Friends of 3 Million Years Oxicomics have something a little bit new…
For a while Oxicomics have been working a way to produce comics using HTML 5. These can work on iOS, Android and on Windows browsers (including IE9, Firefox and Chrome)
In addition to this you can get the following features:
- Full Page and Panel-by-Panel reading modes
- Supported touch gestures (where applicable) like Swipe,Pinch and Tap
- Share to Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, StumbleUpon and all other social networks supported by AddThis
I was lucky enough to get more information from Oxicomics CEO Morton F Thomson about the scheme:
The HTML5 Comic Reader has taken a lot of time and effort to develop and was supposed to be finished ages ago, together with a complete self-publishing platform and e-commerce site for selling digital comics. However, things don’t always turn out the way they are supposed to. So here we are, 5 months after our original launch-date, with one piece of the puzzle ready.
Right now, we have an excellent HTML5 based comics reader that will run on iOS and Android devices as well as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera and IE9 on any computer running Windows, OSX or Linux. It supports touch-gestures (where applicable) as well as panel-by-panel reading mode for small screen devices.
What we don’t have – at least not yet – is a complete self-publishing platform with the e-commerce site to go with it. We have invested a lot of time and effort into this too – but unfortunately, at the end of the day, our efforts had to be discarded, and we have had to start over. We have been fortunate enough at Oxicomics to get a few developers to pitch in for free to help us develop such a system – which in turn also means that developing something like that takes time – free is after all free, and they are doing it on their spare time.
In the meantime we have decided to let as many people who want to use our reader for their comics – for free – that’s the least we can do. We originally started Oxicomics to enable storytellers to tell their story – and now, finally, we are in a position to do this. All it takes, is a little effort on your part – we have already done the hard part.
We are currently making the final changes to the HTML5 Comics Reader to enable you to start using it on your own website – for as many comics as you want. We will release an authoring tool that will create a JSON file you will have to place on your own website, together with the images that makes up the comic(s). This authoring tool allows you to create panel-by-panel mode for your comic, as well as creating everything you need to get going. You will then create an encrypted URL (to the JSON file on your server) that you will pass to the HTML5 Comics Reader each time you want to launch the reader – and the rest is taken care of.
This approach will be free for all foreseeable future.
If enough people are interested, we will look into completing that self-publishing platform and e-commerce site as well – including native apps for reading comics off-line on iOS and Android devices. Anyone who feels they have something they can contribute to this project – PLEASE get in touch with me. The same goes if you want to use the HTML5 Comics Reader for your comic.
This is something I am very interested in – and may well take advantage of too. Please feedback below in the comments and to Oxicomics of your thoughts and suggestions.
