New Reader Lost.

[dianalw]

I saw one of your ads while reading another webcomic, but when I came here I had a few problems.

First, it took me a while to figure out your image was an image map. Second, your archive page has a huge image map at the top of every page that took forEVER for my slow work computer to load. And third, your pages are larger than the frame that holds them in the archives, forcing me to scroll sideways to see the far right edges of your comic pages.

Too much work; I'm leaving.

I'm only writing here because I want to let you know what your problems are, so that you have a chance to fix them and hopefully not chase away possible readers in the future.

I don't like leaving critique without giving the critiqued a chance to respond, so if you would like to contact me, please feel free to e-mail me at [e-mail]. Otherwise, best of luck.

[Hazumirein]

Alright, well...I'm not about to email you just to defend my site since you've already apparently lost interest, but in case you happen to come back, or if anyone else is interested in the reply that would have been:

Okay, first off, yes, the site layouts are image mapped (more or less. It doesn't use a normal image map code; it's a series of tables. I make the layouts in Photoshop and it does a lot of that part of the coding automatically.) I admit I wasn't thinking when I saved the files and probably made them too big for a slower/older computer to load quickly, but I've honestly never heard a complaint about it before. I'm assuming that when you say "archive" page you mean the page that the comics themselves are on, not the actual archive list page, because yeah, the navigation--the big image map you were talking about--is up top there. Mostly because it wouldn't comfortably fit anywhere else and that page is the one most people are going to look at when they pull up the site anyway, so I wanted stuff to be fairly easy to find, and for the logo to be up there to remind people of what they were looking at

I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about when you say the pages are too big for the frame that holds them; there were a couple pages in the very beginning of the comic that were a bit larger and run over the edge a little, but around 10 pages in I switched to a smaller, standard size that fits in the frame (again, it's a table, actually) just fine. In fact, the site was built specifically to fit the pages correctly. So I can only imagine you just checked the first couple pages and didn't get as far as the size change. Though even the ones that do run over only do so a small amount; you hardly need to bother with the scrolling to still see everything you need to on the page.

That all said, I've viewed the site on a bunch of different computers (home, school, and even my iPod) and have never had a major problem with it. It does sometimes take a minute to load on older machines, but it's been pretty okay on anything made in the last few years. I can't remember getting any complaints about it in the past about this.

Anyway, I'm sorry the site bothered you to the point that it made you not want to read the comic, but I'm not about to go revamp the whole thing based on one person having issues. Regardless, thanks for taking the time to critique it; I do appreciate the feedback.

[erro]

Trollololololololol.

But thanks for posting in the forums, we needed a revival anyway.

Trolling backfired. XD

[Hazumirein]

XD I wouldn't really call it a revival. It's still more or less dead here.

I need to come up with a scheme to get people talking here like I did on the comics themselves. Not that I wasn't honestly trying to involve the readers more (because I love you guys), but those Question of the Update things I've been doing have increased the comment count tremendously XD.

[erro]

Well maybe we could use that to increase the rate of posts in the forums, like taking away the comments box for the comics, but still asking the question forcing people to answer in the forums. Or asking the question in the forums so that people have to come by and join to answer but telling people (New page update question! Come to the forum if you want to see what it is).

However neither of these things will work as people are lazy by nature. If its too much effort they won't even bother.

[Hazumirein]

Yeahhhh, taking away the comment box is a bad plan. Asking the question here is probably worthless too because people just won't answer. I'm thinking of maybe starting to post any fun extra material for the comic I have here. Doodles and writings and such. Hell, maybe I'll even post the scripts from finished chapters. I'm obviously too lazy to put it on TWC (they make it so much work to put up incentives *lazy*), so it might as well go here

[erro]

Feb 4, 2011 12:57:29 GMT -5 Hazumirein said:

Yeahhhh, taking away the comment box is a bad plan. Asking the question here is probably worthless too because people just won't answer. I'm thinking of maybe starting to post any fun extra material for the comic I have here. Doodles and writings and such. Hell, maybe I'll even post the scripts from finished chapters. I'm obviously too lazy to put it on TWC (they make it so much work to put up incentives *lazy*), so it might as well go here

I guess its good that I didn't manage to make you any more incentives. :V Though I probably should do more, that last one looks really shitty right now.

[Hazumirein]

Oh, it's fine, stop being so self-critcal