*hypf*

I still don't quite know what I should think of this:

First I only read the part that you should write your comments within 15 minutes (or paste them). That alone is sick enough. And yes, there is a  in the top of the page. I just wonder why. The site isn't as comment-heavy as Slashdot, Heise or other large IT sites so the benefit of seeing the latest comments (well, the ones that are at most 15 minutes old) isn't really that great and besides, that could be done without forcing the user into something he wouldn't need to do (Hint: there is this wonderfully hyped Web 2.0 thing called AJAX).

And the second part of the commenting hint is just downright ridiculous. Something on their side is seriously broken if they need that kind of hint. After digging a bit in the source code of that page it turns out that their comment-system is entirely Javascript, at least the validation part. The form points into void and the only thing that will submit something is probably the JS function AddComments() that is called on submit on that form. However, I lacked the motivation to actually look through that, given that I know nearly no Javascript.

Pop up blocking is nowadays a pretty essential component of every major web browser. However, what about the pop ups the user actually wants to see? Internet Explorer is pretty ignorant about this, only offering the opportunity to turn off pop up blocking for the session or completely for the site:

So, to revisit a blocked pop up you have to repeat the action that lead to it, be it clicking on a link, let the page load or whatever.

Mozilla Firefox is nicer in this regard as it allows you to select a blocked pop up to open directly from a list. However, as URLs get longer and the first part stays the same, the user faces this:

Try to figure out which pop up you want to see from the list at the bottom.

Currently I can't think of a viable solution, although thumbnails or titles would be great for the user (except he's on dial-up). But since both options involve downloading the page in background and wasting bandwidth that way it's probably not a great idea. But the current solution of being either ignorant or at times pretty unhelpful isn't that great either.

Maybe the whole issue settles down after pop ups become extinct (hey, I still have hope).

I am a great fan of RSS, since it allows me to keep track of numerous sites I would otherwise check manually. Especially with some webcomics that are rather irregularly updated this is a pain and much better with RSS. On that note I'd really like webcomic authors to not just provide a link to the strips but rather embed the image itself into the RSS which makes reading much more comfortable (and should reduce traffic on their site).

A few hours ago I hacked together two pretty ugly scripts that fetch a web comic for a fellow student and one for me and output the last 5 strips as RSS. Works fine for now, I'll see whether there are any problems with updates.

You can adapt to your own needs if you see fit.

UPDATE (2008–01–31 10:20): Code for bash.org was missing. This is fixed now.

UPDATE (2008–11–06 07:46): Code for ruthe.de adapted since the site changed in the meantime.

UPDATE (2009–02–29 14:16): RSS for bash.org was invalid when encountering non-ASCII characters in the text. Should be fixed now.

UPDATE (2010–04–14 12:40): Code for ruthe.de adapted again due to a small change in the site's layout.