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Show HN: a web-based xkcd-style comix editor
- nvr219 14y agoAwesome! I love it. My favorite xkcd-inspired hack is still goatkcd[1] though. [1] NSFW http://goatkcd.com http://goatkcd.com : goatse parody
- astine 14y agoGoatse parody? That IS Goatse. Don't link to that!
- eranation 14y agoFeature request: if a link has NSFW and is being downvoted, please gray everything except the NSFW part (and translate it to those pure souls who don't even know what is NSFW) Or, disable the link automatically for highly downvoted comments Or at least make the link use the same color (Or a bit easier, if it has NSFW, just remove it automatically) Edit: yes, I agree, ignore the last one
- corin_ 14y ago> (Or a bit easier, if it has NSFW, just remove it automatically) Why? NSFW doesn't always mean it's not interesting content. It's perfectly possible for there to be interesting technical discussion which happens to be regarding adult content (be it pictures, or large swear words, etc.)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- corin_ 14y agoAt first glance I agreed with the downvoters, but... assuming this isn't updated manually, would be interested to see the code behind it, as it generates comic images which only replace the last frame with goatse. For example (and this is obviously NSWF and shows a goatse picture) http://goatkcd.com/strips/1170.jpg http://goatkcd.com/strips/1170.jpg
- nvr219 14y agoAt the risk of getting downvoted even more I will share with you that this is done automatically. The guy that made that site wrote a script that detects the last panel of an xkcd strip. I will see if I can get him to share more because it really is cool.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- richardwhiuk 14y agoWhen HackerNews change the colour of the text in a comment to gray, it really should fix change the link colour as well.
- xnxn 14y agoI love how downvoting backfires here and ends up visually emphasizing the link. Until the CSS is fixed you could do something like: http://eat-it-downvoters-you-cant-silence.me http://eat-it-downvoters-you-cant-silence.me
- Zirro 14y agoThis was my initial reaction as well. However, I then realised that being able to see where the link leads to (assuming it's not a redirect) may very well be of more importance. My suggestion on posts with as much downvotes as this one would be to remove the <a>-tags which, in addition to introducing the grey colour would also prevent unintended clicks and bring attention to the destination of the link as it requires copy-paste.
- iurisilvio 14y agoHN change the text color but not the link color. So, I can easily click the link but can't read the NSFW warning. :/
- zwegner 14y agoNot sure why you're getting downvoted so much, that's hilarious!
- nvr219 14y agoI really tried to be as clear as possible regarding the contents of the link, not sure how I could have made it clearer... maybe if I wrote "goatse/parody" instead of "goatse parody"? I think it's definitely relevant considering the technology behind it and the comic it's lampooning.
- zwegner 14y agoWhen I first clicked on it, all of the text besides the link was completely invisible, so I had no idea it was NSFW. I guess a lot of other people didn't realize that before they clicked on it at work.
- nvr219 14y agoHere is how the web site works btw, from the author: "it flattens the image to 1-bit colour depth then looks in the bottom right corner for a ┛ shape. if it finds one sufficiently big it follows the edges up and left as far as possible to find out how big the panel is"
- jonsherrard 14y agoBravo! How difficult was it making the characters posable?
- b_k 14y agoIt'd be cool if changes in visual editor would focus & highlight the changes in text and vice versa.
- jawns 14y agoWow, combine this with http://xkcdgraphs.com http://xkcdgraphs.com and you've got the ability to do a pretty good Randall Munroe impression!
- triplesec 14y agoexcept most people don't have his wit or intelligence, so prepare your filters!
- jff 14y agoWit? Intelligence? The phrase you're searching for is "shameless pandering".
- anigbrowl 14y agoI thought the Randall Munro personality came from the writing. Stick figures are not the hard part.
- DigitalJack 14y agobut they are the seasoning.
- artursapek 14y agoI love the scribbly cubic beziers you have going on for the speech bubbles. Moving around their control points makes them dance a little. Great stuff.
- shurcooL 14y agoReminds me of that part from Bret Victor's Inventing on Principle talk. Those who have seen it will know what I'm referring to.
- darkstar999 14y agoAw, snap! Crashes chrome 24.0.1312.57 on Ubuntu 12.10. I tried opening the console to get additional info, but it doesn't show anything.
- mercuryrising 14y agoThis is one of the coolest things about HN. There's a link there, and it crashes your browser. Instead of getting angry, you try to help the person whose creation crashed your browser.
- znowi 14y ago"STOP! WebKit is required here. The Comix Editor was tested under Chrome. It uses some webkit-specific tricks." WebKit - the new IE.
- lvh 14y agoStrange, I don't get that message in Firefox; also it appears to work fine, but maybe I'm missing out on some stuff :)
- Osmose 14y agoA warning is fine, but I just hate it when a site doesn't even let me try in another browser. I use Firefox Nightly, maybe it fixed the issues that are breaking your app? If you're detecting via user agent, what if I use an odd user agent? What if I want to look at the web console to see just what breaks in case I know what the issue is?
