Wishlist for a new hypercomics program

So, a while back I talked to Markus Muller, the guy who made Infinite Canvas, about the possibility of an update to the program. He let me know that it just doesn’t have the userbase that warrants reworking on it, and that if he did have time to work on it, he’d probably redesign it from the ground up. So this got me thinking, if a new hypercomics program had some features that’d be a boon for guy like us, we could probably get a great deal more users. Infinite Canvas is a great program. It has an amazing and truly infinite canvas, a dead easy to use navigation builder, the ability to make hotspots to create nonlinear stories, control of rotation and speed of the trails, etc… But in the current web environment, it tends to pale.

So I’d like to gather a list of features that would be incredibly useful to a current hypercomics creator, with the hope of putting together an article that would inspire a developer with too much free time to see the value in making such a program. Here’s some features that’d be great to have in such a program:

• Cross platform is a must, it seems. I think one of the biggest block in IC’s popularity was that it was Mac only.
• Stand alone application. The biggest hurdle in The Tarquin Engine is you’re required to have and be famliar with Flash
• Multiple export possibilities. It’d be nice to be able to export the entire piece as html (like IC works now) or as a Flash file to embed in your own webpage, or be able to publish it in it’s own “player” like a toutube video.
• Blog embedding. Imagine making a hypercomic then getting people to post it in thier blogs, back to the youtube analogy. Viral hypercomics.
• Sound and video embedding. Including sound atached to panels within a comics, or smal video file within the comic itself
• more control over facets of the readability. I’d liek to be able to choose from a set of “loading” animations, be able to pick what kind of forward and back buttons look best
• Text editor. I’d like to make images, then add text with the program itself, or use text boxes to make “hotspots”

These are off the top of my head, and I could think of more, but what do you guys think? Let’s hear what you’d like!