Hey everyone!
Sorry for the silence! I’ve been busily looking for better ways to put up “Dick and Jane” and other readers/comics. No results so far.
The way Dick and Jane works right now, is that you have one large image file (made up of like 40 smaller image files) per episode.
The problem is that it takes a few seconds to load on a broadband connection, and perhaps longer on dial-up.
If you any suggestions for a better user interface/look-and-feel in general for it, please let me know. Also if you know any good webcomic/image management systems that work with WordPress, do let me know.
Either way, feel free to leave a comment, or send an email to
khatzumoto at alljapaneseallthetime dot com.
Katsumoto-san! I love Dick and Jane! The comics are cute and the incremental reading technique is valuable. I do notice a sizeable delay in loading the page (I have dial-up). I feel like it is worth the wait, but if you could make it faster, without losing the cute comics, that’s good. It’s not enough of a bother to me to justify ditching or drastically reducing the comic content. Thanks for sharing!
Couldn’t it be organized like before? The main post would have just a lead, and then a link to read the rest?
Well, I have broadband, but this would better organize the blog view, which is how I view the site. But anyway, having the stories is better than not having them.
Dick and Jane are great, glad they’re coming back.
LIke Andrei said, it seems that having a link to the whole comic would be best, that way if you’ve already read a particular episode you can skip loading it.
My idea depends greatly on the software you’re using for making these images. If you’re using Adobe Photoshop, then you can always “Save for Web” and adjust the quality of the images and file type to get the best results with low load times.
If you don’t have Photoshop then I do have one other suggestion. It may involve a little bit more work on your behalf, but will probably give a better overall experience. I don’t about WordPress’ capabilities as far as allowing you to enter in JavaScript or HTML into your posts, but if that’s possible then LightBox2 might be of assistance. What I suggest to use it to make your comic’s pages as individual images, and make matching thumbnails. (The thumbnails are not required, it just looks good.) Anyway, you can use the LightBox2 script to string your pages together, and users can click on the page they want to read and the script loads a box that darkens the current page and brings up a box that has the comic page (image) in it. If they are stringed together, then users have the option of just moving their mouse pointer to the left or right and clicking to “flip the page.”
I use this on my website (which is a failed attempt at a web portfolio). Here: sleepyday.craptastic.net/portfolio.htm
And, the link to the script’s website is here:
www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/
I hope this has been of some help. Even though I’m still in the Kanji phase of AJATT, I do enjoy testing my knowledge of the Kanji by reading these small stories.
And, as I’m finishing up this post, I do recall seeing LightBox2 being used in a WordPress blog/portfolio website before. So I think that might work out.
One thing, you may have to do, is upload your comics to an image host. But that’s only if you can’t upload the images to your web server (which I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to, but just in case).
I hope this helps a little. And I do apologize for giving you English sites. 🙁
Hi Khazumoto, I love your site. It has been a big help for me in learning Japanese and influencing my thoughts on how I (try to) teach my students English. I work as a university English teacher in Japan. Anyway, I like your Dick and Jane story approach but what I would like to do, or see done, is to have an interactive story where the learner is asked an easy “Yes” or “No” question and can respond by typing or clicking the right answer. I imagined a scene and questions about it that the learner can answer. For example, There is a picture of a cat with no fur and it is cold outside. The learner can hear an explanation of the scene in the target language. Then there are easy audio questions or questions on the screen – Is this a cat? (learner types, clicks or says yes and gets feedback to let them know if the answer was correct) Is this cow (no)? Is the cat cold? (yes) Does the cat have fur? (no). For words the student might not know – like fur – there could be a word list somewhere on the screen with definitions to refer to in the L1. As long as the learner can follow the progression of scenes that make up a story and generally answer the questions then I think it can help someone learn a language. The input is comprehensible and it is hopefully interesting. I like how the Rosetta Stone software has a simple -click the picture – answering system but I thought it should be in a story sequence because people tend to remember things better in stories. So, I would like to put some kind of software like this together myself but I don’t know how! I learned that you created your own SRS software so I thought you might have some ideas about this idea or be able to use this idea (somehow?) for your Dick and Jane series.