after having to deal with many such atories I’d say for online reading it’s great. But if you download the files to read them later and to archive them like I do it sucks ’cause the title of the story or long chapter stays always the same. It would be better if you would get a title which inclueds all the needed infos so the title should somehow change then you click on the next page so that you ge something like:

Story Title by Author Chapter xx Page 1 and so on or

for long stories with nno chapters:

Story Title by Author Page 1 and so on.

CU

Booker

When I implemented the change, I changed the guidelines to simply say that any file over 12,000 words will be delivered in pages. So there is no more limits on the file size.

Perhaps you can remove this 12,000 limit from under submission guidelines for future authors?

Also, want to let you know that I love StoriesOnline. You publish stories so efficiently but more importantly? So quickly.

I’m glad I found a home for my stories.

I think it might have been a problem with my browser, I’ve now updated to a newer version of Firefox.

Sorry

Only the last page of the chapter will have ‘Chapter n’ link at its end.

If that’s not what you’re seeing, I would appreciated a screen shot of what you’re seeing on your system. Contact me through the site’s webmaster contact link to get my direct email address.

But at the same time I can still change to the next chapter, the chapter link still shows up at the bottom, and in the center of the page. Even if it is only page 1 of that chapter.

I’ve skipped over the next page option a couple times, because I am just so used to clicking the link in the center at the bottom. If there was a way to remove the chapter link and only put it on the last page of the chapter, that might be better.

I clicked the link to chapter 2 and was lost, I had to go back and then I saw that chapter 1 had multiple pages. I’ve skipped over the page link a few times now, I guess I have to watch more closely.

It would be nice, if the link to chapter 2 was removed, and instead put the page link at the bottom center on the page.

But these were my comments from asn ‘outsiders’ perspective – we no longer have any indication of how long a chapter is which we at least had before.

You can even download whole stories in one text file. You won’t need to strip anything. Simply import the text file into your inDesign template and voila!

Of course that’s only one minor convenience of premier level service.

For those that download rather than read online, this is an absolute PITA.

I prefer to read offline – I download, use InDesign to print on A5 pages and then read them as a book. At least with Chaptrer 1A, 1B 1C etc I could just paste them quickly notepad or something and have very little to strip out – but not now. I have no indicaiton of how long a chapter is.

Of course, this is a personal opinion and will be outweighed by others that read on line – but I have no choice as to how I read or download a chapter. The ability to DL a complete chapter would make this more compelling.

Glad I read thru the comments before asking this question. I at the most only have one or two stories that do the A / B chapter breaks but I think they would benefit from the new formatting.

Thanks for testing this out DD.

Perhaps this is just me but I don’t think of paging as flipping to the next page in a print book.

To continue the print compared to electronic analogy to me having my story split for me is more like if I had a print book and the publisher without any input from me the author decided to arbitrarily split my single book into two books. I know there are valid reasons to do this but I would hope they would consult me on where I would want this to happen.

I know if something does get split and I don’t like where it happened I can repost. I also know I can and will in the future do a character count of any posts to make sure I’m not getting into the “danger zone”.

However the reason I have an issue is because the time between uploading and becoming available to my readers is not instant.

The scenario I am thinking of is I upload something and forget to check ahead of time. I then get busy with real life stuff and don’t get a chance to check the presentation for several days. By the time I do check I’ve had hundreds or thousands *fingers crossed * of downloads at what I feel is not the best presentation of my story.

Oh, and thanks for the time stamps on updates.

.B

DD

I did find the “continue” flag confusing, just because I saw that first.

The paging is easy to use, especially with the “next” button.

I would be inclined to discount author arguments about being able to control the split. If an author wants control, then they should create the chapters accordingly. If the author has properly created the chapters to begin with, then paging should not matter, anymore than paging in a paper book matters.
Bruce

Maybe I’m just old fashioned or something, but that seems like a kind of roundabout way to do it. I just save each individual chapter as an html or text file if I really want a story available offline. It’s really not that hard to do. And it has the benefit of being able to close firefox without losing your story if it’s necessary. If something crashes or otherwise requires a reboot, those tabs will not reload the contents if you restart the browser when offline.

On the other hand I see no reason why you couldn’t ctrl+click and open the next page of the chapter in a new tab while leaving the first page loaded, if you really must load an entire story into tabs.

I have a real world situation where this can cause some problems, though.

There are readers who have no access privileges to download stories/chapters – the SOL readers on free accounts, who are extremely limited in the features they are given access to.

