Improving the Archive Interface

[chimera]

I was just going over the archive and it reminded me that the current interface can get a little painful when browsing through a hundred or so comics. I don't know how good you guys are at coding, when you get a chance could you make it so the pictures work as forward links and set the site up so the forward and back arrows on a keyboard do the same for the comic? Looking at your code the first change should be simple enough. Currently images are placed into links that go to the image itself. If you replaced these links with one going to the next page it would make browsing the archive a lot easier. I suspect that all of this is being taken care of with PHP or something else on the server. As for using the forward and back arrows this can be taken care of with a bit of javascript. Here's a sample of the code that you would need to get this working:

<script type="text/javascript">
function go(e) {
if(!e) var e = window.event;

if(e.keyCode==37){ //left arrow
document.location="photo.php?id=3"; //go to previous photo
}
else if(e.keyCode==39){ //right arrow
document.location="photo.php?id=5"; //go to next photo

}
}
document.onkeydown = go
</script>

[harknell]

Hi, those are interesting feature requests. Unfortunately in both cases we probably won't be able to add them, at least not yet. In the first case (the forward click) this doesn't work with the hi-res archive (which only tools get to see) because you need to actually click the image to see the hi-res version. So the behavior wouldn't be consistent for advancing the archive in that case. Since the archives use the same underlying system they'd both (currently) need to work the same. The second feature (Javascript key mapping) I'm also hesitant to add since we may add other features to the site that can have that functionality, and I don't want conflicts to pop up (we may be adding audio/video). I prefer to leave the javascript at a minimum if possible.

Of course we're always re-evaluating things and may actually add this stuff in at some point, so we are glad for this feedback.

[chimera]

Ah, I can see how the need for tools to view high res would stop that, and trust me I understand your hesitation to add any key mapping. It's dangerous for any programmer to add code that they aren't comfortable or familiar with on a production site, and with future features on the way it's even more important to plan these things out. Let us never forget our six P's: Proper planning prevents piss poor performance.