More errors fixed

There were some pretty bad formatting errors in my...page on formatting. Turns beet red.

I need to review the documentation to make sure it's caught up with the last of the changes I made. I swear, it seems like the documentation is more work than the script itself was!

Posted 1 Feb 2009 | 8:58 pm | View Comments

Feedback welcome

I'll post an open thread every once in a while. I like to hear what's going on.

I especially want to hear if you're having any trouble getting Kipper to work for you. I was pleased with an early 5 out of 5 rating at our HotScripts listing, but later someone voted 1, the lowest rating. A 2 would be a plausible "it sucks" vote, but the lowest possible rating and I've got to figure somebody couldn't even figure out how to get it to work in the first place. :D

My internet time is very limited, but when I am online I want to make myself available to help. Don't be shy!

Posted 1 Feb 2009 | 8:58 pm | View Comments

Kipper template foundry

Oops! I corrected a few errors in the recent templates I posted. Nothing serious.

But while working on the first four, I developed a good routine. There is now a real-life Kipper template foundry. It's a special folder on my desktop called "foundry".

This Kipper template foundry is a pretty good example of one variation of use for Kipper. I made a job file called "template-foundry" that is permanently set to that folder. It expects, every time, that the template is called "template.html", regardless of the name of the other files. And the site name is set to "Kipper template foundry", so that it will appear in the top bar of every display page.

This folder is kept empty, so that when I have completed a new template, or if I need to make a slight correction to a template, I can just switch the contents of the template's base folder into the "foundry" just long enough to forge the display page.

One click of Kipper.

Then all I have to do is drop everything back where it belongs, and make the ZIP file. For the template files, I don't bother with Kipper's upload functions. Since I have to upload the ZIP file anyway , along with multiple images and other files, I FTP what I need with a separate client.

Kipper doesn't yet have (and I'm not sure it should have) a file manager for uploading files outside of its current mission (making pages). Enough extra files, and it seems like it's just as well to open that FTP client. I'm not sure if I see a good reason to have Kipper emulate a full FTP client to that degree.

I could maybe see something that uploads images to just a set relative image folder, but then that seems too limiting.

The answer will probably come out of ongoing usage and feedback.

Posted 1 Feb 2009 | 8:58 pm | View Comments

Three-column templates

Trilateral and Trilateral Luddite: two more extremely simple Kipper-ready templates, showing how easy three columns can be with plain old table tags or advanced CSS styling.

Posted 31 Jan 2009 | 8:58 pm | View Comments

Kipper templates

Why don't I make some prefab templates for Kipper? Hm? Huh? Eh? Huh? Hm?

Well, OK then!

Here's the first one: Plain Jane, a very simple template that should make it easy to see how Kipper works.

And another: Button Nose, a simple template that shows how to make graphic navigation buttons using CSS.

I speak from experience when I say that using CSS is better than plain image tags for this purpose (even if the CSS intimidates you a little, at first). One day, after you've accumulated hundreds and hundreds of webcomic pages, you'll want to redesign your site. Using CSS, you can wildly re-arrange your navigation buttons by editing just the one stylesheet document, without having to rebuild entire archives.

For those who care about such things, both templates validate with W3C's markup validation service. The CSS, too.

Posted 29 Jan 2009 | 8:57 pm | View Comments