Nifty colored scrollbars, too!

The inline-frame featured all of the site's pages that weren't actual episodes themselves. The news updates, the archive system, extras, and contact information popped into this frame as they were accessed.

The inline frame was originally supposed to hold episodes as well. However, I had no way of knowing how the inline frame dimensions would handle the highly-variable formatting of each episode's text boxes. The images weren't a problem, being as they're all 320 x 240. However, some text stretches five lines high. Others don't have any text at all. So, I decided to keep episodes on their own pages. I liked the inline frame idea too much to throw it away, though.

The News section let me keep a sort-of journal for myself -- be it news about the site, my thoughts about something, or general ranting. Mostly, it had a lot of "I know I haven't been updating lately, but..." I decided I liked having a News section, and would keep it for future versions.

Each of the episode's six images were in their own rows, resulting in a completely vertical layout. This made the episodes easier to read.

I began shooting episodes with a FujiFilm FinePix 2800. Finally, the ability to macro focus! The ability to be mobile!

There were three drawbacks to this layout. First, while I loved the layout, it hardly said "medieval." The font had me heading in the right direction, I liked the two helmets on three characters in the silhouette, but it didn't go much further than that.

Second, the inline frame. As I found the hard way, a few people complained their browsers don't support frames, let alone inline frames. I'm not really sure why they're not supported, nor could I see any reason for it. I thought frames, when used properly, made sites look nice. I've designed other sites that also use frames. Others, however, banded together, lit their torches, and held their pitchforks high in protest of the inlines.

Finally, the "Today" link gave me an opportunity to avoid confusion of which new episode is which by simply linking to the most current comic. For a while, I used one file over and over again for the current comic. However, I found people began passing the news page completely by bookmarking the "current" page. I realized that a lot of people don't like going through one page to get to another, and decided to work on an index page with both the comic and the news I felt like typing up. I first practiced with this idea while designing the layout for Refugees from Planet Cartridge.

I began using "Books," keeping tabs on episodes by naming them in different groups for every 12 completed. I liked the idea of taking a still shot from each comic and putting it into that Book's group, breaking up the flow of episode links a little bit more.

The menu featured clickable pictures instead of text links. They were all pretty tiny images. Each link led to another page, which was designed exactly the same. Going to that page meant a new page of content loaded, and that page's text label in the link bar was italicized.

Navigation between episodes was improved. Going from Episode 15 to Episode 16 no longer required clicking back to the index page. Each Episode's six images were placed in three rows of two.

As in the first version, I continued shooting episodes with my Logitech QuickCam Pro. Though it sat attached to the computer, I think I came up with some bad-ass shots anyway.

This site still required clicking on a link to go to an actual episode. Text in various episodes didn't line up exactly how I wanted it to. Generally, a little bit more organized than my first version, but still somewhat messy.

The episodes on the site were chronological, but not listed backwards. Once the list was long enough, readers couldn't tell if a new episode was created unless they scrolled to the bottom of the site. So, not only do they have to click another link to get to a current episode, but they had to scroll down to even get to the link.

The layout was ridiculously simple. I was still working on my HTML usage and learning how to play with graphics. As I am with most of my new layouts, I was happy with it at the time. Now, I look at it a lot like corduroy pants -- we used to wear them, but damn. That swipping noise will be forever burned into our ears. What were we thinking?

Version 1 was -- well -- a work in progress? LIPP was never intended to be a running project sort-of deal. I did the first comic on an otherwise-idle Tuesday afternoon to kill some time. After pointing a couple friends to it and giggling like schoolgirls on marijuana, a few more episodes followed.

There's no image available right now because the drive housing the first version died quite some time ago. It's probably easily recovered, but I haven't had much time to try. Luckily, I was able to move the old versions onto a newer computer (at the time) before the hard drive died.

The site was sort of similar to this abomination, typed up a few months later to show just how bad a website can look. It was done around three in the morning after a particularly grueling day at my then-job as a grocery store produce clerk, the job that made me realize how much life would suck without a college degree.

I later went on to graduate from Illinois State University, but that's another story.

I began shooting episodes with a Logitech QuickCam VC, the original camera given to me by some folks at a now-defunct company called CollegeWeb.com. It was the device used in their project, WebDorm.com, which is also defunct.