Digital Comic Museum

Help and Support => Feedback and Suggestions => Topic started by: comicreadermobi on October 23, 2011, 03:09:30 PM

Title: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: comicreadermobi on October 23, 2011, 03:09:30 PM
Hi there! I originally made a post at GoldenAgeComics, and they mentioned your site, so I thought I'd talk to you guys too.

I made a silverlight version of my app to let people try it out before buying it, but I realised that with a little bit of extra effort, I could modify it to allow any website to use it to display their own comics! You know, get a little more awareness for my program, and make the world of online comic reading a whole lot better in one fell swoop :p

To give you an idea of how it works,
Instead of looking like this:
http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/preview/index.php?did=16078

It would look like this:
http://comicreader.mobi/CRM3/Baffling.html


Its completely free for you to use, and you don't even have to sign up to put it on your site. You can just go here:
http://comicreader.mobi/OnlineReader.aspx
and fill out the info to get an embed tag on the fly.


I'm really excited about the possibilities, and I want to make it happen. So if theres something I can do to make the process a little easier, or a little better, let me know, and I'll be glad to help :)
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: Yoc on October 23, 2011, 05:01:22 PM
GAC could use a working preview feature.
CRM didn't mention one has to install Microsoft's Silverlight for this to work.
I'm quite happy with our current Preview feature so I wont be trying it but thanks for sharing CRM.

Anyone else that tries it please let us know what you think.
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: comicreadermobi on October 23, 2011, 07:12:04 PM
were you not able to try it because you didn't have silverlight installed? Because it is worth giving it a shot.
The program lets you do true full screen, caches the next page, and even lets you zoom in on specific sections. Plus you can use the arrow keys, spacebar, and even the mousewheel to change pages.

In short, it makes the experience just as good, if not better than if you had downloaded the comic and loaded it up in your own reader :)

Plus its not hard to format the embed tag in a way that falls back on the web version if silverlight is not available.

Eager to hear your thoughts :)
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: Yoc on October 23, 2011, 09:52:53 PM
I'm a FireFox person CRM, I stay away from MS as much as I can.
Your features do sounds pretty nice.  GL with the app.
:)
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: Yoc on October 24, 2011, 02:37:32 PM
CRM was nice enough to give me a copy of his reader that wouldn't need Silverlight to run it.
I downloaded it, checked I had the required .Net 2.0 or higher and tried it.

I got several error messages which I figured was easier to take a screen shot of than type them all out.
So CBR - here's what I saw if you had any advice-
(http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/9856/comicreadermobi300winxp.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/827/comicreadermobi300winxp.jpg/)

Oh where it says "Finish other layer first!" it actually said "Unable to find entry point 'glGenFramebuffersEXT' in DLL 'opengl32.dll'.
I'm running WinXP Pro sp3 on a very old Dell Latitude D800 if that helps.

Thanks for your efforts CRM.
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: John C on October 24, 2011, 03:33:17 PM
Quick notes for the general case.

I'm not a fan of Silverlight on principle (the idea of desktop-like web pages sends chills down my spine), but technology-wise, my impression (as a programmer and occasional user of it) is that it's more stable than, say, Flash.  And Firefox is pretty good with disabling or dumping plug-ins, so of the things you could install, it's low on the worry list.

For the error boxes, you might have luck with just a CTRL-C to copy the text to the clipboard.  It'll also catch what's rolled off the screen, which is nice.  Sadly, I only found out about that recently, despite having worked with Windows since the Dark Ages.
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: comicreadermobi on October 24, 2011, 04:03:10 PM
yeah, thats a very odd bug. Your dell must not have the opengl capabilities necessary to run it hardware accelerated. I'll see what I can do about fixing it.

And yeah, Silverlight is the only reason the online reader can even exist. Rebuilding one in flash would be a massive effort without a lot of reward, but thanks to silverlight I can make an online reader with very little modifications to my code :)
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: Yoc on October 24, 2011, 04:36:56 PM
Hi CRM,
I recently installed nVIDIA ForceWare video drivers 8596 with a hacked INF file.
Dell stopped supporting the built in video card on this back in 2006.
I suppose my using the hack might have something to do with the errors generated.

John, Ctl-C only works if you can highlight the text first.  The error list created by the app doesn't allow me to highlight anything.  Ctl-C was the first thing I tried to use.  Ctl-A highlights 'All' and Ctl-V will paste any copied text as well.  Just in case you missed those.
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: comicreadermobi on October 24, 2011, 04:49:35 PM
I went ahead and put up a possible fix. Can you redownload it and report back?
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: Yoc on October 24, 2011, 05:23:18 PM
Hi CRM,
I went back and tried to download it.  The link says it's ver 301 but when i download it it's still the same 300 file.
You can email me if that's any easier for you.

