly, greatly appreciated.

Oualawouzou · Post by **Oualawouzou** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 12:37 pm

Yes, post your indextemplate.html and dailytemplate.html here please.

Anastasia · Post by **Anastasia** » Mon Dec 05, 2005 6:07 pm

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EDIT

Okay --- I did another update, and now things seem to be working; page loading up, comics the right size, everything showing.

What I did was to reload the templates and the comic pages that were wonky. That seemed to have done it.

ANyway -- thanks a lot for the help. I'm aure I'll be needing more in days to come. But at least I've got a basically working site now.

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SECOND EDIT

Okay; I do notice one other weird thing, and I don't knwo if it's my computer or what.

Internet Explorer seems to be loading everythig up properly and in sequence.

Firefox appears to be messingup. It sometimes goes from one page to a blank template with nothing on it, and then skips ahead to a date weeks beyond what the real "next" comic should be.

Does Firefox tend to have problems with the keen-code (forgot what it's called). Is it because of a popup blocker or something like that?

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