Comic Genesis Forums

My strip is a 640x480 full colour *.jpg weighing in at about the 250K mark. Is that OK for most people, or do I need shrink it back a bit? Also any tips on speeding up sites' loading times would most appreciated.<P>------------------
<A HREF="http://portside.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank> <IMG SRC="http://portside.keenspace.com/images/logo_s.gif"> </A>
*Brought to you by the number 7, the letter Q, and the phrase "shameless plug". <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/smile.gif">

I'm not to worried about the dimentions to much, 800*600 is the minimum most people seem to run at these days.
Right now I'm searching for software that has a quality setting, so I can optimise the file size with losing to much detail.
About the use of text links, how do I set the font to CopperPlate Bold?<P>------------------
Time will tell. Sooner or later, time will tell - Albert Einstein, Red Alert.
Don't Panic. - Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Spam Works(tm) - Overloaded billboard, <A HREF="http://portside.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank>PortSide</A>
__|__P /_._
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A pic from the first violent video game, Axe. <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/smile.gif"><p>[This message has been edited by Seven3 (edited 09-09-2000).]

Re: Text Links<P>If you want to use a non-default font for your site, you'd better pick a font that ships on all Windows machines, or most folks will just see the default font anyway. The tag you would use is (FONT FACE="fontname,alternatefontname"), with the parens replaced by the appropriate HTML brackets, and your font names filled in. I use "arial,helvetica" so that Mac users and Windows users are both guaranteed a non-serif font. Dunno how it looks on Linux.<P>A little dressing goes a long way. Using a background color, and a table with a different color, and then some custom buttons can make your site look very much your own without hampering download times. But if you go all out on the background images, ruler images, and buckets'o'buttons you are doing yourself and your viewers a disservice.<P><P>------------------
<A HREF="http://www.tayler.com/howard" TARGET=_blank>Howard Tayler </A>
<A HREF="mailto:htayler@myrealbox.com">htayler@myrealbox.com</A>
<A HREF="http://www.schlockmercenary.com" TARGET=_blank>Schlock Mercenary</A>
( <A HREF="http://www.schlockmercenary.com" TARGET=_blank>http://www.schlockmercenary.com</A> )

And another thing...<P>Your image may not be too big visually, but 250k is too long to wait. <A HREF="http://metalab.unc.edu/Dave/this-week.html">Doctor Fun</A>, the longest running single-panel strip on the web, is the same screen size, but 100Kb smaller than your strip. You definitely need to get a JPG utility that will let you specify the quality of the image.<P>Sure, with DSL, digital cable, etc, byte size becomes less relevant, but it does not become completely irrelevant. You WILL alienate a large portion of your audience if your site takes too long to load. Folks with modems probably will not stick around long enough to determine that it is worth the wait. Nobody is going to surf your archives on a modem. <P>For reference, my strip is 725x230, and varies in byte size from 30Kb to 60Kb. I use GIF compression, because it is more effective (smaller AND more legible) for the sorts of images I post. On Sundays it is about three times that size, because there are three rows of 725x300 image instead of one.
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<A HREF="http://www.tayler.com/howard" TARGET=_blank>Howard Tayler </A>
<A HREF="mailto:htayler@myrealbox.com">htayler@myrealbox.com</A>
<A HREF="http://www.schlockmercenary.com" TARGET=_blank>Schlock Mercenary</A>
( <A HREF="http://www.schlockmercenary.com" TARGET=_blank>http://www.schlockmercenary.com</A> )

Have you actually been to the the <A HREF="http://portside.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank>site</A>? I'm way ahead of you. The background is a binary gif (915 bytes) done so that the table appears to be a different colour. All buttons (12.5) are custom, and there's no rulers or spacer.gifs.
Ah, much better. the strip is now less than half the size (109K) with only a 10% loss of quality. I might keep the graphical buttons after all. <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/smile.gif">

