Comic Book Resources

this is... gonna take some getting used to.

My eyes! My eyes! Just when they recover from looking at five issues of McFarlane art, this happens! Oh, the humanity!

I guess I'll get used to it.

Yeah, taking used to will definitely be needed.

I think I like it.

I don't like it so far, but it could just be because I'm not used to it. It looks like it should be a companion website for that Comic Foundry magazine or something.

We fear change.

But I think I'll get used to it pretty quickly.

Finally! I'm pretty excited, personally.

But that's for selfish reasons, because I've wanted everyone to read my reviews that have been sitting in Jonah's inbox for weeks.

I didn't mind the main page... but the blog's thrown me.

While it's a fairly big change for us behind the scenes (we have to figure out a lot of new widgets), is it even that much of a change visually?

I signed off on the change because it basically looked the same as the old blog.

I signed off on the change because it basically looked the same as the old blog.

There are a lot of little changes: the new font styles are a bit too blocky (especially the larger fonts), the off-red and off-black don't quite mesh, and the white background is too shiny and bright. Oh, and the random grey head thing next to each post is weird (is there some option to add a picture there)?

Other than that, it's fine.

I'll add that the single best thing about the site change is the new drop down menu at the top of the page, which makes it much easier to find everything.

Oh, and the random grey head thing next to each post is weird (is there some option to add a picture there)?

Lets see....

I like it except for the gray background in the main area. Makes the text slightly more difficult to read.

Well, I did the signup and it appears there's.....nuthin'.

Oh, yeah, thok, certainly there are changes, but I think it's pretty much a mixed bag, with the positive additions outweighing the negative subtractions.

To wit, you mention the black and red, but I think that's a SIGNIFICANT improvement over not being able to tell if a word was a link. Everyone remember how annoying that was?

I also really dig the "link to author's posts" function - I like that everyone can find all of, say, Brad Curran's posts right away.

Or all of Tadhg's post.

OOPS! I see what the problem is...

I like it except for the gray background in the main area. Makes the text slightly more difficult to read.

Interesting - I bet we have some leeway with the look, maybe I can see what we can see.

I think the new look is very ugly and cold. Sorry.

Very neat, Paul!

See, folks, you can have avatars! If you, you know, actually want to have avatars for whatever reason.

Hang in there folks! Give it some time, it'll grow on ya. And there's certainly room for change and modifications down the line. This isn't the end -- this is an evolving process. Let Brian know your thoughts and we'll discuss possibilities.

Thanks for all the support.

I just keep saying "Wow" over and over...

OK, that wasn't so painful to figure out. Spiderham gives the avatars a thumbs up.

So, how do we make avatars and stuff?

Hmmm....Well I cleared my cache and cookies, but I still can't see the avatars. Anything else I should do?

So, how do we make avatars and stuff?

Dan, click on the grey avatar thingy next to your name.

Oh yeah, Brian....Looks like the blockquote thing isn't working anymore. Or, again, is that just me???

Shit, man. Now I can't read our spam.

The only thing that actually bugs me is putting the comments link at the top of each article on the main page, which is a general peeve of mine in every blog design I see that does it.

Big improvement, especially the front page layout & colors.

And, in other "Stuff the rest of you guys can't see nyah nyah" news: Now everybody can read all the unused drafts I have sitting in my cache.

And, in other news, there's now a "show/hide kitchen sink" button in the "write post" area.

Kitchen Sink? WTF.

Also, it looks like it's way easier to embed videos, and even audio! Neat.

I was going to mention the many, many drafts you have, Mark. Get going on some of them!

That's odd - I don't think it makes sense to have the drafts visible to all.

The blockquote still works for me, so I dunno, Paul.

The blockquote still works for me, so I dunno, Paul.

Lets see...

...At least I have the avatars working now. Adblock didn't like 'em at first.

By the way, where's the “link to author’s posts” function?

As long as you don't bring in the horrendous new smilies on the boards.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Er, ahem.

Pretty sleek and snazzy. Could we get the link to the comments at the bottom of the post, though? or maybe top *and* bottom, to please everyone.

Actually, I guess it doesn't matter with how condensed the text is now. Hmm.

But does the new look give me some kind of tyrannical magic power?

Just click on the name of the author, Paul.

I think I should give everyone titles!!

Bill, Gregs, Danielle, Mark, etc. - just drop me an e-mail with anything you'd like to see addressed on our end of the blog.

Me likey so far especially the long overdue CBR redesign. And the link to all of a CSBG author's posts was the single most thing that I wanted a few weeks ago. I like the avatars but I think it would be nice to have a little more visual separation between comments. I dig the menus at the top, too. Let's see what this puppy can do.

