Web Comics and the Palm Pre… Happy Together? 21
Will the comic book industry embrace the Palm Pre? According to Hervé St-Louis, the founder of Coolstreak Cartoons and founding publisher of the Comic Book Bin, the Palm Pre offers “several features which will make Web comics fans that like to view strips on portable devices very happy.”
He calls out the Pre’s Web browser as being "faster and more useful than the iPhone's, the BlackBerry's or even his good old Nokia N800's." He also notes that because of the Pre’s multitasking capability, “Web comics viewers can view a Web comic strip online while using Twitter or texting friends.”
Developing for the Palm Pre will be easier than writing programs for the iPhone, noting the Palm Pre “will get its own Flash player, which means that many existing Web comics solutions which were developed in Flash, such as Marvel Digital and Zuda Comics from DC Comics, will be easily viewed and customized for the Palm Pre public.”
“Many Web comics readers readily embraced the iPhone, but that came with several barriers and hurdles in the form of Apple and its domineering attitude toward developers and its customers. A lot of people that thought the iPhone was cool did not hop on the bandwagon because of Apple itself.”
St-Louis believes the Palm Pre crowd is sure to develop even faster than the iPhone crowd because “the market for Web comics is much more solid than it was last year and the barriers to convince users to adopt a Web reader for their smartphone will take much less convincing than a year ago.”
Maybe the timing is right and the webOS platform will be the one that is fully embraced by developers and fans of Web comics.
21 Comments
Second that
Several people are looking forward to Flash and possibly the JRE on the pre, but they are the two things most likely to make the pre unstable and crash. I personally hope that both are delayed long enough and phased enough that the pre gets a track record so any instability can be properly attributed and not prematurely attributed to the pre. Multitasking itself, while wonderful, can be problematic. We don't need the other two muddying the waters just yet.
FTW!
sleepy
First of all, you don't have any evidence that the Pre won't have multi-touch capabilities. Secondly, when you don't post your name, a lot of people lose trust.