Once and for all, how am I to tell if I should use Gif or JPG other than my anti-GIF bigotry?<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Howard:
<B>And another thing...<P>Your image may not be too big visually, but 250k is too long to wait. <A HREF="http://metalab.unc.edu/Dave/this-week.html">Doctor Fun</A>, the longest running single-panel strip on the web, is the same screen size, but 100Kb smaller than your strip. You definitely need to get a JPG utility that will let you specify the quality of the image.<P>Sure, with DSL, digital cable, etc, byte size becomes less relevant, but it does not become completely irrelevant. You WILL alienate a large portion of your audience if your site takes too long to load. Folks with modems probably will not stick around long enough to determine that it is worth the wait. Nobody is going to surf your archives on a modem. <P>For reference, my strip is 725x230, and varies in byte size from 30Kb to 60Kb. I use GIF compression, because it is more effective (smaller AND more legible) for the sorts of images I post. On Sundays it is about three times that size, because there are three rows of 725x300 image instead of one.<P>
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Now with new look logo and navigation buttons:<A HREF="http://nerdz.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank> NERDZ!!!!! </A>I'm really running out of things to say about my comic, huh?

Yes, I visited Portside. My comments were meant to be interpreted generally. Sorry about the confusion.<P>By "way ahead of me" I assume you mean "I've already customized the site for low-bandwidth connections." Well, your buttons are fairly small, but you use them for EVERYTHING. If someone wants to navigate the site, they MUST wait for your buttons to load. 3k buttons are great, but they are worlds slower than simple text links. If you are truly concerned about bandwidth, you can find a way to keep the look-and-feel without the custom buttons.<P>I gotta hand it to you, the site does have a great look, and your comic does load much faster now that it's smaller. You've probably made the compromises the way you should at this point. <P>Your format (one big file for all panels of one day's strip) is disadvantageous in one notable way: some of your comic frames would lend themselves well to GIF compression--they have simple palettes, and lots of black-on-white text. JPEG works poorly there. Unfortunately, other frames have rich colors, and would be crippled by a 256-color GIF palette.<P>The solution is tedious. Carve the strip into individual panels, or sets of similar panels, and let each of those be its own file. Pete Abrams does this with <A HREF="http://www.sluggy.com">Sluggy Freelance</A> on Sunday strips. The line-art, heavy text panels you could GIF, while the gradient fill, space-background things you could JPEG. Of course, if you are carving it up like that, the 256-color GIF palette is not so bad (assuming you use a custom palette, optimized for the colors in your image), so you could GIF everything and it would look great. <P>Maybe, somewhere in this long, long post, I've answered Screwball McGoo's question about GIF vs. JPEG. If not, I'll summarize: Use GIF for line-art, and large blocks of solid color. Use JPEG for photos and complex gradients. For MY strip, GIF works much better than JPEG. For Doctor Fun, JPEG works much better than GIF. Experiment. Maybe find ways to use both. Remember, readability comes first, with byte-size a close second.<P>------------------
<A HREF="http://www.tayler.com/howard" TARGET=_blank>Howard Tayler </A>
<A HREF="mailto:htayler@myrealbox.com">htayler@myrealbox.com</A>
<A HREF="http://www.schlockmercenary.com" TARGET=_blank>Schlock Mercenary</A>
( <A HREF="http://www.schlockmercenary.com" TARGET=_blank>http://www.schlockmercenary.com</A> )

Just to add to the GIF vs. JPG discussion. Generally speaking, GIF format works far better for line art with a moderate amount of solid colors. As most people know, that's pretty much because of the limited color palette. The primary way of removing file size in GIF's is to remove colors. Some progs, like Photoshop 5.5, also offer a lossy compression attribute allowing you to compress the image without slimming down the palette. On the other end, JPG compression works best on images that have a "smooth" coloring scheme. That's why it is the defacto compression technique for web photographs at the present. It also works pretty well on line art that makes heavy use of gradients and shading. Howard pretty much hit the nail on the head as to when to use the different techniques. <P>250 k is bit excessive when it comes to file size, especially since not everyone has broadband. I'm a web designer by trade so I try to work off the assumption that the average home user has a 56k modem with a maximum 800x600 screen resolution. The "ideal goal" of web design/presentation is to get your entire page to be 60k or less (that means all the images AND HTML code since that can sometimes take up to 20k of the total file size). Of course, that's a holy grail and not always achievable. Try to shoot for 100k or less on the inital load. There are a few techniqes out there to give the illusion of a speedier download. First is to use the HTML code to have a low resolution copy of the image load first (and quickly). This keeps the visitors interest while the higher resolution image continues to load in the background. Of course that means creating two different versions of each comic. One as a low rez substitute as well as your normal high rez one. The following code is how to implement that:<P>{IMG SRC="sample.gif" LOWSRC="lowrez_sample.gif" HEIGHT="xx" WIDTH="xx"}<P>*this is only containted in paratheses in order to appear on the board. normally you would use the standard TAG brackets.<P>Another technique is to simply save your files as "progressive" JPG's. That way the image will load in several passes (once again, keeping the visitors eye) instead of slowly from top to bottom. Those are just a couple ways that I know of to offer the illusion of a quicker load time. Any body else have any suggestions?<P>
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Rick Zawadzki
<A HREF="http://barclayusa.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank>http://barclayusa.keenspace.com</A> <P>"Egg!?!"<P>[This message has been edited by rickZ (edited 09-09-2000).]<p>[This message has been edited by rickZ (edited 09-09-2000).]