- ceejayoz 14y ago> I use Firefox Nightly, maybe it fixed the issues that are breaking your app? If it's using -webkit prefixed CSS, that's pretty unlikely. > What if I want to look at the web console to see just what breaks in case I know what the issue is? Anyone interested in doing that should be well aware of how to spoof a user agent.
- JoshTriplett 14y ago> If it's using -webkit prefixed CSS, that's pretty unlikely. Unsupported CSS features should not affect the functionality of a web app, only its appearance. Emphasis on "should"; far too many web apps end up fundamentally broken when this happens.
- dmbass 14y agoWell how do you expect it to work when the functionality is to change the appearance?
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- readme 14y agoCool. Take it a step further and make it so we don't have to edit the HTML/CSS code.
- ctruman 14y agobootstrap is everywhere
- eggbrain 14y agoHere's my problem. It works, fairly well. But I spent about 15 minutes doing one panel, trying to figure out the minor nuances. I kept thinking to myself "I could do a whole comic in about 5 minutes in photoshop" as I adjusted the person's location, arm, speech, etc (and that was just modifying the characters that were already in the scene). In the end it was just not worth it in my mind. Also, imagine creating something like Randalls "Click and Drag" comic (xkcd.com/1110/) -- how would you create all these custom objects in the editor without changing it into something similar to an HTML5 web-photoshop, at which point you might as well do that?
- dr_win 14y agoYes, this a prototype and definitely not for everyone. It has many downsides. I agree Photoshop gives you full pixel control. I think it has some upsides too. You may treat comix source as html code and apply tools we have for coding today, eg. diffs, version control, collaboration via github. People may also collaborate on library of items, actors and their poses, so you don't have to re-create them or copy&pase all the time. Also localisation will be a snap. And it will possibly allow animations in the future. Actually I built this for a bigger project. I want to explain Bitcoin technically in the form of XKCD comix. This won't be one-off comix strip. This will be something like wiki/book which will evolve and I hope it will attract other contributors (not necessarily graphic designers).
- eggbrain 14y agoI agree it has some great upsides. I love the idea of localization, and version control is nice to easily revert changes, etc. Having a scalable comic that can change text on the fly is something that I've been hoping for for a long time. But I think you're strongest element is the WYSIWYG editor, as most people aren't going to be coding from only the HTML view (unless they know what pose="-11,9|-5,117|-11,99" will look like in their heads). But the WYSIWIG interface is still pretty anemic, meaning I'm going to run into roadblocks faster (such as -- how do I create something like a tree? How can I add a hat to the man?).
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- tobinharris 14y agoIt's like http://yUML.me http://yUML.me, but better :) http://yuml.me/e5d8e14e http://yuml.me/e5d8e14e http://yuml.me/diagram/scruffy;/usecase/edit/[Bob]-(This%20is%20a%20shit%20comic),%20[Phil]-(Agree!) http://yuml.me/diagram/scruffy;/usecase/edit/[Bob]-(This%20i... T
- triplesec 14y agoBrilliant. But... now wait for a deluge of tenth-rate internet comics!
- olegbl 14y agoTo go along with it, making XKCD diagrams in Mathematica: http://blog.wolfram.com/2012/10/05/automating-xkcd-diagrams-transforming-serious-to-funny/ http://blog.wolfram.com/2012/10/05/automating-xkcd-diagrams-...
- jschuur 14y agoScience not included.
- 10098 14y agoBetter idea, draw the comic by hand in 5 minutes (I think everyone can draw stick figures), photo it, desaturate and add high contrast in gimp, voila. No webkit required :)
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y agoThis little comic I "created" some time ago is never going to be so relevant again so here it is [inmature humor ahead]: http://i.imgur.com/EnXc9e9.jpg http://i.imgur.com/EnXc9e9.jpg
- memset 14y agoThis is neat! Unfortunately, the editor does not work for me. It makes Chrome crash the page :( I'm running Chrome 24.0.1312.69 on one of those new Dell XPS 13 Ubuntu machines running 12.04.2 LTS. Is there any other information you'd want for debugging, or pages to try?
- davidrudder 14y agoThis is awesome! Okay,I agree with others that say that photoshop is easier, and that most people (ahem, like yours truly) would make crappy comics. But...c'mon...an xkcd editor?!?!?1!! hecka cool
- herdrick 14y agoThis is great, nice work!
- eksith 14y agoWhy do I also get a Windows Media Player extension warning? Surely, JS + CSS doesn't need WMP help?
- dominic_cocch 14y agoThis is fun, but for it be useful in production the control scheme would need to be made more GUI-like. Great start!
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- scott_s 14y agoIt has a WYSIWYG editor.
- dr_win 14y agoWait, there is WYSIWYG editor for tweaking "t" and "pose" attributes visually. Also quite frankly my target audience is myself (a developer). I think I can use this tool to write fine comixes without being an artist. xkcd-style helps to hide this inability pretty well :)
- Frozenlock 14y agoAny known issue with Chromium? I just get an error message saying that the page script was taking too much memory and was stopped.
