Cleaning House and Cool Stuff

• We are excited to announced that our Large-Print Version is now complete! Thanks to some nifty programming by Jim, double-size copies of each strip are now generated on-the-fly, so the Large-Print version will be totally up-to-date with the standard version! We have also added a convenient link to the large-print version on the No-Frames page.

Due to the new automatic image generation of the large-print versions, we no longer manually adjust the formatting of strip panels. As as result, when viewing the large-print comics, readers with older screen resolutions (such as 800×600) may find that the strip will roll off the screen. This may require some side-scrolling to read. We apologize for this inconvience, but hope that the benefit of having large-print versions available immediately will be worth the small hassle.

• We are also VERY excited to announce our new Toggle View! Our readers have mentioned that even though they prefer the normal view of the comic, there are occasions when they would like to be able to see a larger version of a single strip. While most browsers have a zoom feature, particularly with pixel-graphics, the zoomed image can be grainy. Well, thanks to some more nifty programming on Jim’s part, we now give our readers the ability to toggle between the normal and large versions of individual comics. Simply double-click on the strip itself and the 2-times version will appear. Double-click again to go back to normal size. ** Note that due to format restrictions, the toggle option is only available in the no-frames version.**

When toggling the large-size strips, navigation is only available by clicking back to the normal size. For our readers who generally perfer the big-print, we recommend using the large-print version, as that will allow you to navigate normally. However, for that occasional strip where you want to see the details up-close, the new toggle view is perfect.

• Michelle has just finished the process of reviewing all of the archive files. While no major changes were made to older strips, there were some minor changes made to many of the comics where there were issues with grammar, speech balloons, and other formatting. So, if you see something that seems to look slightly different than you remember it, that’s probably why. Note: We realize there are still a few strips with problems out there; they are on our list to fix.

• In other news, we are happy to announce that Tess is nearly done transcribing all of the comics. This was a project she started months ago, but was put on hold when the laptop which held the transcripts broke down. We now have it up and running again, so she will be working on the last few strips and then we will be adding them to the site. Our hope is that the transcripts will allow the visually impaired to enjoy the strip, as well as giving our non-English speaking readers the means to translate the dialogue so they can better understand what’s going on.

• Lastly, we are in the process of finalizing and re-opening our “condensed” version of the strip. Stay tuned for more details.