It'll take some getting used to, but not too bad. A little cold as someone mentioned. I don't like that there aren't numbers next to the comments anymore. I usually could remember what number comment I had read up to before, not sure if I'll as easily remember who left the last comment when I check back in on columns.

CHANGE BAD!

Hm. It seems the change has made CSBG look really nice! Outstanding!

I kind of hate it, to be honest.

I like the look of the site, but I'm less thrilled about the look of CBSBG...

It's all kinds of UGH - like a Jonathan Hickman when you love a Kirby...

The main page looks very familiar. The dominant use of blue against white....... Newsarama?

I kid Looks fresh.

Oh, I see. When something's quoted it's just indented slightly, but otherwise looks like normal text. I couldn't quite tell what was going on there.

The amount of dissaproval in the comments surprised me, i think it's a very good update. Nice, sleek design, digging the font for the blog title (which font is it?). But I agree on the grey heads next to the title, you guys need to get yourselves some avatars! Cool design overall.

I'll get used to it...but I won't like it.

To quote Futurama:

"Clever things make people feel stupid and unexpected things make them feel scared."

ps: I'm so scared!!! And I can't find my good pants!

Wow... This will take some time to get used to, but congratulations to the CBR and CSBG staffs!

Nope sorry, I'm not keen. The grey is unpleasant to look at and cold.
I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually but definitely don't like it.

Surreal, mind-blowing, eye-catching, colorful, teeny lettering to read (which the size can be adjusted for my old aging eyes fortunately).

Feels like I'm tripping on Morrison LSD-wise.

Way too busy. Looks like everybody else's blog. Gonna take time to get used to it.

I don't mind folks not digging the look, but what surprises/confuses me is the love shown for the old blog look.

Is it just nostalgia? Because as far as I could see, the old blog wasn't anything special. I mean, I was fine with it, but it was just a normal looking blog to me, no different than most other blogs.

For the folks who dug the old blog look, what, in particular, did you enjoy about the old blog look? What was special about it?

It was somewhat surprising/disorienting when the new layout popped up, but I must admit, I smiled as I realized it had been re-designed. I'm still getting used to where everything is, but I like it...a lot! Good work.

Hate it. What was a smooth, simple design has devolved into a clumbersome modular mess. Everything is a lot harder to find now and its not because it is "new", its because its not very easy on the eyes and a lot of stuff that used to be visible right on the main page are now hidden behind submenus.

Sometimes simpler is better.

I don't know if it's nostalgia, but there was something a bit more organic about the old look (and I mean that in at least two or three senses of the word).

Really good new look – clean, clear, easy to read and use. Congratulations all round.

If you could change the background color to something besides gray...otherwise, it's looking good so far.

I don’t mind folks not digging the look, but what surprises/confuses me is the love shown for the old blog look.

Refer to the post by me/Garth Algar, but also:

I liked the way quotes were shaded differently before, but I really like that you can tell dead links from live links now. I don't like the giant CSBG block at the top, but I like that we can have avatars and the expanded "recent comments" block, and I especially like the "notify me of followup comments". Overall positive change.

Not sure I like it, but I think I can get used to it. It'll take a while. It happens.

This is just like changing the status quo in my favorite comic. I will either love it, or I will hate it, but no matter what my thoughts, I sure as hell will tell everyone on the talkback.

Personally I like it (especially the misspelling notification), but it is "different". I liked the familiarity of the old one...like a soft slipper.

I only see a tiny, tiny handful of the headlines. The text and links are still there, but in IE 6, they're "invisible". I also get a Javascript error on every page.

Pretty snazzy, I think. I read the site by RSS, so the look of the website doesn't change much for me... except I don't immediately see a comment feed link, which would be troubling. Hopefully it's around here somewhere.

The new look was a pleasant surprise this morning. Very cool.

I dunno what was great about the old blog look, but the new look, once you scroll down and get to the comments section, it looks very bland. It's just black on white text, and it all starts to blur together.

I like it quite a lot overall - although maybe that's just because I'm something of a new-blog-widget junkie. Anyway, very sleek, very easy to navigate round, and much more in line with your modern blog format.

See, this is why after just one issue of the original grey Hulk they quickly changed him.

Not that I think the comments should have a lime-green background...

And it just lost a cool point for declaring me "anonymous."

What the...?
I go away for a few days and LOOK at the mess I come back to?

"been away so long I hardly knew the place, gee it's good to be back home..."

It's...different.
I don't like it, I don't hate it.