- chewxy 14y agoSame here (Version 24.0.1312.56 Ubuntu 12.10 (24.0.1312.56-0ubuntu0.12.10.3))
- brokentone 14y agoDisappointed the top comments are criticizing and discussing the browser limitations. For a weekend project, this guy created a UI that deals intuitively deals with angles, bezier curves, dependent relations between objects, and turns it all into HTML, and you guys are that butt hurt it only works in Chrome?
- DenisM 14y agoYeah, it is rather odd to see people complaining that the first prototype of a project does not contain all the features from all of the future releases...
- mintplant 14y agoWhile I agree with your message, I don't think "butt hurt" is the most appropriate term you could have used here.
- brokentone 14y agoSure, while yes, these people don't actually seem "offended" as "butt hurt" would somewhat crudely imply, your need to assert such a pedantic issue is the very essence of my original point.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- hprx 14y agoMy thoughts exactly... http://cmx.io/#4942668 http://cmx.io/#4942668
- c3d 14y agoAlso works in Safari for all I can tell...
- freerobby 14y agoWish I could give you all of my karma for this comment.
- AlexDanger 14y agoI think its brilliant. I love the balance you've created between the visual editor and the markup. Have you considered this as an educational tool? This is a fun and useful introduction to HTML and markup languages in general. Would it be possible to highlight the relevant markup node when you've selected an object in the visual editor? That would be neat from a learning perspective.
- CletusTSJY 14y agoMarry me.
- Duhck 14y agoThis is awesome. Such a great idea!
- alemhnan 14y agoMan, this is amazing. Think about the endless possibilities. On top of that it will be possible to build a library of objects like: "NormalGuy", "Ninja", "Tree" and so on. Then it will be cool to programmatically move them. No Idea if that is feasible or not. Maybe not, but I will say otherwise. Then we could describe an environment in which they could act in a declarative way. We could add simple behaviours shaped on top of simple goals. Those goals could be described in a similar way as the environment. If we tie a behaviour to an animation we have small drones of "Ninja" that act on themselves (well..kind of). Or we could move those animation with the keyboard. I mean, at this point possibilities are just to be enumerated. At the end it will be like a DSL to describe animation and behaviour and environment. Like an engine for videogames, animation, even smart behaviour (not mentioning AI and similars) I don't know, I smell something really great behind that think that you built.
- DeepDuh 14y agoYour comment reads exactly like an xkcd comic. I wonder why this is..
- catshirt 14y agoforgive me if i've missed any sardonicism, but you might be interested in learning you are describing Flash in thorough detail.
- alemhnan 14y agoahahah, yep you are actually right. A big difference, probably the only important one, is that you could read, and modify, the source using the same medium (the browser). So the gap for people to play with that is almost zero. This is probably one of the forces that have allowed the Internet to become what it is today.
- dangoor 14y agoThis is really neat. It would be cool to combine it with one of the JS-based presentation engines.
- dr_win 14y agoYep, that was actually my original plan. I wanted to make slides explaining some Bitcoin concepts, but I wasn't able to draw a comics. This actually started as a small hack on top of impress.js :) Hey K., do you remember? You interviewed me back in 2009 for a Bespin position :-) The world is pretty small. Hope you are doing well.
- bobbaddeley 14y agoWell done! That's really impressive work.
- fsniper 14y agoAnd now, someone should create an AI capable of mimicking XKCD humor, and viola! Automated xkcd!
- gioele 14y agoThe source shows quite clearly why the HTML community needs try to address the adoption of namespaces in HTML5 ASAP, maybe not in the current form but in some simplified form. I feel uncomfortable with the use of non-namespaced tags and squatting on common terms. For example, cmx.io uses tags like <scene>, <label>, <drawing> and so on. I really would prefer it used something like <cmx:scene> or <c:scene>, so that it would be possible to mix CMX tags with other libraries that use similar tag names.
- tanepiper 14y agoStick some IRC behind this and instant Comic Chat!
- dr_win 14y agoGood news. Comix Editor will work on Opera soon. And without my work :-) http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/300-million-users-and-move-to-webkit http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/300-million-users-and-move-to-...
- joppe 14y agoChans of chans 999999999999kr
- JohnLBevan 14y agoGreat project - really easy to use and works well. As other comments have said there's tonnes of potential / additional functionality which could be added, but this is a great start. For anyone interested, here's my play: http://cmx.io/#4949114 http://cmx.io/#4949114
- dr_win 14y agoYou made my day :) It reminds me I have to build some feed with published comics :)
- JohnLBevan 14y agoThanks, you made mine too - it's rare that I can find a library which I can create something with within an hour of coming across it, and this is also my first contribution to the world of memes, so chuffed that I got to do it using such a great utility. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with next.
- JohnLBevan 14y ago(code now updated to include animation)
- dr_win 14y agoHey folks, thanks for all your great comments and watch out for v0.2 :)