I’ve been really looking forward for the release of this infinite canvas comic. Five Ways to Love a Cockroach is a comic written by Alexander Danner and illustrated by Neal Von Flue. ”

- Five Ways to Love a Cockroach

It seems that Ryan Estrada has found some time after his 168 175 hour comic week. He rebuilded and rereleased his older Infinite Canvas comics using the new Flash Viewer.

- The Z Story by Ryan Estrada
- Apron Iyagi by Ryan Estrada

I guess we are at the beginning of a great week. Neal Von Flue just released Halcyon Redux - Last Ditch a revamp of The Halcyon Years Part 17 - “Last Ditch”. He is making great use of the new “Hot Spot Hint” and you definitely should take a look at it.

I would also like to thank Scott McCloud for finding such kind words about my application on his blog. Thank you!

But as I said we are only just at the beginning of this week. Neal Von Flue and Alexander Danner are planning to release their collaboration Five Ways to Love a Cockroach later this week and I’m really looking forward to the release of their project.

Update: I guess I mixed something up. Five Ways to Love a Cockroach will be released next week and not this week.

I just uploaded the new Infinite Canvas Version. The most important update is the new movement class which resolves the flickering problem. The updated viewer also features the improved “Hot Spot Hint” I mentioned in my last post.

InfiniteCanvas Version 1.3.1
(1.4MB, 08/07/2005)

The current implementation of the Hot Spot Hint is somewhat problematic. When moved over an hot spot, the cursor changes to a a finger curser. This leads to line scanning when the readers want to find an hot spot in a branched comic.

With the help of Neal Von Flue I was able to improve hot spot hinting. In the upcoming version a rectangle will appear over the hot spot when the user moves the cursor. This rectangle has a black border and is filled with a semitransparent white. The rectangle will disappear when the user stops moving the mouse. You can see an example in the picture.

I hope you like this new feature. It will be available in version 1.3.1 which may be released this weekend.

Neal Von Flue converted parts of his last Halcyon “comic” to use InfiniteCanvas. You can find the result on his blog. Please take a look at it and let him know what you think. He will be using InfiniteCanvas for is upcoming project “Five Ways to Love a Cockroach”, a collaboration with Alexander Danner.

- Infinite Canvas testing

I just moved my blog/website over to Wordpress. If you are using a news aggregator (like NetNewsWire on the Mac), please note that the URL of the RSS feed changed.