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Earlier this week Ian from Top 100 Best Graphic Novels shot me an email with a couple of questions regarding ATC – my answers are included with an ATC synopsis in his year-end writeup, The Best Webcomics to Follow in 2014 (Part One). Go check it out! :)

In other, more local news – a new version of the website is live! It’s the third and definitely final release of 2013, and will hopefully last for at least a few weeks. I’d prefer it to last for all of 2014 but that’s, like, fifty years in internet time and if I think of a better way to do things you can bet I’ll jump on it. V12 is an iteration on V11 with a cleaner presentation and a pseudo-mobile version – I’m using a couple of mobble checks to feed mobile devices an augmented stylesheet and different ad locations. The mobile sheet isn’t business-card-sized and doesn’t use @media queries – it sticks the left sidebar to the top of the page and that’s pretty much it. I may extend it further if I ever get a tablet or a phone with a bigger/sharper screen. I’m digging the new look, and I’m digging the speed boost and performance gains I wound up getting by working through the initial display issues. The site’s looking good, and as usual it’s the best version ever!

Here’s the v12 build log. It’s a lot shorter than the v11 build log. That build log really whipped the llama’s ass.

20131221, 11:37 – Winter solstice. Spawned build log and v12 theme directory, v12 “screenshot,” etc. Copied the live v11 theme into a new directory and changed the header on the stylesheet. ATC v12 will be built from ATC v11 and as envisioned will be a couple of header edits, some sidebar edits and a whole bunch of new CSS. The design concept hit me on Wednesday or Thursday as a refinement of some ideas from the new Twenty Fourteen theme combined with the existing ATC v11 layout. The entire purpose of this theme is to “clean up” the design and rectify a number of issues that have been bugging me since the new site launched. I’d dive right in but I have a schedule to keep – both for ATC comic page production and for client work. I’ll poke at this a bit more tomorrow and hopefully get started in earnest on Monday or Tuesday.

20131226, 15:21 – Started work last night; just about done with the major bits. Still need to figure out what I’m doing with ads and mobile, still need to decide if I’m doing a mobile sheet right now or later, still need to add a widget to the chapter sidebars. Otherwise… this is a pretty fast turnaround, so far. Maybe 8 hours so far with maybe another 4-8 to finish, compared to the 120+ of version 11.

20131228, 12:41 – Picked away at the site yesterday and this morning. Mobile checks and a rudimentary mobile device sheet are in place. No font size fuckery, just re-setting the menu sidebar into a menu header. Looks decent. Very minimal. PW placeholder ads of the proper form factor are really all that’s left to do – that and a final “tour” of the site to fix anything I missed. The goal at this point is to polish on Monday and roll it out on NYE or NYD.

20131230, 13:01 – Noodled on the site a bit yesterday, ironed out some inconsistencies today. I also componentized what will be the skyscraper adbox, so I only have to add markup to one template instead of two. Still need to make a 160×600 ad template to hold territory, but otherwise I think v12 is ready for deployment tomorrow as planned.