The old one DID have a "comforting" organic feel (as one other poster put it), while this does look very 21st century sleek.
Nothing overly god or bad about it yet.
Just need to get used to it all, I suppose.

The light grey background is so indistinguishable from white that it's rendered useless.
Perhaps a darker shade of grey?

Numbered posts had good points; it was easier to refer people to specific comments,
and bad points: people spouting "FIRST POST" (although, I don't really recall that going on here) and truthfully, they still could spout it if they are, indeed the first post, so the loss of numbering on the posts is a bad thing overall, imho.

Eh. the main CBR page is a bit "magazine" like now.
It took a little getting used to, but it's fine.

This could all be good with a few minor adjustments.

Now to see if I can call forth an avatar or something.

~P~
P-TOR

Hurm... just breezed around the other avenues of the site and the redesign is growing on me.

Hell, it's the 21st century. It might as well LOOK like it.
Now where the hell's my hovercar & personal jet-pack that I was promised way back when?

~P~
P-TOR

Too much gray/white so that everything is hard to read. Just adding a few contrasting areas like between comments, title headlines, and such will help out a lot.

Somebody may have already mentioned this, but why does the header, above your initial post, Brian, say "CBI Archive"? Shouldn't it be, I dunno, "CSBG"?

I just saw that, too, Ian.

Yeah, that'll be fixed.

As will a lot of these comments (especially numbered comments, I can assure you that that one will be fixed).

By the by, speaking of good new things, do note that you can now link to each individual comment! You didn't use to be able to do that!

Oh, from my standpoint, my blog traffic reader code was lost in the change, and I didn't notice at first, so when checking it last night, I thought, "Wow, today was a strangely slow day!" Hope that one gets fixed soon!

While it’s a fairly big change for us behind the scenes (we have to figure out a lot of new widgets)...

This is really my only issue with it. Trying to write the column will be a pain for a couple of weeks; I like to be able to see the image library I've loaded for that week as I am writing, and so far I haven't figured out how to do that. Jonah, is there a way to get some kind of hybrid version so we can at least have a similar input-field box? The one thing I really hate is having to open a new link to get at my images. Even with tabbed browsing it's an enormous pain in the ass. Or am I just doing it wrong? (This is ENTIRELY possible.)

As far as the look itself is concerned, I can live with it. Years of typestting and design for print have given me a slight prejudice against sans-serif fonts; I think fonts with serifs are easier to read, easier on the eyes, and a lot of those "cold" complaints would go away if we went with Times or Palatino or something. But that may just be me being an old guy again. (Seriously, though, there's a reason prose book publishers never use sans-serif fonts for the body of the text.)

The blog is cool, but I can't find anything on the main page!

Best,
Hunter (Pedro Bouça)

It looks fine. As long as the content keeps up its high level, the look doesn't matter much to me. It loads up a little faster; I used to have the white background not show up, so I had to highlight everything to read an article. It would be nice to get a sort of toolkit post. I don't know how to do anything; I would put in quotation marks or type a link and sometimes they would show up.

Oh, and "Publish" instead of "Submit Comment" makes me feel more important!

In terms of the CBR Site (Jonah are you listening?) my main complaint is that there really should be a section just for columns (like before)... I don't like the 'put a yellow box around the column and put it out in general population' approach at all. I like having all the CBR columnists in one handy place.

In terms of the blog, it's a big change but I don't think it's a bad one. My only qualm is that I would rather have the number of comments (and the link to the comments section) be at the bottom of the post, not to the side of the headline as it's somewhat counter-intuitive this way. Otherwise I'm down with it.

Change is good! Congratulations

Woa..this is different. Might take some time getting used to, but it's nice. Personally the gray background is too plain. Maybe a hint of CBR pattern or gradient might do the trick, which may also help the bottom page below.

I notice that there are four panels of 'Ads by Google'. Is that temporary placements? Or will there be a main section somewhere?

Overall keep up the great site!

IGNORE THIS POST
(just trying to get my darn avatar to fit and be readable)

Actually, after a day or two the new look has really grown on me.

I would suggest making names all be the same color. Links already appear to be underlined, so the differing colors feel redundant and a bit jarring.

Also, the section of the front page that list articles in this blog doesn't seem to be upgrading correctly.

Wow, the article titles randomly disappearing makes it so much easier to navigate. Even before I noticed that, I found the the front page of both this and CBR to be a lot less intuitive. But it's new, so if I don't like it I'm a troll who hates change.

I was a bit negative. At least you didn't find a way to make the site slower, as most arbitrary website makeovers tend to do.

So, I went to gravatar and made an account and avatar, but I can't figure out how to make it show up here. Can someone help out?