-Yoc
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: comicreadermobi on October 24, 2011, 05:56:58 PM
Sorry about that. Still working out some kinks unfortunetely.

Go ahead and download it again, and you should be good to go :)
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: Yoc on October 24, 2011, 06:11:11 PM
Hi CRM,
That helped a lot, thanks!
How about we continue this via email?  There are still a bug or two to cover.

-Yoc
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: comicreadermobi on October 24, 2011, 06:14:59 PM
Sure thing :)
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: Yoc on October 24, 2011, 06:29:53 PM
you've got mail.  :)
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: John C on October 25, 2011, 04:54:16 AM
John, Ctl-C only works if you can highlight the text first.  The error list created by the app doesn't allow me to highlight anything.  Ctl-C was the first thing I tried to use.  Ctl-A highlights 'All' and Ctl-V will paste any copied text as well.  Just in case you missed those.

No, no.  I knew about the keyboard shortcuts/accelerators.  What I didn't know was that the pop-up boxes are special.  Give it a shot.  It copies the title, the message, and the titles on the buttons.
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: Yoc on October 25, 2011, 09:13:24 AM
Gee, you were right John!  Thanks.
CRM's app isn't bad at all so far.  Images look nice though I don't see any colour controls like CDisplay offers which has always been a feature I liked about CDisplay.

A couple of early bugs he sorted fast and now I only get those errors messages if I try to use the mouse click for zooming off of the actual pages.  His page turning animation looks fantastic, one only needs a sound fx to make the illusion complete.  That and some fingers on the edges as they turn!  ;)
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: jfglade on October 25, 2011, 09:14:59 AM
 This may as well be the Wyoming State motto: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: comicreadermobi on October 25, 2011, 06:06:42 PM
I went ahead and added a screenshot showing what it would look like :)
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: Geo (RIP) on October 25, 2011, 10:39:13 PM
This is the problem I get with a Mac, see screen shot below, as I change pages:

(http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/9317/screen2ju.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/265/screen2ju.jpg/)

It sound like it's looking for "Silverlight" on the Mac and it's not there.
It shows this error message, then the page does show after a short delay.

Just thought you'd like to know what it does on a Mac, I'm running OSX version 10.6.8.
Haven't taken the leap to OSX 10.7 because I have some software that will not work with it, and won't update till it's been updated for OSX 10.7 so I can still scan. So maybe someone else is running OSX 10.7 can tell how this works for them.

Geo
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: comicreadermobi on October 26, 2011, 01:59:51 AM
thanks, I think I know what the problem is. I'll see if I can get it fixed
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: comicreadermobi on October 26, 2011, 01:43:53 PM
should be better now :)
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: Yoc on October 26, 2011, 03:26:17 PM
I'm getting this set of messages when I click the mouse anywhere off of a comic page.  That's the only big bug I've seen so far with the PC/laptop.

---------------------------
Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
---------------------------
   at CRM.Core.UI.Paging.PageManager.OnTouchesDown(TouchEvent e)

   at CRM.Core.UI.Manager.TouchManager.handler_TouchesBegan(Touch[] touches)

   at CRM.BaseForm.OnMouseDown(MouseEventArgs e)

   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseDown(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)

   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)

   at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)

   at System.Windows.Forms.ContainerControl.WndProc(Message& m)

   at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m)

   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)

   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)

   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: Yoc on October 26, 2011, 03:44:11 PM
Hi CRM,
I tried CRM3.1 on a file that contained a .txt file.  The app showed the scans but didn't read the .txt.
There are many files on DCM that contain such files to convey information about the scanner and the book.

Would it be possible to show the txt files from within your app?  It's a feature that CDisplay does that I've always appreciated.  I add .txt files for each issue to almost all of my own scan collection.

Take care,
-Yoc
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: comicreadermobi on October 26, 2011, 05:32:26 PM
I'm still trying to track down the click bug. Did you get any of my email replies?

As far as the txt thing, eventually I would like to, but its not something I can do in the immediate future.The downside of multiplatform code is you lose nice things like word wrapping :(
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: comicreadermobi on October 26, 2011, 06:46:47 PM
I managed to fix the click bug. Check your email :)
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: Yoc on October 26, 2011, 07:47:13 PM
Got your email and replying.  Mouse click bug is now gone, thanks!
:)
Title: Re: Silverlight based Comic Reader
Post by: Yoc on November 15, 2011, 09:47:31 AM
I've been using this app for a while now and enjoying it for the most part.
The only disappointment I've had is that the LENS feature for magnifying a page section does not move with your mouse as you read a page.  I love that you can set the size of your box but having to turn it off and on as you move down a page is tricky and unpleasant when you don't have to with CDisplay.

I hope CRM can someday offer the option of having the len follow your mouse.  Otherwise I'm enjoying the app a lot.

-Yoc