Comic Genesis Forums

I would so, too. But that's just because I keep my page design as simple as possible so it can have room to grow as my comic demands. Just to mention the people who posted on this thread, I really don't see where Ping or Filer could fit a newsbox on their very nice pages.

One way we could force people to use the newsbox is coding it so people who don't have the newsbox on their page wouldn't get their images shown. But that'd be a very un-democratic option.

I really like RPin's recent design. There's enough room in the logo area for the banner ad, and the layout is nice and clean. It also may serve well to integrate the Guide on the front page too.

However, it could use some tweaking. The bottom area with the KeenSpot description can be extended across the bottom, instead of being butted against the NewsBox's column, and you may use in the black bar:

KeenSpace (c) 2000-2004 KeenSpot Entertainment.
Privacy Policy -- Terms of Service -- Antispam Information

I actually scrolled down the newsbox on pin's design to see if he put an easter egg or something.

I really don't like the idea with voting. There's pretty much 50 or more sites - comic directories out there that relay on voting. And it doesn't work on any of them. Things wouldn't change much if voting buttons are in guide instead of on sites, and after all, do we need to make TWC out of keenspace?

RPin wrote:I already pointed out that those are very good ideas. In fact, I'd rather have 5 randomly drawn comics of every genre than the whole newsbox thing. That'd mean the recent efforts of Kisai in trying to ressurect the newsbox will be in vain, but frankly speaking, I don't think there would be many artists willing to place the newsbox code on their page.

You are correct, sir.

I have no problem with the OPTION of a newsbox, but unless it's going to be HIGHLY modular (as in, an artist has the option of designing the entire look, color scheme, and even the dimensions of the thing from scratch so that it'll plug into their site's design fluidly) then I'm against making it a requirement.

However, I wouldn't mind if the newsbox is totally morphable. That might actually give me something to do with that empty space in the left corner of my site.

RPin wrote:One way we could force people to use the newsbox is coding it so people who don't have the newsbox on their page wouldn't get their images shown. But that'd be a very un-democratic option.

Do this, and I think you're going to be forcing a lot of comics with carefully-designed sites not open to quick readjustment into going independent.


EDIT: By the way, who's "Ping??"

I don't see anything wrong with the "don't have a newsbox on your site, you don't get to be in the newsbox" approach. Seems only fair to me if you want to exploit the promotional power of the newsbox you should be willing to take on the obligation of promoting other people through the newsbox too.

We're talking about the little rectangular animated .gif newsbox that Keenspot has right?

Keenspace should have had one of those long ago.

Like the Keenspot newsbox it should be free to Keenspace members, but also Keen could sell spots in the newsbox to non-Keenspace comics like they do with Spot's newsbox.

fi13r wrote:EDIT: By the way, who's "Ping??"

Phalanx.

Ghastly wrote:I don't see anything wrong with ...

Ghastly wrote:Eek! A tentacle monster.. it's going to rape me!

It occurs to me that you don't see anything wrong with a lot of things.

And that's why I like ya!

Ghastly wrote:I don't see anything wrong with the "don't have a newsbox on your site, you don't get to be in the newsbox" approach. Seems only fair to me if you want to exploit the promotional power of the newsbox you should be willing to take on the obligation of promoting other people through the newsbox too.

That's what I would figure, normally. But for some reason, some of the talk here seems to be about something else.

I think some people mean one thing, and other people mean another thing, or something.

Ghastly wrote:We're talking about the little rectangular animated .gif newsbox that Keenspot has right?

Keenspace should have had one of those long ago.

It didn't, long ago?

I was under the impression that it did.

Ghastly wrote:Like the Keenspot newsbox it should be free to Keenspace members, but also Keen could sell spots in the newsbox to non-Keenspace comics like they do with Spot's newsbox.

Yeah. Seems like a good idea to me.


Maybe there could be more than one size/design of newsbox, sort of like how there are 3 pretty standard sizes for banner ads?

fi13r wrote:

RPin wrote:I already pointed out that those are very good ideas. In fact, I'd rather have 5 randomly drawn comics of every genre than the whole newsbox thing. That'd mean the recent efforts of Kisai in trying to ressurect the newsbox will be in vain, but frankly speaking, I don't think there would be many artists willing to place the newsbox code on their page.

