Broken Frontier

Oh, poor navigation, thou art a fiend!

These couple of weeks I’ve been at a loss at the number of good webcomics on Top Webcomics which are handicapped, if not altogether marginalized, by poor navigation. When your chosen medium is webcomics, your website is among your most important features, and many entries on the south side of Top Webcomics are paying the price in rankings.

Such websites don’t have to be feature-filled, Flash-covered events. They just have to be simple and easy to navigate. Putting emphasis on anything else can have devastating results.

Luckily, there are less-than-devastating results in the webcomic Hero Academy. This fighting fantasy read is actually exceptionally designed to resemble a traditional scroll, complete with a seal that provides the various features of the webcomic. This is a great interface for what really is a fast-paced and kinetic read.

The problem is two-fold. First, the features fold on the “seal” read Homeroom, Yearbook, Class Syllabus, Academic Postings and Links. The first four are exceptionally interesting titles, and all of them, including the links page, are broken and blank. Now I did say that one doesn’t need these features for a good webcomic, but having them out there with nothing to them is like false advertising.

The other problem is the screen resolution. If you’re not careful to notice the Firefox icon at the bottom of the screen with the measurement 1024 x 786, you might end up even more confused if you have a smaller screen. This is because the backward-forward navigation is clear on the opposite ends of each other, making navigation difficult at smaller screen sizes. All that’s required here is a more obvious “this website is best viewed at a screen size of 1024 x 786.” Otherwise, it's easy to get lost in the page's huge navigation.

I realize I haven’t said enough about Hero Academy itself. It’s a good webcomic. I like Benjamin Carver’s work on Point Guardian, but seeing him work in a far more original and expansive world is a definite improvement. The story of a young hero training to be a Paladin is an interesting one, made all the more realized by the rough yet edgy penciling of artist Ivan Pratama.

But the navigation issues are a hang-up for me on not just this comic, but many, many others. I’ve been looking through literally hundreds and hundreds of webcomics marred by much bigger navigation issues than this one; some so bad they prevent me from reviewing their webcomics. This hurts, especially because a lot of these webcomics have solid premises, good art and original ideas. Ultimately, it won’t matter how brilliantly a webcomic creator’s ideas flow on the page if they don’t flow through the web page itself.