Monday, April 18, 2005

A New Method of Transcription

Something just occured to me. There's a far better and more effecient method of acquiring the transcripts than the method I'm using. Allow me to explain.
My current method to grab the transcript is as follows:
  1. Check if the user has JavaScript. If no, stop.
  2. If yes, grab the images off the page, make them invisible, and separate the image tags into an array.
  3. Make an IFRAME that calls up the transcript.
  4. The transcript file has its own JavaScript in it that, upon loading, sends messages to the main page. One message says the comic's name. Each of the rest contain the transcript of an individual frame.
  5. The system then writes the images back to the screen.
  6. When you click on "(Enable transcripts)", the system nukes the images and rewrites them to the page with the proper OnMouseOver events.
This can be improved to be as follows:
  1. Check if the user has JavaScript. If no, stop.
  2. If yes, grab the images off the page and separate the image tags into an array.
  3. Each page has its transcript in there, just invisible. The system ganks this off the page and flings it into an array.
  4. The system then applies the OnMouseOver events to the image tags.
  5. When you mouse over the image, a function checks to see if the transcripts are enabled. If yes, display the transcripts as usual. If not, don't.
I'll get this done at some point in the near future. First I need to finish all the transcripts, or it won't work. While I do this, I might as well add a cookie system to remember if you wanted the transcripts enabled or not. Furthermore, when I do this, I'll add in a version of the comic tagger. And once I get all this done, or possibly as I do it, I'll completely redesign the site, adding some additional pages (like a cast page) as I do so.
God, this'll be a lot of work.

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