Building on 20010.1 :

1. The footer CSS has been Mostly Fixed. It works "right" in Firefox, Chrome and IE, and it's slightly goofy in Safari. I'll hopefully get this fixed soon - in the interim it's Good Enough. Getting things Exactly Right will involve changing template HTML and new CSS across the entire site, so for the time being.... good enough.

2. While cleaning that up, I think I've found the last of the /NaN-throwers. Time will tell!

3. The biggest change isn't the footer, it's the "removal" of page metadata from all three books. It's still there, mind you - I've forked The Words off into a separate template stream and may eventually either re-integrate them or make them easily accessible to the casual reader. I haven't (technically) deleted or changed the metadata, just made it harder to get to.

The thought occurred to me while injecting the strip and original page metadata for Whitehouse and the first four pages of The Operative - I realized - with a sudden, rare clarity - that the VAST majority of page metadata is formatting notes, alteration notes, and emo. Lots and lots of emo. Given the signal to noise ratio, I began to feel strongly that a majority of the metadata actually detracts from the story - there's a lot of emphasis on what the story was and the struggle to shape it into what it is, as opposed to fresh, relevant commentary on the story, the artwork, the dialogue. Lots of links to old websites, to boot. Cleaning up four hundred pages is one thing - auditing four hundred essays? No. The chapter synopses? Yeah, gotta get to those. Show some pride, etc.

I've retained the metadata for the top page of the site for consistency and relevance, I can bring it back at any time... or I can, eventually, cross-link the two archives and keep an eye on analytics. For the time being, the metadata's been swept under the rug. End of.

There's more site work - and comic work - to be done. Before that can happen, I have a lot of work to do on other web projects. Once the present urgency has subsided, I'll revisit the ATC structure and proceed from there, with fresh eyes and a clear mind.

20110820 : All metadata has been audited and put back online.

Removed the comment logic from the comics - it will be trivial to add it back in at a later date, which I may do when DCR.3 begins production. After some meditation on the subject, it makes sense (given traffic volume) to whack out a chunk of markup that's going largely unused.

So. It was there, it isn't now, and it can be again. You can still comment on blog entries - that's unlikely to change!

Comic pages seem to load a hair faster now, at least to my eye. There should be some additional speed improvements when/if the comic templates are forked into "browse" and "blurb" streams, or if the metadata is "mothballed" entirely.

All of the missing DCR metadata has been added - an exercise in data management that's given me focus and kept me sane for the past couple of hours. That's the last bit of "paperwork" for the reworked books. There's still a lot of work to do on the Universe, but as far as DCR, The Dualist and Transitional Voices go, well.... there's nothing left to do but MOVE FORWARD! *

Happy holidays, etc.

The next step? Well, I'm thinking about making the blurbs less intrusive. Either a CSS-based "flipper" sort of thing, or fiddling with templates and "forking" the comic into two display versions - one that's Just Pages and one that's Pages With Blurbs. That's the horns of the dilemma - there's a hell of a lot of emo I'd love to eject, but the blurbs are also a production bible and blog of sorts - something I'd like to keep, but something I'd also like to sweep out of casual view. "Forking" the metadata into a separate page stream will be interesting for analytics, and in that respect it's certainly worth trying. I'll figure out what I'm going to do with that eventually - in the meantime, I need to figure out what I'm doing with the DCR website. That's been a "priority" since late 2009 - put off until DCR.2 was completed, then put off some more while the DCR.3 script was hashed out and finalized.

Inertia. Gotta size that up and ambush the hell out of it in a dark alley - there's a lot of little, easy things I can do with the site to help push things forward. At this point it's largely a matter of figuring out how to put myself in a position where that impulse - that type of work - comes naturally.

That said, pulling the comment logic and "extended" entry bits from the comic pages would be fairly trivial - adding a template "fork" would be a bit more work. My initial tests are looking good, though there's a CSS issue to sort and the question of which template the front page writeout will "grab." Work will be progressed or completed when the Web Ninjas are available, after the holiday.

* Oh, and the book and chapter synopses. Still gotta do those... but I don't associate a summary paragraph with page production, which is what I'm referring to above - all the pages have been combed over, all the associated metadata has been filed appropriately, everything's been rewritten once or twice (or three or four times).... page-wise, it's all good to go. Finally. :D

Getting work done on the Universe has always been a big blind spot - a low priority, something I don't feel is viable without at least a "top ten" of readership WHAT THE HELL IS ________ to work from. At this point the vocal readership is split evenly into three camps - those who like the comic just fine, those who roll their eyes every time I mention it, and those who yell "IT'S CONFUSING!". I need to hear from the latter, in detail.

RSS seems to work, FSVO "work." It's not something I use, it seems to do the intended job ("Hey, there's an update!") in the various apps I have on hand, and any further under-the-hood time would probably best be spent on Tags - which aren't something I have much of a need for at the moment. Eventually, probably - right now, not so much.

Chapter and Book writeups I'm going to need to do soonish - the present shape is barely useful to me. I can't imagine how useless the writeups are to a new reader, or a reader with a hazy memory of what happened in what chapter. I like the production information, but a synopsis isn't production details. It's a solicitation, a back-of-the-box blurb, an enticement. That, I can get behind.

So with the exception of chapter writeups, I'm scrapping the previous Q4 TDL and creating a new one - one that consists of that, and one other thing - DCR metadata.

"What?," I hear you not ask!

Simple - Whitehouse -1- through The Operative -4- have strip blurbs. They're on the strip site. A site that I'm going to re-task the hell out of in 2011 - a re-tasking that will in all likelihood be an effective re-formatting. The metadata will be moved here for preservation, though the original strips probably won't. Given the nature of DCR chapter one version one and the original version of the first four pages of DCR chapter two, the blurbs are bound to be more confusing than clear. I'm fine with that.

I put a lot of work into preserving The Dualist's original color commentary - once I've given DCR the same courtesy, I can nuke the .org with a clear conscience. I may even pull in the original round of blurbs for the original 6x8.33 version, just for the hell of it.

THAT SAID....

The DCR.3 script weighs in at 36 pages, with nine of those laid out. The script has been transcribed, the "workbook" file has been hardcopied, and pre-pre-production is about as done as it gets. Layouts, some kind of assets list and "schedule," then pages - all of which is (still!) on track for Q1 2011.

Pages are, as always, ATC Priority One.