Same Bug, New Look
Howdy all!
As you can see, I’ve made a few changes to the site. And by “I’ve” I mean “other people I’ve paid who know way more than I do.” You can thank Joel Duggan (from the wonderful webcomic Starcrossed) and his buddy Ryan for helping me out.
I’ve been sick of how my site looks for a while now, and decided it was high time I finally cleaned house. I also wanted to make my site more mobile-friendly because looking at my old site on my iPhone always made me feel like I was looking at a website from 1997.
As some of you might have noticed – there are no longer any ads! To be honest, I was just as sick of ’em as you guys probably were. So foosh! Out they went. Instead, I’d much rather be a reader-supported webcartoonist through things like Patreon.
There will be some fine-tuning to the site throughout the next week or two (need to get the Bug Martini title back on there), so lemme know if something really bothers you about the layout. Not saying I’ll necessarily make the change, but I will definitely consider it.
For now: enjoy the ad-free shenanigans!
The comic still looks small on smartphones, but now you can’t zoom! I’m using Android. cheers!
That’s exactly my point too. I’m thinking about getting a magnifier to read the strip.
And now I noticed the edit box layout is grey on grey. How am I supposed to see what I’m typing?
I just noticed the same problem on my iPad – I cannot zoom in any more. That is not good. My eyesight is not pefect any more and so I need to be able to zoom in to read it!
Another problem: This input field is grey text on light grey background in my iPad. Very hard to read!
The text is a little too big for me. Other than that, nice redesign job
Like the design but the comic became unreadable on my mobile. Cant zoom in anymore. 🙁
Can you please put the Random button back? I like to remenisce on old comics 🙂
it unfortunately does mot seem to.work very well on mobile. The comic is unreadably small (while the nav buttons are comically large) and I cannot zoom in (biggest problem).
It looks a bit sterile and empty to me. Can we have some bugs lurking around?
Also, I prefer Disqus comments, although I am well aware that some people do not. Maybe a poll would help, if you’d be interested in changing the comments system.
Put me in the “No” category for Discus.
There’s a 80/20 change Discus will crash and/or freeze up my computer.
It sucks when news sites use them because I can see that 400+ people commented, but, “sorry, now you have to close your browser because Discus has crashed. Would you like to send a report?”
Put me in the no-on-Disqus category. I utterly loathe that service. It’s buggy, it wants you to log in to use it instead of just providing a name and what-not, and it keeps ruining the comments sections of otherwise fantastic comics.
+1 for the bugs lurking around!
And congrats for the removal of ads!
I also have the impression that the comic is smaller than everything else in the page, or that everything except the comic is too big, which might be truer as I had to “ctr -” twice to get not-gigantic fonts. (https://postimg.org/image/og734beqv/ to see what it looks like on my browser)
Awesome! Yay no more ads! Congrats, Adam!
Thank you all so much for the feedback! I’m going to talk to the guys about bringing back the ability to zoom in on the comic and the Random button.
On’t forget the grey on grey text in the comment entry form.
Thanks! That was also thrown on the pile of changes.
Is the lack of a logo intentional?
Also: The comment text box is light gray text on a slightly lighter gray background (using Firefox desktop). I had to type this in Notepad and copy/paste because I couldn’t see what I was typing.
Everything aside from the comic looks really, really big on desktop (zooming out two or three settings does get it all down to where I’d expect it). The top navigation is unsettlingly off center, but I assume the logo will balance it when it’s back.
Especially with everything so large and off-center, the Privacy Policy link at the top seems out of place. You usually see those in the boilerplate in the page footers rather than headers. I can’t recall ever seeing a privacy policy on the same level with the About and Archive links.
Also I was doing maintenance on my comics lists and wanted to check to make sure I had your schedule right, but while the top navigation’s archive link goes to a list of previous comments correctly, the Archive box in the sidebar with the drop-down menu, which I saw first, is only blog posts, at least for the last two months.
The nav bar looks a lot better today. I think what changed was the right edge of the header now lines up with the edge of the canvas the comic sits in, but I don’t have a grab from yesterday to compare to.
I really miss the random button. I like coming on here and just hitting random a few times and just reading old comics again.
Thanks bro. Keep up the good work
It’s good but I can’t zoom in on the comics on my iPhone now.
I’ll note my minor “agh it changed and change is bad” nipicks, sure.
First thing I noticed, before anything else, is I now have to scroll down to see the little text post accompanying the comic and click to access the comments, whereas I did not before. Minor annoyance, but it’s always unfortunate when upgrades remove convenience.
Appearance-wise, the text is a bit large for my tastes and the colors are too bright for my delicate nerdy complexion.
Aside from that, it all looks good! Congrats on the new, mobile-friendly site!
Thanks! We’re still gonna make changes based on feedback and my own concerns. It’ll get better, trust me.
Disadvantages:
– The comic is too small
– The fonts are too big
– The little story/ background information you give along with the strip isn’t next to the strip anymore
– I have to click “blog” first and then click on “comments” before I can share my opinion
– This edit box color scheme leaves room for improvement
– This edit box can’t scroll, no idea if I’m giving the same point twice
– In the comments section the avatar pictures overlap the comments
Advantages:
– to me? None.
Sorry to say that Adam, but I liked the old layout better.
And this was written on an android phone.
All things Kai said, especially the font/strip size relation sucks, and the grey-on-grey the edit box is a catastrophy. Please change.
Haven’t tried the mobile version yet, but on the desktop it looks great. Much cleaner than the previous website. Even if there’s still a few things to fix, good job. Keep up the good Bug 🙂
Thanks!
Where’s the “random comic” button?
Minor complaint: the comments, when they appear in a string, are pushed way over to the right on mobile. It’s not really a problem until there are multiple replies, at which point there’s about one word per line, and it’s quite obnoxious to read through.
I miss the logo!