The migration of Monkey Law

By Brad | Published: January 24, 2013

To see how stripShow 3 does in the wild, I’ve upgraded my hoary old webcomic Monkey Law to stripShow 3.0a3!

What did I find? Not too much in the way of problems.

  • My theme had a width set on one of the sidebars that got broken by something in stripShow Sandbox. I removed it.
  • There is a bug in 3.0a3 which, instead of choosing between the template files single-comic.php and single.php, shows them both. That turned out to be, embarrassingly enough, a missing else clause. Oops.
  • stripShow’s calendar widget doesn’t work. Well, duh, of course it doesn’t, when dealing with custom post types. I’ll be working on that in the coming days. Best look at the storyline dropdown too.

I’ll be adding features to Monkey Law, to showcase features in stripShow 3 — like cataloguing where each character appears and giving them their own page. Stay tuned for details.

Posted in Development Blog | 3 Responses

stripShow development resumes!

By Brad | Published: January 23, 2013

I have decided, based on user responses, not to let stripShow die! I’m currently fumbling my way around the code that makes up the project — some of which is ten years old — to regain my bearings.

I have done a little bug fixing lately, including making stripShow work with posts marked “private” — I hadn’t considered that option, and there are probably a lot more things I haven’t considered.

So here is a new 3.0 alpha! I really do need feedback from people! If you install the alpha, let me know any issues or concerns, in the forum.

stripShow 3.0 alpha 3

Posted in Announcements, Development Blog | 1 Response

Is stripShow dead?

By Brad | Published: August 8, 2012

I know it’s a provocative title, and a question that any stripShow user would be justified in asking. After all, it’s been years since the last version was released. This is of course all my fault; I have not had time or inclination in the past few months to devote any effort to stripShow at all. For one thing, I am no longer a webcomics creator, and without that impetus driving new features, it’s hard to drum up any enthusiasm for updating the software. For another, I have new hobbies which consume almost all of my time.

In addition, I note that ComicPress now has a companion app, Comic Easel, which appears to do basically the same thing as AutoComic: allows it to be used with any theme. I’m wondering if this new functionality has rendered stripShow moot.

So what do you think? If you still use stripShow, what is it about it that makes you choose it over ComicPress? I’m in the process of making a decision about whether to continue stripShow development and I would very much like to know what people think.

Posted in Development Blog | 11 Responses

Current state of stripShow

By Brad | Published: May 6, 2011

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to let you know what’s going on with stripShow at the moment. I know it’s been a while, and 3.0 is way overdue. I’ve been very busy and have not had a lot of time to work on it. However, the project is not dead. 3.0 is almost ready, and as soon as I get a few things (mostly related to various upgrade scenarios people might have) set, I can post a beta.

Thank you for your patience.

Posted in Announcements | 8 Responses

New arrow sets

By Brad | Published: March 1, 2011

stripShow user Phillip Wright has created a few new sets of arrows for AutoComic, and has been good enough to share them with us.

Each set is in several different colors to match your design. Check ‘em out! If you wish to use them, they go in wp-content/plugins/stripshow/iconsets.

Posted in Theming | Leave a comment

Recent releases of stripShow

By Brad | Published: October 6, 2010

Just a quick note to update you on some recent minor releases to stripShow:

2.5.1

I was made aware of an issue which prevented AutoComic from being used on non-English sites. The tooltips that appear when you mouse over the navigation arrows couldn’t use non-Western characters. So that left out, oh, most of the world. Thanks to webdemin, a Greek stripShow user, I was able to modify the code to allow these tooltips to use UTF-8 characters.

2.5.2

Not a bug fix, but a minor new feature. Another user requested the ability to, in AutoComic, choose whether to place the navigation buttons above or below the comic (or both). I have added this feature.

Meanwhile, stripShow keeps motoring towards 3.0, which will mark a major change. WordPress 3′s support for custom post types means that comics no longer need to be blog posts in a special category, they can be their own unique thing. This is admittedly an obvious idea, and I know that ComicPress 3 will do the same thing. Some features just slap you in the face. I’m also working in features to make AutoComic more flexible.

In the meantime, speaking of AutoComic, I’m always looking for new arrow sets. The ones that ship with stripShow (you can find them in your iconsets/ folder) were made by me, and if there’s one thing I’m not, it’s a designer. If anyone has created a set of icons for AutoComic, please feel free to let me know!