In my case, I often load entire long stories in separate firefox tabs on my laptop so I have the story available to read when I’m not going to have internet access for a while (vacation, etc). el sol’s stories in particular, for example.

When you’re quickly loading 50 or more chapters (option clicking to load the new chapters in hidden tabs behind the front tab), it would be very easy to lose/forget to check for multi-page chapters. In fact, it makes this technique – which I’ve used for years – completely impossible.

So while this may be doing something positive for the servers, it could very well become very aggravating and time consuming for users. Not just free users; I’m sure premier members do this as well – pre-load all the chapters to read at their leisure is just downright convenient.

On the other hand, I see timeout errors all the time on sites like fanfiction.net (and their original fiction site) and some other story sites out there, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one on SOL. Seems like something is certainly being done right.

Just some thoughts – thanks for all the hard work!

It’s not about the processor load on the servers. It’s about the connection time of each user. The shorter, the better (within reason of course).

My guess is increasing the number of page hits while decreasing the average page size may actually increase your server load.

a couple of minor things i don’t like (as a reader) are:

there’s no indication in the browser window title of what ‘page’ you’re on. previously, you’d have “chapter 27a”, “chapter 27b”; now they’re both just “chapter 27″.

and secondly, the screen position to advance to the next part of the story (whether it be a “page” or a “chapter”) is no longer the same. links to the next “page” are on the right margin; while links to the next “chapter” are in the middle (referring here to the links at the bottom of html pages). this may not seem like a big deal; but i am used to lining up the cursor where that link was, and then settling back in a lounger and reading. space bar to advance to the next screenful and a left-click to advance to the next html page. both are easily reachable from a laptop keyboard — and when when i really kick-back, i enlarge the text, leave the screen on the coffee table, pick up the wireless mouse (laser, so it doesn’t move the cursor if it’s not on a surface) and can read by simply scrolling (the wheel) and clicking.

Most word processors have the ability to display the number of characters a file has.

If the file comes close to the number above, it might get split.

You have three choices – let the autopaging do it’s thing, insert the chapter breaks as mentioned previously or send each chapter on a separate file.

Rob

I like this new feature, but the italicized “continues” and “continuation” I dislike, as it matches the normal italic font used by authors. It is disconcerting to have non-story text matching the story text, and interrupts the flow of the story.
Looks like Lazeez changed the style a bit to make them stand out. Looks good.
–
Sam

The navigation bar for chapters shows all the chapters. Unless a story is extremely long (more than 1MB of text), there is enough room in the strip to show all the chapters, so you’ll know where you are.

“But what if the author doesn’t like where it splits? Personally if the story is going to be split when it is read I want to pick were it will be. If the system warns me it will happen I would then cancel the upload and find my own proper break point.”

Then divide it yourself. It’s simple. Insert ‘Chapter 1′, ‘Chapter 2′ etc… where you want the divisions to happen.

They’re pages, people understand pages. Have you ever seen a book with an unlimited length page? why is it a big deal where the page ends?

Authors can control their chapter breaks, the page breaks are more like pages in a physical book, which we’re all used to being in arbitrary locations. At least the paragraphs don’t break.

Over all, very nice job.

Unfortunately, this is one thing that is not like the old way. Previously, we looked for good spots to split a submission like a horizontal rule or a scene change. The new way is automated. It simply divides the file into equal pages at the closest paragraph separator.

The size limitation is slightly lower because of the automation. But not by much. The new system keeps page sizes below 55,000 characters. The old manual way was under 58,000 characters. A file that is 65,000 characters long will be delivered in two pages roughly 32,500 characters each. A file 105,000 characters long will be delivered in two pages 52,000 characters each. A file that’s 115,000 characters will get delivered in three pages.

Authors who like the 1a, 1b thing can still do it on their own manually. If you insert ‘Chapter nA’, ‘Chapter nB’, the formatting tools will split the submission at those spots.

To see the new system in action, look for old long stories. For example, ‘Aftermath’, and ‘Doing it all over’ by Al Steiner and Book 2 of Summer Camp by Nick Scipio.

I also don’t think the spot where the story splits to a different page will be arbitrary. The mods seem to work diligently to keep the pace going.

Nice work.

“Oooh, I like that!”

—

Are the size limitations for pages the same as the old size limitations for chapters?

I’m a control freak and I like to put in deliberate mental ‘breaks’ when a reader is going to flip to a new page online.

I like treating the old 1a, 1b, 1c method as mini-chapters.