What's with the Archive?

Mycorner

So I'm a relative n00b here, but love the strip and have been working my way thru the archive from the beginning in a quest to get to present day. I understand it was always a sort of clunky chore to be able to access a certain date/comic to pick up where I left off, but it did indeed work. For the most part. So I dealt with it.

Now I can't jump to any comic in the past at all. Doesn't matter what I search on, I get no results.

Am I being stupid here? Am I missing something?

Why can't you just scroll to the comic you want to view and click on it? What a concept! Already i nuse by thousands of sites everywhere!

I don't get it...I even bought a shirt here, and now I feel I'm going to have to give up my quest of reading every PA strip every penned. Sigh.
m.

Smasher

I just went to five random comics scattered throughout PA's lifetime via the archive and they all worked for me.

Comic search is horribly broken and has been for years, but pennypacker takes care of that.

Mycorner

Well, good for you, but how?! HOW did you do that?
I can't click on a comic, and I can't bring them up via search.
If i want to see a comic from 1/6/2006, I'd have to start at either the first one or the most recent and click, sequentially, all the way to it.
Obviously, I ain't doin that!
m.

Henroid

Mycorner, what browser are you using and what version?

Smasher

Do you have noscript or some other script-blocking behavior set up?

Also, what search terms are you using?

Mycorner

I'm running IE7. Everything is up to date.
As far as I know I have no script blocking going on.
I know, I know, I should go with Firefox and PennyPacker and blah blah blah...my point is it used to work just fine with both my work and home pc, and now it doesn't. I'll get around to Firefox sometime.

I'll search on whatever most relevant word is in the strip title, two if need be. Like 1/6/06 is 'Bottom Toppings', where I'm currently stopped at. I'll search on Bottom. Or Toppings. Or both if I get too many results with only one word. This used to work. I'd click on the reult I was looking for and off I'd go, happy as a clam.

m.

Smasher

So what happens when you use the pull-down menu to select a comic without doing a search?

Daedalus

Mycorner wrote: »

Well, good for you, but how?! HOW did you do that?
I can't click on a comic, and I can't bring them up via search.
If i want to see a comic from 1/6/2006, I'd have to start at either the first one or the most recent and click, sequentially, all the way to it.
Obviously, I ain't doin that!
m.

you can just put the comic's date right into the URL. For example, Wednesday's comic was at

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/7/23/

and other dates should work too.

Orogogus

Smasher wrote: »

So what happens when you use the pull-down menu to select a comic without doing a search?

Well, I tried for myself, and apparently what happens under a default install of IE7 in Vista is that nothing happens, the same as if I were running FF with Noscript. Works fine under FF without Noscript, and Opera.

Something I've been wondering: What's the reason for the dropdown, instead of a normal page of links? The large number of strips makes the dropdown seem unwieldy when trying to find a particular comic.

MechMantis

Orogogus wrote: »

Smasher wrote: »

So what happens when you use the pull-down menu to select a comic without doing a search?

Well, I tried for myself, and apparently what happens under a default install of IE7 in Vista is that nothing happens, the same as if I were running FF with Noscript. Works fine under FF without Noscript, and Opera.

Something I've been wondering: What's the reason for the dropdown, instead of a normal page of links? The large number of strips makes the dropdown seem unwieldy when trying to find a particular comic.

I have a dim memory of it once being set up like a calendar.


But this may or may not be true.

Mycorner

Wow, thanx guys!
You've all been very helpful.

Smasher: Nothing happens when I select from the pulldown. Nothing.

Daedalus: Thanx, you just gave me an effective workaround. That works perfectly fine. I am in your debt sir!

It still puzzles me why it DID work (searching on keywords), then stopped. Weird.

Oh well, all is well again. I can now continue to catch up.

Thanx again!
m.

Älphämönkëy

Orogogus wrote: »

Well, I tried for myself, and apparently what happens under a default install of IE7 in Vista is that nothing happens, the same as if I were running FF with Noscript. Works fine under FF without Noscript, and Opera.

Something I've been wondering: What's the reason for the dropdown, instead of a normal page of links? The large number of strips makes the dropdown seem unwieldy when trying to find a particular comic.

The drop down should be fixed. I'll look into sprucing up the archive page.

-Alpha

Mycorner

Alpha,

Yep, seems to work fine now.
Thanx for that.
m.

Thanatos

Seriously, Alpha, I think the easiest, best thing you can do would be to just link PennyPacker from the archive page.

Willeth

Or hire the phasetwo guys to link all the scripts up properly, so Firefox isn't required and people can tag strips and discuss stuff just through Penny Arcade itself rather than anything else.