?

Okay, so that was easy. You just put your e-mail in after creating the avatar, and it does the rest of the work.

Well, the blog looks like the bastard child of Blogger and Wordpress, but isn't such a hard adjustment, aside from the chilly feel, but the main CBR page? Ohgodmyeyes!!! HORRIBLE. Cluttered, messy, inelegant, a fifteen dollar Hollywood hooker wearing spandex and neon.

My only complaint is that it isn't what I've grown accustomed to, which isn't any sort of complaint at all.

I genuinely like it! I did have a few silent complaints with the old design (mostly having to do with neglecting to move months or sometimes even years-old items or articles off the home page... doesn't exactly lend itself to feeling like an up-to-the-minute comics news source when you see ancient items lingering forever).

Change is good, it keeps things fresh and it conveys that you folks give a damn. A welcome treat to see this facelift.

I like it quite a bit. No getting used to required. Gonna have to take a longer look to see how the main page is organized though, admittedly. I likes it, I tells ya!

Very nice, both professional and visually appealing.

Meh. I've spent some time looking over both the sites. The negatives, while generally minor and trivial, do add up.

On CSBG: the titles keep disapearing, lack of numbered comments, and one that's hard to explain... the articles on the main page and the comments within the article seem... less seperate. I can't expalin it, they just seem to blend together in a way they didn't used to.

On CBR:The combo of visited links not changing color and the way the two big columns of articles go across, then down, but not on a clearly defined grid. Again, sorry for being so damn vague. I sometimes don't visit the site for days, and the links changing colors were exremely helpful for finding where I left off.

I know these are all minor, but they're still frustrating. Particularly since I've yet to see anything that stands out as a marked improvement. The best so far has been neutral change for the sake of change.

I really REALLY liked the blockquote speech balloon - just indenting, I could do that myself without typing html - and I hope it comes back. I thought it was very clever when I first saw it. Makes it look like we're talking about comics! Otherwise, I think it's fine. Easy on the eyes. I don't generally go to the CBR area so I don't know from good/bad.

Agreed, Lothor.

I hope we'll get it back ,as well.

Particularly since I’ve yet to see anything that stands out as a marked improvement.

The links in comments are now visible.
You can link to individual comments now.
You can find all posts by one author.

Those all are marked improvements over what we had before.

"For the folks who dug the old blog look, what, in particular, did you enjoy about the old blog look? What was special about it?"

There was art, there was color, there was spacing & numbers in between posts. There were bubbles and yellow thingies...

Oh, and when you quoted someone a cool word balloon would appear! That, I remember! 'Cause that cool!

This is kind of sterile. Like a medical blog.

I LOVE IT!!!!! GREAT...KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK GUYS!

Eh... I'm having a hard time getting used to it. Finding stuff in the Main Page was easy: the news were on the left side of the page, in descending order, and the columns were on the right, also in that order. Now it's all over the place!

And the new smilies look *dumb*. Sorry.

Meh. At no point had I even considered that not having those features was a problem, so they seem inconsequential compared to what was lost. Like being able to see the bloody article titles. Was there no way to add those in without turning the front page into a borderline unusable mess? If link colors are such a big deal, why were color changes for visited links removed over on CBR?

testing smilies & avatar.

SWEEEEEEEEET..........

What am I missing about the smilies that people are complaining about? They look the same as before.

I love the new look. It's clean, it's modern, and I think the home page is much better organized. Great work!

So do we log in to this thing now? I don't see any smilies or stuff:(

And I agree, it's all a bit sterile feeling.

The old site was easy to use. I could navigate around easily.

This one...man, it's SO cluttered. And what happens when video becomes a bigger part of the experience? Another interface change?

What was the goal? Encourage greater involvement by readers? Facilitate the addition of new types of content? Make it more like a _______ site? Or, more likely...increase the amount of time people spend on the site.

Let's use RSS feeds as an example. You designed the feeds from YOUR perspective, not the readers. If you had, you would have made it easy to subscribe to a Marvel feed, a Vertigo feed, etc...'cause that's what motivates fanboys. My guess is Marvel fans are far more likely to subscribe "Marvel Comics Previews" -- or even better, a "Secret Invasion Update" feed -- than a generic "CBR Previews" feed.

Think of it as signal-to-noise ... people want to get to THEIR stuff, as fast as possible. By putting so many roadblocks in place, we as readers are actually frustrated and I for one am less likely to spend time here.

The look of the site is GREATLY improved.
The old one has so much content that wasn't flagged, you were overwhelmed with content.
The look is very professional which is what I think people are being put off by. Its weird how people recognize that professional magazines look superior to fan zines yet fansites are loved by many and professional sites with a good use of color, typography and layout are panned.

weird.

