The RanmaScan Reader III

About

Last Modified By: John C. McCabe-Dansted
Last Modified On: 26/3/2002

The RanmaScan Reader III has been tested under a number of browsers, but no doubt there are some browsers that will have problems. If it does not work under your favorite browser then please mail me - unless your browser does not support javascript, in which case you will have to view the images the old way from at www.techserv.curtin.edu.au/ranmascan/manga.html. Before you mail me check, that javascript is enabled in your browser :)

This help file starts off somewhat meaningful, but degenerates into techno-babble, so don't feel pressured into reading all of it.

Tips

You can go to the next page just by clicking on the image. In the two pages per screen mode, you can click on the right hand page to "turn it over" and go to the next page, similarly you can also click on the left page to go to to the previous page.

One thing I would find pretty cool would be to set the reader to automatically scroll through the manga, so I can just watch, without having to press any keys. I am working on a javascript page for doing just that, when I am done I will probably put it up on my web page .

Browsers that work with the RanmaScan Reader III

Browsers tested and found to work perfectly:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.00 for Windows
Mozilla 0.9.2.1 for Linux
Netscape 6.2.1 for Windows
Opera 6 Technology Preview 3 for Linux

The following browsers are fully supported:
Although fully supported, they do not support changing the image size, so all pages are displayed at the same size. This is OK for most pages, but some pages have very unusual dimesions - and end up looking kind of squashed.

Netscape 4.08 for Windows
Netscape 4.74 for Windows
Netscape 4.78 for Linux
Opera 6.01 for Windows

The following browsers are usable but have slight problems:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.00 for Windows running under linux with wine-20011108 (cannot change view mode)
KDE Konqueror 2.2.1 for Linux (in 2 pages per screen view mode, the heights of the images do not match. This can be fixed by replacing the "height=100%" in the location panel with "height=700")
Galeon 0.12.1 for Linux (in 2 pages per screen view mode, the images have zero height, they are just horizontal lines). This can be fixed by replacing the "height=100%" in the location panel with "height=700")

The following browsers do not work at all:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.00 for Windows 3.1 (does not appear to support javascript at all).
Links, Lynx: no support for images OR javascript.

Design

A number of issues that tripped me up when attempting to make the RanmaScan Reader portable to most browsers are discussed below.

Netscape 4.xx cannot resize images once they have first been displayed. Hence, by default the RanmaScan Reader will fix the size of the images at 800x1150 (so that they do not come out at 0x0 before the image is loaded, and then stay at 0x0). Some other browsers also have this problem (such as Opera 6.0.1). The fix_netscape routine is used to detect this problem, and then set the view to a fixed size view to fix it. Ironically the fix_netscape routine is not needed for netscape, as the Reader knows about netscape and will fix the problem without having to print the page just to find that it did not display correctly and needs to be redisplayed.
Netscape 4.08 triggers a page resize event when a page is reloaded. This makes it important to check that the page has been resized before reloading the page due to a page resize event. (It can cause an infinite cycle of page reloads)
Netscape 4.xx seems not to support accessing form elements as variables. Thus for netscape we must use document.forms[0].elements[1] rather than the simpler and easier to read "iptPage"

Javascript debugging quick links

Javascript Console (Netscape Only)
Show navigator.userAgent