First point they say: "story is easy to read on mobile devices" yet they immediately distract with an annoying "get our app!!!" floater at the bottom that ruins the experience, and disallow selecting text on mobile so I couldn't properly quote it here
As someone with a great interest in comic paneling, I can agree, but there's so few that seem to do so. Not only that, but the vertical format (particularly as it pertains to optimization for mobile devices) leads to a number of negative effects, not limited to extended scenes where not a lot happens -- and the size and space available conflicts with the actual storytelling.
Wow, thanks for that! I finished it in one sitting, and it was wonderful. Not only is it an excellent example of vertical storytelling, it also spoke to me in a way that nothing else has in awhile. I'm left feeling inspired and hopeful.
But for some reason, I find vertical scrolling to be tedious and annoying. My 13" rMBP is at default scaling, so I only have 800px in total height, and about 720px for the web page area. It's really irritating seeing so little and having to constantly scroll. Horizontal there's an extra 560px, or 77% more.
Its not much different from placing manga frame in vertical order rather than pagination. I dont think it qualifies for "vertical storytelling" - it's like saying a book in which you scroll instead of turning pages is a "vertical book" - it's a very artificial way to categorize things.
Horizontal mode sucks, when enabling auto screen rotation it often rotates when not wanted from minuscule movements, like when having it near horizontal or reading in bed. I don't understand why they don't use a schmidt trigger effect where you have to rotate the phone very much in a direction, or even shake it, before it rotates, and then keeps your desired rotation more robustly. Oh and the buttons to enable/disable auto rotation are already too much effort to bother, too many taps away plus none to switch hor/ver instead of auto/ver.
That's a problem with the device indeed. Vertical mode makes no sense for video and many images-based mediums, like panel to panel comics, should be better viewed in horizontal mode. A square screen phone would solve this, maybe?
Anyone done experiments in responsive comic layouts? Reading a vertical comic on a desktop is a bit unsettling though it works better on an actual mobile device.
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