So… does anybody else suspect that GoComics knows their new format is a PITA and nobody likes it, and put through the change just to “encourage” people to subscribe?
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Comics I Don't Understand 
I certainly do. I’ve believed that ever since they killed off their RSS feeds more than a year ago.
Let’s list our reasons. :-) I’ll add one of mine: – having to open comments, and then every set of responses to a comment (I do appreciate that we are now able to respond to specific comments).
Hmmm. I’ve never felt like complaining about the format of that site OR what one gets here at CIDU, although I guess if you’re paying for the former, you might have a reason.
It’s the first thing I thought, as you know . . .
1) As mentioned elsewhere, the “today” template adds yet another step to the process of getting to the current comic.
2) Even worse than having to open the comments is that every strip gets a “featured comment”, which frequently awards inordently prominent exposure to idiots who have no idea what they are talking about.
3) GoComics has (recently) increased the amount of background script activity (presumably to fetch and generate ads within the page). Any time I have more than a few GoComics tabs open at the same time, my browser slows to a crawl. Kill the GoComics tabs, and the response rate quickly returns back to normal.
P.S. It took me an embarrassingly long time to correctly parse Bill’s “PITA”. I knew he wasn’t talking about bread.
P.P.S. Calling it a “P.O.S.” would have been more understandable (to me), and equally correct.
Well, something can be a PITA without being a POS (though rarely, perhaps, vice versa).
I don’t know I am a paid subscriber and most of the changes they have made that people are complaining about are there for me too. I don’t have to deal with the ads though. I have to agree that most of the changes they have made lately are not for the better.
The inability to zoom on the comics, which are smaller than they ought (and used) to be, thanks to all the crap to the left of them, is my big annoyance with the current format. I dropped a couple comics I really enjoyed, because the text became unreadable*, it was so small. I also dropped a few others because they updated so sporadically, having them always on the bar, instead of just when they updated, was kind of annoying, so that’s my secondary annoyance, I guess. (Though the only one of those I really missed was Up and Out, and I’ve since found Julia Kaye’s Tumblr, so I’m good on that.)
* The Upside Down World of Gustave Verbeek was galling – when they first changed the format from the old-old version, and the crap was below the comic, it was great – I no longer HAD to zoom the comic, so the lack of ability to was not missed. Then they moved it to the left, which shrinky-dinked the comic to even smaller than it was on the old-old layout, and now it was unreadable, AND unzoomable.
For RSS feeds, try https://www.comicsrss.com/
*raising hand*
Twice the clicks for the same comic-visit. Sweet deal, if they get pay-per-click for their ads.
I’m getting used to it; I really wish they would have more consistent sizing. I don’t like the number of times I have to change my browser’s magnification because some comics’ text is too small, and then adjust it back for the next comic.
Thank you, @Barry. That covers the last couple I couldn’t get it had to give up.
Someone suggested using ArcaMax and they did have many of the ones I view at GoComics, but they were even smaller.
You’re so cynical.
I admire that.
Barry’s link is an amazing resource. I think I can say “good riddance” to the idiots at GoComics.
I haven’t encountered the two click problem. Maybe because I browse GoComics by opening the A-Z listing and opening the comics I read in other tabs. The comments problem is annoying, but I rarely look at the comments, and many of the comics I read don’t seem to have any when I get to them.
The one big problem I have is that the site will simply stop responding. I have to wait for 10 or 15 minutes and then it works again. It happens pretty frequently.
I don’t mind the extra click, but the preview of today’s comic on the landing page is super-annoying.
I’ve been a paid subscriber since they launched that service and get my comics by email every morning. I can count how many times I’ve been to their website on one hand (except for those times I had to update my billing information). It’s just not worth it, no matter what the design is.
I still miss comics.com, which gocomics absorbed about a decade ago.
For the problem of the scripting eating all of your CPU time, you can try using a browser that doesn’t support scripting. I don’t think it would work at gocomics… I stopped hitting the site when it stopped working at all for browsers that ignore scripts.
I am a paid subscriber. One feature is that you can get an email of your subscribed comics or read them all at your profile page (where they are larger size). I only have to go to the page for an individual comic if I want to read the comments. The links from either the comics page or the email are to the one for the date, so I don’t encounter the Overview problem.
I’m not getting this two-click issue, though…
I find that when I post there it (similar to the postman ringing) always posts twice – and there seems to be no way to delete the duplicate post.
I keep getting doubleposts, too, but have no trouble deleting them – there’s a garbage can icon at the top right corner of the post.
Some people have reported problems with page width so that they need to scroll over to the right to see the delete icon.
Just a week into having switched over to RSS links has probably (already) saved me over an hour of useless “hourglass” time (waiting for GoComics to finish loading all of its scripts and other garbage).
Thank you Kamino Neko and Brian in STL – I will look for the garbage can next time.
I haven’t experienced the GoComics double-posting or seen examples from others in the past few days. Possibly they have fixed it.