Hello all,
I am from a small company who just published their first comic book. We'd liked to
make it available online in cbr format as well. All the cbr files we checked out seemed to do things a little differently from each other so we were wondering what the community likes to see.

Which container type is favored? (cbr, cbz, cb7, etc)
Which interior page file types are favored? (jpg, png, etc)
Folder naming conventions? (full title, month, year, publisher, etc?)
Page numbering conventions? (just a page number? title and page? etc)

Also, I have read that ComicRack supports extended information?

Any other thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

We'll be pointing to ComicRack as the eComic reader of choice from our website as a way to say thanks.

1) CBZ is preferred as ZIP is an open standard
2) If it is not black and white jpeg is best. Black and white can be coded in PNG (but compare the sizes)
3) ComicRack just ignores folders inside of the CBZs
4) Page naming is best done in the most safe way - with leading zeros (e.g. "Page001.jpg" etc.)
5) Make your CBZ, open it in ComicRack and edit all the information (artists, summary etc.). Set the page types (cover front, back etc.). If it is rather long you can optionally set bookmarks as chapter start points. Write the info back.

Tell me your address, I look at it and point back.

Well, pretty much everything cYo just said.

Even though CR ignores folders (but not the images contained in them) I like to have them with, as you said, the full name of the Comic, the volume, the number and the publication date. But, hey, maybe it's just me. Regarding the page numbering, as long as it displays in the correct order, you can pretty much do anything you want.

I'm gonna be the Devil's advocate for just one thing. If you add the infos and they are stored in the xml file, CR will be the only reader capable to interpret those. Maybe you should consider adding a small text file, with the same informations, in your archive so that everybody can access them.

Good luck to you and your company in your new venture!

Thanks for all the good advice.
I forgot 2 things.

Is there any preference to the page dimensions?
ComicRack seems to scale even the largest pages down just fine to fit on the screen but I don't think 2100x3150 is needed?

Finally, file size. When is a cbz too large?

Thanks again.

Well, usually, larger dimensions means better picture quality. But you don't need pictures that are good enough to touch them up. Since CR can resize pictures according to our screen resolutions, I'd say that something between 1200 and 1400 in width with a 300ppp resolution should be good enough, but that's for me. With a 40(ish) pages eComic, your archive should have a size around 20Mo (depending if you have B&W pages or not). You'll have to find for yourself which size and which picture quality settings give you a good result that is of good quality but not too big. But, most of all, a result that you, the artists, etc like and won't eat too much bandwidth.

For your final question, I opened a 500+ Mo .cbz archive with CR with no trouble whatsoever. It just takes a few seconds longer to load but that aside, it was the exact same reading experience than with a 15Mo eComic.

That's all what my poor 2gray-celled brain can mutter.

If I was going to sell my digital comic I would provide it in as many sizes and formats as possible. Just to make it convenient for buyer.

So not only PDF and CBZ with metadata. That's a bare minimum. Consider also EPUB, Sony Reader format, some kind of online reading possibility, flash file with simple navigation, etc.

As for file naming - beside obvious counter I like putting there series name and/or chapter title. Also you may suffix specific pages with "cover" and other page types.


Resolution:
- small one, for PSP users
- medium one, for netbooks
- high for 1920x1080. so one with width 1080 - for single page view on pivoted monitor. And other one 960px wide for viewing in two page mode.
- original, if someone wants to resize himself.


Well, best of luck! ;]