You are correct, sir.

I have no problem with the OPTION of a newsbox, but unless it's going to be HIGHLY modular (as in, an artist has the option of designing the entire look, color scheme, and even the dimensions of the thing from scratch so that it'll plug into their site's design fluidly) then I'm against making it a requirement.

However, I wouldn't mind if the newsbox is totally morphable. That might actually give me something to do with that empty space in the left corner of my site.

I would have absolutely no problem with people using different color schemes on the newsbox, but the former newsbox and the newshack Kisai was working on before Boardy crashed only accept 150X300 images posted via guide. That's the only real limitation, I believe.

As I see it, if you make putting the newsbox on your site a requirement, then there'll probably be only 5 comics on the newsbox. Crappy ones, that have nothing to lose by sacrificing their already crappy pages.

And all those 5 pages will be getting revenue from the Ks main page. Can't get much better than that, Goobla.

fi13r wrote:

RPin wrote:One way we could force people to use the newsbox is coding it so people who don't have the newsbox on their page wouldn't get their images shown. But that'd be a very un-democratic option.

Do this, and I think you're going to be forcing a lot of comics with carefully-designed sites not open to quick readjustment into going independent. :-?


EDIT: By the way, who's "Ping??"

The horizontal width and vertical height were picked because that's what the keenspot newsbox has. However nobody says you have to use the full space. Unlike the original newsbox, I intend to let some control in the newsbox through css properties (like if you want to change the borders or something.) However there is no standard advertising 'newsbox' shape.

And letting people define their own sizes will result in breaking everyones pages since people will pick really stupid sizes like 113x659 which trashes anyones page that hasn't i-framed the box itself.

Right now the newsbox is the size it is because it would be seamless with keenspots box. I have the same problem with people picking oddly sized banners. 468x60 200x40 and 88x31 are the only sizes supported by guide specificly so they do not break guide.keenspace.com, but them some fools went and put broken html and img tags into the description box, which ... broke the guide pages they were on, AND broke the rss.xml files, making their sites disappear from both systems.

I manually went through ALL the sites on boardy and removed the html code from their descriptions.

So point to note, there is/was two intended styles for newsbox, one is img/img-map and the other is img+links

the img+links would allow for a smaller image, but because of font choice, may still break the layout of the site.

BTW, I stumbled across this site which might prove useful: It tracks updates for various comics using the RSS feed.

http://evoluted.net/webcomics/

That system might work for intergrating guide in the front page.

Okay guys, if there is not going to be any further input I'm going to go with RPin's layout and fix stuff as it goes up.

I'm going to try and fix the newsbox/newshack box please keep making newsbox images, animated gif or not (please try to keep below 40KB) and at least attempt to store it in the guide banner system.

I may need to alter the layout or color scheme depending on what happens.

Any final input? I don't want this to drag on forever.

Terrence asked for one week, I guess.

I also did this alternative design which can hold guide information. I don't like it very much, and I'm not sure about the "guide's picks" either.

EDIT: And I submitted that little dummy newsbox to the guide

Incidently, I mean I want to put something up -now- to see if I can make it work. the Contest is NOT over yet.

RPin wrote:Terrence asked for one week, I guess.

I also did this alternative design which can hold guide information. I don't like it very much, and I'm not sure about the "guide's picks" either.

I like your new design better. I think it suits the functionality of the site more than the old one.

But your images are STILL having rendering problems. It looks to me like there might be something the matter with your .gif compression, maybe.

I'm gonna take a screenshot to show you what I'm talking about.

Um... Anyone ELSE going to give the www page a shot, or am I going with RPin's design? *hears crickets*

The reasons for that can be found here:
http://www.reallifecomics.com/daily.php?strip_id=1134

I like RPins design, particularily the new Keenspace Logo. I say go with it. I suspect that many people are not entering the contest for the same reason I am not. I like RPins design and don't really think I could offer much better.