GPF News Archive

Hey, gang. I know it's been a while—again—since the last news post, but I promise it's because I've been busier than usual behind the scenes at GPF. True, my day job has kept me hopping too, but things have slowed down there (involuntarily) enough to let me steal some time to introduce three new features here on the site. I wanted to announce them yesterday (Monday's are always better for news updates, because more people visit the site on Mondays than any other day of the week), but I wanted to make sure everything was running smoothly before I unleashed the feline from it's cloth enclosure.

GPF News Notification: First off is one item I've secretly trying to implement for a while now. One of the biggest complaints Faulties have mentioned about the News is that it's too easy to miss the notice on the main page when the News updates. I tend to update it so infrequently that most readers get accustomed to the blurb and it takes several days (or weeks, if at all) before they notice the date has changed.

The current solution is the News Notification system. This is a voluntary cookie that contains the date of the last News update that you read. This value is compared to the date of the most recent News update and if the latter is more recent, a small animated icon will appear on the main page. When you actually visit the News page, the cookie will be updated and the icon on the main page will no longer animate. As I mentioned, the cookie is completely voluntary, so it won't be set or read unless you expressly activate it (so you cookie-phobics out there have nothing to worry about). It also requires JavaScript, so that needs to be enabled as well for the system to work.

To active this system, click the new "Want to be notified...?" link right under the main heading on this page. (Note that you won't see this link if JavaScript hasn't been enabled.) This will open a little control panel window that goes into more detail about how the system works and gives you the link to activate it. Once you've activated the cookie, the link above and the control panel will let see the cookie's contents, see approximately when it will expire, and let you delete the cookie any time you wish. It may take a few News updates before all the bugs are worked out, but feel free to give me some feedback on how to improve it.

GPF RSS Feed: You guys have been bugging me for this for a while, so I'm finally giving in. There is now a GPF RSS feed available. Note that it's more for notification of updates than anything else; there are no deep links to content, like a link directly to the latest strip image without the surrounding HTML. As long as Keenspot and GPF remain largely advertising-supported, you'll still have to come to the site to get the content. (Either that, or we'll have to restrict the feed to just PREMIUM subscribers, and to be honest, I'm not sure how to accomplish that easily.) Currently, the feed gives you the latest updates for the main comic, the High-Def comic, the PREMIUM-exclusive Jeff's Sketchbook feature, the News (including the same summary blurb as on the main page), and for the next few months, the most recent update for the upcoming Shows & Cons. If you can think of anything else that might be helpful to add, please let me know.

GPF1Stop: This one is just for our PREMIUM folks. It's called GPF1Stop, and it combines the High-Def comic, Jeff's Sketchbook, and the latest News update into a single page, with all the appropriate links to let you browse into each archive. It also includes the current Keenspot Newsbox, so you won't be missing that either. I remember Howard Tayler over at Schlock Mercenary doing something like this a while back, and I always thought it was a good idea. I wasn't 100% sure how to implement it until I did some experimentation, but I finally got it to work. If you're a Keenspot PREMIEE and you find this new feature useful, just let me know. Also give me a holler (that's one o' dem hillbilly words) if you can think of other regular or GPF PREMIUM features you'd like to see added to this page.

And All The Rest...: Here's a brief update on some of the things mentioned in the last News update:

• I'm still way behind on my e-mail. Please be patient if you're waiting for a response.
• Just a reminder, GPF daily strips go back to gray scale June 26th. See the last News update for the reasons.
• Comic-Con and Dragon*Con are swiftly approaching. (Comic-Con is just over a month away!) Keep watching the pre-con report pages for updates about my schedule, merchandise, panels, and all the usual stuff.