News items, etc.

I know Thyla has said it a billion times, but she was right. The above-the-comic headlines need to be brief, with "(see more below)" as necessary. Scrolling down to read the first line of the comic is annoying, and a big no-no from a web-design perspective. A user with a decently sized monitor should be able to see the first line of panels when the screen loads. In the same vein, the big Sluggy Freelance banner takes up a quarter of the browser window, which limits the room for headlines. Finally, the business about "new readers will be confused" is important, but don't make the text that big and break the link to the new reader guide at the same time. At very least leave the text size smaller until the link works again.

While not scrolling down is kind of important for the main page, it's much more important to the archives. Scrolling down for every comic in sluggy's wonderfully large archive is seriously tedious. It takes a very hard-core sluggite to be interested in the news items 5 years ago, and there isn't much reason the Sluggy banner can revert to a smaller strip in the archives.

However, the comic is wonderful, and I have high hopes that the website will work well when the kinks are ironed out. The bulk of this post would work better as an email, however, the email form isn't in the header anymore. :)