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                      Some musings about webcomic layouts
                                        
Obligatory Sidebar Links

Comics I've posted in the past:

* Oh. Today was a holiday. [1]
* Don't blame me if today is rotten [2]
* A readable Garfield [3]
* A more readable Garfield [4]
* Garkov [5]


I'm not sure anyone has actually noticed this or not, but each time I've
posted a cartoon, each frame has been a separate image. I got the idea 6½
years ago [6], although from where I don't recall.

I do think it's still a good idea because it facilitates a liquid layout for
a comic (the frames only take up as much horizontal space as needed) while
allowing for a larger frame. The frames on my experimental comic [7] are
320×240, which are large compared to most online comics, while at the same
time, allowing for a very narrow browser window.

I've even put the idea [8] out there [9] and had some positive feedback on
it, but I've yet to see any online comic actually implement the idea, and I
don't understand why. Perhaps it's not as good an idea as I think it is? Or
it's, oddly enough, too constraining? Perhaps Howard Aiken [10] was right
when he said, “Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas
are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.”

I don't know, it seems like an obvious idea to me.

[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2005/10/10.1
[2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2006/02/14.1
[3] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2006/02/08.1
[4] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2008/02/26.2
[5] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2008/07/30.2
[6] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2002/01/20.1
[7] http://www.flummux.org/samurai-admin/2002/01/20/
[8] http://www.websnark.com/archives/2005/03/oh_my_god.html
[9] http://www.talkaboutcomics.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=26987
[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Aiken

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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