What dimensions should I use for a mobile comic?

July 8, 2010 7:46 PM

What are some multi-panel webcomics that are pretty swell to read on mobile devices?

I'm trying to settle on a webcomic layout & combination of font sizes and detail levels that works well for people on mobile devices.

I've seen some single-panel comics, and I've seen iPhone apps, but I haven't seen anything that's pretty nice to read on an iPhone or Android device, and is just a comic website.

If possible I'd like to find a nice resolution at which I can just do horizontal strips where viewers just kind of scroll down as they read, then go to the next chapter, and repeat. But I don't know how good that feels in practice and what alternatives might work better.

I think I'll be making high-res originals, but if possible I'd like to only have one web-reading size.

posted by circular to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

My pal Brett Jackson has made an effort to make Massive Sqwertz simple to view on alternate devices. He uses these meta tags:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0; user-scalable=yes;" />
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes" />
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black-translucent" /> 

I'm not sure if the viewport meta tag applies to Android, though.
posted by artlung at 7:58 PM on July 8, 2010

It's not really necessary on Android 2.x, as the status bar folds up once the page is loaded. As far as resolutions go, the iPhone 1-3 and mid-range Android phones are 320x480, that'd probably be your best bet. High-end Android phones are 480x800 (or 480x854 for Motorola), and the iPhone 4 is 640x960.
posted by ConstantineXVI at 8:09 PM on July 8, 2010

Response by poster: I tried a sample at 480px wide, and man, that's cramming a lot of stuff into a small place.
posted by circular at 8:46 PM on July 8, 2010

I think the mobile version of Dinosaur Comics does a pretty good job of presenting a multi-panel comic on a mobile device.
posted by minifigs at 4:31 AM on July 9, 2010