Posted in Announcements | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Responses

stripShow Wiki

By Brad | Published: August 5, 2010

I’ve created a brand new wiki to serve as stripShow’s documentation. I figured a PDF file simply isn’t the best way to document such a robust and changing piece of software. Plus, there’s the fact that all of you get to help! I know I’m not the best writer of documentation. Maybe someone out there can explain things better than I can. Feel free to do so!

Right now I’m working on getting all the stuff that’s in the manual up on the wiki. From there, I’ll start adding new explanations and how-tos.

The address of the wiki is stripshow.wikia.com.

Posted in Announcements | Leave a comment

stripShow 2.5 Released!

By Brad | Published: July 23, 2010

I’m pleased to announce the release of version 2.5 of stripShow, the all-in-one webcomics solution for WordPress!

Version 2.5 features AutoComic, allowing webcomics creators to use virtually any WordPress theme, not just themes designed specifically for webcomics. Thanks to the magic of JavaScript, you can mix comics with your regular blog and still take advantage of stripShow’s features such as searchable transcripts and storylines.

Also new in 2.5 is a handy interface to add comics directly from WordPress’s Add Post page. No longer do comics have to be added from a separate page.

The default stripShow template theme, stripShow Sandbox, has gotten a bit of a facelift as well, but don’t worry. These changes are confined to a separate file, so they won’t affect existing child themes that don’t import that file.

Posted in Announcements | 4 Responses

2.5 beta 1 and AutoComic

By Brad | Published: February 12, 2010

So I’ve released a beta of 2.5 — don’t install it on a production server, all the usual beta warnings, etc.

One feature that I’m excited about in 2.5, that I didn’t mention in the previous post, is called “AutoComic,” and I thought I’d take a moment to share a little information about it.

One of the most common questions I get on the forums is “Can you make stripShow support the _____ theme?” Well, the answer was always no. Not without editing the theme, anyway, to add stripShow functions (like show_comic()). The plugin can’t really do much about a theme that hasn’t been written for it.

Until now.

Enter AutoComic: Now, with the flick of a switch, stripShow can show a comic and navigation bar on nearly any theme. Thanks to the magic of JavaScript, you don’t even need to edit the theme files. All you need to know is where to put your comic on the page.

Say for instance, I am using the Constructor theme. I’d like to host a webcomic on this site, but don’t know enough about theme editing to get started. stripShow has me covered.

Here’s my site before AutoComic:

As you can see, no comic anywhere. But I can see, in the source, exactly where I want my comic to go — it’s below the header, which is a div element with the id “header.”

So I go to my WordPress admin page, and turn on AutoComic. I tell it to put the comic below the header element, and voila:

Now there’s a comic. Also some navigation arrows. Also, though you can’t tell in this screenshot, a complete widget-aware sidebar. Isn’t that cool?

Obviously, this is intended as a quick, get-up-and-running feature. Nothing beats customizing your themes yourself. But stripShow 2.5 aims to make it all easy. Go download the beta, try it out for yourself!

Posted in Announcements | 4 Responses

What I’m working on for 2.5

By Brad | Published: January 27, 2010

Hi, everyone. stripShow 2.5 is nearing completion, and I thought I’d update you on what I’m working on. These are some new features:

  • The Add Comics page is going away. This is a part of my ongoing project to integrate more tightly with WordPress. Now, you can set comic options, upload comics, etc., from the Add Post page that WordPress provides.
  • The Bulk Import and Bulk Upload pages have been merged into a kind of file manager, where you can see what you’re importing.
  • Now you will be able to specify what characters appear in each comic. This is thanks to WordPress 2.8′s support for custom taxonomies. There will be new template tags and an archive page to support characters. These will behave just like tags, complete with auto-suggestion and clouds.
  • I’ve rewritten all the widgets for use with WordPress 2.8 — now they’re all multiwidgets, meaning you can use as many of each one as you’d like on the same page.
  • Admin interface enhancements — thumbnails and characters will now appear in the Edit list, and you can specify your characters using the Quick Editor.
  • Option to move to next comic by clicking on the comic itself.
  • Tighter integration with WordPress’s built-in functions. Now all my custom MySQL queries are gone, and WordPress is used for everything. This makes stripShow compatible with plugins that might modify the WordPress query, like Role Scoper.
  • A few edits to stripShow Sandbox — more customization options are moving into the stripShow Sandbox Options page.
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