Thanks for the input everyone, I’ve already applied Horizontal Scrolling for mobile-users to every comic strip in the site. You might have to zoom-in for the double or larger comic strips, but they’re still readable in my experience. Horizontal Scrolling also shouldn’t conflict with already webtoon’d comic strips like with Episode 1. I might convert more strips too to webtoon in the future if I have the time!
While you’re waiting for me to finish the Valentine’s Day 2020 comic, I’ve been doing some testing with possible mobile comic formats. Help out by testing them out with your phone/tablet, then tell me your opinions and suggestions in the comments or polls below!
Links to those pages have been removed! Thanks to everyone who participated!
In order of how easy they are to implement:
Comics can now scroll horizontally. Work involved depends if I upload bigger comic sizes to compensate for the zoomed-in comic. Looks pretty nice in either orientations, I can actually implement this right now if you guys don’t care about the image lower quality!
The comics, just rotated 90 degrees. I still have to upload a separate file for each comic with this method, but at least all I have to do is rotate and export them. Oh, and just before someone suggests it, I did try rotating the whole comic navigation + comic with CSS, but too bad the rest of the page’s elements don’t adjust automatically. If that worked, this would be a way easier fix than Horizontal Scrolling.
I’m not too keen on this though since you have to set your phone to portrait mode, it’s hard to switch into a different format if I change my mind later, aaand my inner web designer is telling me this is stupid.
Upload new versions of the comic strip in a manga-like rectangle format. Gonna take a lot of work to convert the strips into this. The benefit with this is I might be able to use this in physical prints, though the page you can see is still a bit shorter than an actual (Shonen Jump) manga page. Around 20% shorter to be exact! I was thinking of changing Cat Nine’s format to something like this, but I’ll think about it more seriously after the current episode is over.
Related to this is the square format like with the Mega Myan VS Bakunawa comic. Fits in most places and super easy to share in sites like Instagram, but it’s a lot more limiting than it looks. I’m sure you’ve seen some comics that would be a lot better if they cut one or more panels for their joke… and if not, just check out r/comedynecromancy for some examples. You could argue that they just need to level up their humor, but some comics need fewer panels, and that’s often not possible with a square format. Finally, I want to reserve this format for bonus comics, for now. Why am I using it then? Well, it just looks so nice in the home/blog pages ain’t it?
Some of you should be familiar with this mobile-optimized, super-long, vertical comic format. Downside is, like the manga page format, this will take some time to convert and upload. The benefits of this is I can upload this to websites LINE Webtoon, Tapas, and MangaDex. I suppose it does look great on mobile, though I’m not a huge fan of this since you can’t really be creative with the panels… though I’ll admit, I haven’t played with creative panels recently, so this might be a moot point. Lastly, you can drop some panels if needed, unlike the square format. A neutral point is I can just rotate the long horizontal panels I’ve used in Cat Nine. Not ideal, but it will do!
I was supposed to put up an Opinion Stage poll here, but they apparently have a 250/month view limit now with the Free version. They’ve become extremely greedy these past years, geez. Gonna use Straw Poll from now on!
Poll closed and removed!
I just told myself I wouldn’t be fiddling around with the website again, but ehh, I suddenly found myself having another go at trying to make the website more mobile-friendly again.
So far, all I’ve done is:
And sorry, but you still have to zoom-in and/or read in landscape orientation for most of the comics since I have to convert them to the vertical format first, which takes a lot of time, plus not all pages will fit the format correctly.
I was thinking if I should permanently change to a square/vertical/manga page format to make things easier for myself. I still like the horizontal strip format a lot though, but I’ll think about this more seriously after the current Episode is over. What do you guys think?
All of Episode 1 now has mobile/vertical comic pages! Feel free to read them on mobile… or not! If you have time though, please do read them to check if I missed anything or made a mistake!
Sorry if they’re sloppily made, cause they are! Looking at my older stuff fills me with disgust and I just want to hide under the covers! You’re welcome!
sobs
Haha! Finally figured out how to make mobile/vertical versions of the Cat Nine comic pages. No need for Tapas anymore! Only the first page is up for now though. It will only work if you’re on mobile and if a mobile-sized comic is available, otherwise the normal horizontal page will load instead.
It will take me some time to make them and they’re low-priority compared to actually making comic pages. I’ll make these vertical strips if I have free time, but thankfully I can use the 146 pages I’ve already made for Tapas.
Also expect that not all pages are gonna look great in mobile, especially now that I’m using Clip Studio since it’s a lot easier to move/resize things in Flash. You guys on mobile can just load the desktop version, or I can just not make a vertical page.
Now, some gratitude is in order!