The old set-up was easier to navigate, but this isn't too bad.

Testing my new avatar...oh, and jetjaguar, I think I agree with you. Thing is, though, this is the one Net arena in which 'retro' is an entirely beloved concept, and originality isn't far behind. Can't blame comics people for feeling a little out-of-place in the slick professional world.

I really think functionality should trump professionalism. Looking professional doesn't matter if the damn thing doesn't work. The old version worked, the new one doesn't. The end.

But no, I'm all ignorant and afraid of change for wanting the site not to be counter-intuitive and hard to navigate.

Like being able to see the bloody article titles.

The titles are there. Any inability to see them is most likely due to something with your browser. A lot of times, when changes are made, your browser's cache has the old stuff still saved in your cache/cookies, and it affects the display of the changes.

Burgas had the same issue - he couldn't see the titles at first, but now he can.

They ARE there.

I can see them, they just keep vanishing. They're still never visible when I first load up the page, I always have to scroll down and then back up to see them. It's nothing big, but little annoyances that weren't there before always leave a bad taste in my mouth.

CBR's front page looked clearer the last I checked, so I hope that it's not just because the various headlines happen to be the right length to stay on even rows. If they can just get the visited links to change color again I might be able to judge the redesign objectively instead of just declaring it "Ruined forever!!!!11" I know I'm being a whiny bitch, but you'll never convince me that takng away functionality I liked is a good design.

My complaint mostly IS with functionality. At least the backstage functionality. The image thing is driving me crazy... the page keeps telling me the picture I'm trying to add has "failed the loading criteria," then I look in the image library and there it is. All of this involves layers of java windows. It is slowing down the writing of the column considerably, which is why it's not up yet.

Grrmph. Couldn't we have changed the look "out front" and kept the backstage user stuff the same?

The hell of it is, if I was hotlinking to other site's images it would be no problem. But we're not supposed to do that.

Anyway, I'm taking a break to go to the computer store to address a DIFFERENT problem we're having. Technology hates me this week.

This has been today's Grumpy Old Man moment. *shakes cane*

(Don't tell Curran or I'll never hear the end of it, but I really do walk with a cane.)

Any inability to see them is most likely due to something with your browser. A lot of times, when changes are made, your browser’s cache has the old stuff still saved in your cache/cookies, and it affects the display of the changes.

It may be a browser issue, but it's not related to the cache. It's just wonky CSS code. Everything's rock solid for me in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox, but the layout is extremely unreliable in Internet Explorer 6. I see maybe 20% of the headlines -- the rest are there but invisible. Sometimes scrolling up and down will make them appear.

Agreed w/Hatcher. I haven't had "failed loading criteria" but it's a pain to load all the java windows, and the system for actually sticking the images in the posts is much less user friendly.

In terms of color and aesthetic value, I did like the old one better. This design seems to have less distinctive character to it.

I also think it's funny how few of the contributers have avatars.

That's the same error message I'm getting, Greg. I worked around it, but it took some time and was awfully annoying. I agree that the "backstage" stuff is a bit more complicated. But I do like the fact that we don't have to open a new window to add HTML code.

I keep meaning to get an avatar, Dan, but I haven't done it yet. I lose focus far too easily!

Yeah, the HTML stuff is easier, and I like the new widgets in our HTML window. (Although we could always just type HTML code into the regular non-Html windows. At least stuff like and .)

I worked around it, but it took some time and was awfully annoying.

Yeah, me too. I ended up using tabbed browsing instead of the javascript layers -- I really, really HATE trying to work with the images that way, you can't see what you're doing and the cursor's useless. So I opened the Add Media link in a new tab and went from there. I ended up loading the gallery and then bounced back and forth plugging the pictures in as I worked. Thankfully once I got back from the shop with the new computer I could at least see thumbnails on the gallery page. Not too different than the old method once I devised a work-around.

But it was, indeed, awfully annoying. Quite a bit slower than before. And you shouldn't have to try to out-think your snazzy new features to get them ALMOST as functional as the OLD ones.

Okay, done crabbing now.

BTW, here's what I'm seeing in Internet Explorer 6:

http://www.wittydomainname.net/me/images/photos/203.gif

Headlines appear only sporadically. (If I Page Down and then Page Up, I see them.) I get a Javascript error on every page about 'permission denied' with one of the banner ads. The entire right column is pushed to the bottom of the page, leaving a tremendous amount of empty white space.

Testing my gravatatornator.

Apparently I suck at this.