Free Software - Comics
(v3.2 for Windows)
by
Evan Reynolds
Quick link - ComicViewer.exe . Run that, then run the updater (or wait until the next Monday, when it will check for updates on it's own and run the updater for you.) It checks for updates each Monday. I can be quite slow sometimes, but sometimes updates are actually available. Whoo-hoo!
When you first get this, I advise updating, then running the sort option in the setup program's menu to sort all strips. Otherwise they will show up in sort of a random fashion.
Notes about the recent updates
Note that updating will NOT turn off any strips you selected. New strips may start out turned on, depending on whether they are activated in the update file or not, which is usually pretty random, but nothing you selected should get turned off.
Last updated June 8th, 2008.
Also since comics are added at the end I started having a hard time finding the out-of-order ones. So I added a sort function to the menu which will alphabetically sort your strips. If you want to order them to your liking you can still just open ComicSetup.ini and arrange the strips in any order you want, but it might be worth sorting them and then altering the order. (I add them to the end and not in a sorted fashion as I don't want to stomp the order anyone else has created.)
I also updated the free source code at the bottom with that.
No comic updates this time. Just tinkering with the updating thing. That's still very new...so if it or anything else doesn't work please bear with me...and drop me an email at evan@evan.org telling me what happened and what operating system you have (95, 98, ME, NT 2000, or XP.)
Proxy Servers - if you have IE configured, this should get the proxy configuration from IE and just work. Username and password aren't supported yet, if your proxy requires those then this won't work. Hopefully I'll work support for those in soon.
NOTE:
From now on, updates will be put in a file called Update.txt. You will just copy that into your directory, and the updates will get sucked into your ComicSetup.ini file, leaving your selections unchanged. You will have to run ComicSetup to add the updates, though!! And new updates will be at the end of you ComicSetup.ini file, not sorted alphabetically. I haven't yet figured out a nice way to sort those without breaking any sort you might have added to your ini file to make the comics appear as you want them.
I made non-daily comics go to the web page and get themselves. It'll be slower, but you'll get the right comic every day instead of a broken picture. Non-daily strips will just repeat each day until a new one is put up.
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This is actually two programs packaged together. Unzip them into the same directory. Run ComicSetup first. That lets you define what comics you want to read. It remembers what you selected, so it's easy to change later. Hit prev and next to see more comics. Press OK when done, or Cancel to discard your changes.
Run Comics to actually read the comics. That goes to the web and gets some information it needs to create a web page for you. Then it launches your browser with the comics in it.
Source Code for Comics - as of June 23, 2008. Does not include the installshield part. Email me if you want that. I make the source free for use with absolutely no restrictions, if it helps you then use it. If you do use it in your project, I'd appreciate letting me know you used it, and if it's a commercial product I'd love a copy of that product.
If anything doesn't work, e-mail me at evan@evan.org with whatever you can to help me figure out what's wrong and I'll fix it if I can.