Yes, it's only 9:30 Monday morning, and yes, I could wait and check back later in the day to see if it's all fine, and yes, I expect Ron you know already, but all I see for this week's Trollbabe is a solid black rectangle. I feel sad.

-Vincent

Shit!

The strip exists and it was to have been placed in the queue last week.

I am checking to see what's up.

Best,
Ron

Wouldn't you know, it's perfectly visible using Netscape rather than Windows Explorer.

The imps are at work to repair whatever it is that Explorer thinks its doing, but for now, folks, peek at the strip using Netscape if you got it.

It's the final strip of The Birthright Bargain, by the way.

Best,
Ron

Dude, crazy. I just got home and checked it out on IE/Windows after checking it on Netscape/Linux, Konquerer/Linux, and IE/Mac at work, where it looked fine.

I have no idea why IE/Windows is not working with it. I've re-uploaded the file and everything. If anyone else has a clue, shoot it my way.

It looks like it could be a bug with MS IE. I tried the page in Opera, Netscape, Mozilla, and Rebol (Internet scripting language) and all displayed the comic correctly. When I tried saving the image from other browsers and displaying a local copy, MS IE still failed to display the comic correctly, indicating that there's probably no problem with the server.

When I edited (drew some squiggly lines in it) and resaved the picture locally (using MS Paint), MSIE could display the picture locally. Perhaps MS IE is wrongly interpreting the content of the comic as another form of picture like JPG? Perhaps the artist could edit the picture, add a grey background or draw a couple of lines near the top left corner (what I did) and resave it?

I just did a right-click save-as and tried to open it with Macromedia Fireworks, which says "Could not open the file. Unknown file type." It opens other .jpgs just fine.

Dreamweaver's okay with it though.

Nice. Life, death, birth. Good comic.

-Vincent

The interesting thing is that it's not a JPEG file, but a PNG file. The rest in this series have been as well, and IE displays them fine. However, IE doesn't get the advantage of a file extension directing it - the images are being displayed through a PHP script that opens the files from a non-web-root location and outputs them to the page.

Hey - that gives me an idea. Could someone with Windows/IE check it out now and tell me whether it looks right?

Hey Clinton,

Could someone with Windows/IE check it out now and tell me whether it looks right?

Windows 2000, IE 6.0; still a black box.

Paul

Same here - Win2K Pro, IE 6, black box. I found this on a quick MS bug search . . .

"Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 can display Portable Network Graphics (PNG) files. However, if those files have a transparent background, they might display with a gray background instead. According to Microsoft, this has to be fixed by the web developer who is working with the PNG files. In particular, they should use the AlphaImageLoader filter. For details, see http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q294/7/14.asp"

Probably NOT the current problem, but I thought it might help . . .

Gordon

it's definitely an IE display bug.

looked at the page, saw the black rectangle. looked at the source, found this url to try: http://www.adept-press.com/trollbabe/comic.php?num=1. in my browser, it showed up as a black rectangle. so I right-clicked on the black rectangle, saved it, then looked at the saved picture: it shows up fine.

discussion of this problem here.

their faq mentions that running this command (in Start -> Run) sometimes fixes the problem:
regsvr32 c:\windows\system\pngfilt.dll

talysman wrote: Their faq mentions that running this command (in Start -> Run) sometimes fixes the problem:
regsvr32 c:\windows\system\pngfilt.dll

You know, week 8 is the only comic that I created using Photoshop instead of The Gimp. I bet these problems are Photoshop's fault. :(

Hi Ed,

Any chance you could re-format it and send a copy to Clinton?

It's such a beautiful strip and such a strong story-ending (if I do say so myself), that it's a shame just for that black rectangle to be sittin' there ...

Best,
Ron

I don't have Clinton's email handy, so I'll bounce it through yours, Ron, but -- um, I just went to the site and I can't see ANY of the strips (of mine) anymore. What's up with that??

According to libpng.org, "Photoshop has traditionally been the poster child for poor PNG implementations." Crap!

That'll teach me to stray from the Open Source way...

So how long till the whole strip is available together?

Hi there,

Ed, I think you just caught it in the middle of the re-upload. They're all there and they're all visible now. Yay!

Ralph, Clinton's next job is to collect'em and set up a link to them on the Trollbabe site just as we did for the Green Goo story. But I for one am not going to be impatient about that; he's real busy and I've given him enough hassles for one day already.

Coming up next: A Day at the Circus.

Best,
Ron

Can't wait!

Hey, everyone, just for the record, I am the most unreliable, irresponsible, and worthlesss artist on the planet (well, it comes partly from having a fulltime job and toddlers, but still), and Ron is a prince of an editor/writer to put up with my procrastination and last-second deadline-courting antics to get the Ghost Wolves story out.

It's good to be off the hook, but doing that comic, badly procrastinated or not, really helped me get back into an artistic groove that I had been out of for a long time. I'm glad I could contribute, glad people enjoyed the art like I enjoyed the story, and appreciative of Clinton for hosting it.

Maybe I'll be able to ride this momentum and do a little stuff of my own and put up my own web page sometime.

In any case, it's been great, it's been a great experience, and I can't wait to see whatever's next in the pipeline. :)