640 by 480? Definitely overkill. Heck, that's as big as some moniters are! I would definitely shrink size. To half of that probably, heck, my own comic (at <a href="http://whatsalife.keenspace.com">http://whatsalife.keenspace.com</a> is only an average of 45k but I still get frustrated with my 56k modem.<P>-Caster<P>------------------
Proud owner of "What/s A Life".
Viewable at <A HREF="http://whatsalife.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank>whatsalife.keenspace.com</A>
Please visit.

I think 250K might be a tad big. I have one of the largest strips on Keenspace, I believe in terms of physical size so I have no problem with 640x480. What I would suggest in terms of the 250K is to use a different compression ratio if you can.
I find, though, with my crappy 56K that if I truly enjoy the comic then I will wait for it to load.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Seven3:
<B>My strip is a 640x480 full colour *.jpg weighing in at about the 250K mark. Is that OK for most people, or do I need shrink it back a bit? Also any tips on speeding up sites' loading times would most appreciated.<P></B><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><P>------------------
Now with new look logo and navigation buttons:<A HREF="http://nerdz.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank> NERDZ!!!!! </A>I'm really running out of things to say about my comic, huh?

Keenspace's auto-updater WILL work with multiple images. Your filename must have the date in it, of course, but then you follow that with an alphanumeric code to provide alphabetical order. Thus the files 20000910.gif, 20000910a.gif, 20000910b.gif would be loaded in the order listed.<P>Ensuring that they line up right is the trick. I'd build a table that was about 10 pixels wider than the row of graphics I want on the each line, and then put the ***TODAYS_COMIC*** tag inside a single cell that spans the width of the table. AutoKeen puts a space between the IMG SRC tags it creates, so your multi-image comic will have space between the frames. This might look funny, so you could make the table background black (or whatever your between-frame color is) to work around it.<P>Anyway, if your table cell has an "align=left" tag (TD WIDTH=725 ALIGN=LEFT), the images should line up nicely left to right, and as long as you've done your math and made sure that your 4 rows of images all add up to 715 pixels (saving 10 or so for the spaces) then they should drop right into line, no problem.<P>RickZ's LOWSRC tag is a great idea (never seen it before, gotta try it out on one of my other sites!), but there's no way to implement it with autokeen and your comic. Or with with your previous/next buttons, either. AutoKeen creates the IMG SRC tag for you, and there's no LOWSRC option for it. <P><P>------------------
<A HREF="http://www.tayler.com/howard" TARGET=_blank>Howard Tayler </A>
<A HREF="mailto:htayler@myrealbox.com">htayler@myrealbox.com</A>
<A HREF="http://www.schlockmercenary.com" TARGET=_blank>Schlock Mercenary</A>
( <A HREF="http://www.schlockmercenary.com" TARGET=_blank>http://www.schlockmercenary.com</A> )

Howard:<P>No worries.<P>Yes, and I'll see what I can do. Adding dimention attributes to the buttons will probably be the way I'll go; the clickable area will be defined before the image loads. Text links will be go only if I can get them to look good and there's a good speed boost.<P>Thanks. <IMG SRC="http://www.keenspace.com/forums/smile.gif"><P>I see.<P>How would I put all the pieces back together? (I still can't figure out how to set images at precise locations) And can KeenSpace's Auto updater handle multiple images being used for one comic? Each frame (or set of) having it's own custom 256 palette is a cool idea tho'.<P>Cool.
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<A HREF="http://portside.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank> <IMG SRC="http://portside.keenspace.com/images/logo_s.gif"> </A>
"Because 56K connections suck, but it's all I have." - Not a quote from PortSide.<p>[This message has been edited by Seven3 (edited 09-11-2000).]