Template talk:MiniaturesNavBox

order?
What is the ordering for the nav box? Should miniatures of different colors be separated somehow? -User:PanSola (talk to the ) 14:37, 13 September 2006 (CDT)
 * At the moment, it's by rarity then alphaetically (in other words, collector/rare/unique/etc. and alphabetically within each rarity type, as shown here). MRA's wrapping edit took away the 2-line format I started the template with that put all the collector/rare/unique together, and the uncommon/common as another set. I initially thought about dividing the minipets into separate lines for each item color/rarity, but with the standard list font size of the NavBox template, it would take up unnecessary space. - Intricated  talk page |undefined 17:48, 15 September 2006 (CDT)
 * At the moment, this nav box is pretty useless as it only links to NPC pages and not anything about any actual mini-pets. I think the whole community needs to discuss the whole organization of mini-pets on the wiki before we start making a big cluster-**** out of this. — Jyro X [[Image:Darkgrin.jpg|25px]] 14:53, 27 October 2006 (CDT)

Ordering revisited
Any objections to making this a completely alphabetical list? Next best to me is to have each color on its own row then alphabetical. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:38, 26 February 2007 (CST)


 * Maybe it should be split into groups: first birthday series, second birthday series, limited quantity prizes (kanaxai, beetle, etc), others. --Shattered Self 07:07, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

Piggy placement...
The suggested similarites noted on the pig's page suggested me to place it AFTER Rurik and Shiro. please correct me if I was wrong to do so. -- Barrage.

Mini Pages?
Only the pig and the Gray Giant have pages, if anything...shouldn't the other link to the Miniatures page? - Entice789  (Talk | Contributions) 21:59, 16 February 2007 (CST)

Standard pets only?
Are only pets available to all players to be listed in the navbox? Should the Taiwan/Japan exclusive ones be listed too? &mdash; kyrasantae   01:44, 24 March 2007 (CDT)

Gwen?
Why is Gwen on this list? She doesn't have a mini. In fact, neither does Palawa or Zhed, and I think others too --Gimmethegepgun 15:24, 11 May 2007 (CDT)
 * They do, the 2nd birthday set contains those minis. Lord of all tyria 15:26, 11 May 2007 (CDT)


 * Oh. Would help if there was actually some mention of the minis on the respective pages or something... --Gimmethegepgun 15:47, 11 May 2007 (CDT)

split
I propose the navbox be split into the 3 Birthday Series (hopefully 4 soon), and then "Other sources" or something to group all the rest. As it is now it's starting to get kind of long as a single blob of text and it's hard to find much of anything in it, especially with many names being the name of the monster and not the mini (Skree Tracker=Harpy Ranger), which I corrected below. The following is just a suggestion in a brainstorming kind of phase, because I don't know much about formatting navboxes, and I can't get it to look really good, but it illustrates the idea of the split, and I'm hoping someone else can step in and make it look prettier or give feedback on how they think this should be organized. This example also illustrates a flaw in the navbox template when you add both a title color and an image (unlike the Template:TonicsNavBox), and the first line in the list ("Birthday Series 1:") has a larger break space after it than all the others. RoseOfKali 18:12, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

version 1

 * Oh, and how about I add the 8 missing minis? >_< It's up to you whether to keep the 2 frogs. RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 19:08, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Would it be possible to have this be in 3 columns? column 1 for the series, then column 2 for the minis of that series, and column 3 would remain the image. --JonTheMon 19:11, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, you mean column 1 is the header, then 2 is the list, and 3 is the image? This is kind of what they use for the armor boxes, and it could probably work here, but I don't know how to do that.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 20:01, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

version 2

 * How about:

--JonTheMon 20:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I changed the background color to lightblue as in the other navboxes. This one is too big and does not use the template, which defeats the purpose of having a navbox template.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 20:27, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * While on the topic, I verified all the links in the top table and made sure they link to the correct creature and that the lists are complete. All that's left is formatting, and do we leave Frog/H.Frog in there or not?  I think yes, since they're listed on the Mini page, but wanted some input since they are not available to players.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 20:32, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I got the wrong color :-/ However, i blame the size increase on the headers section being too big (make it 2 lines instead of 3 and a smaller font). I changed it on the table. Also, even though it's not using the navbox template, the template I looked at (Template:WarriorArmorNavBox) doesn't use the standard NavBox template either. --JonTheMon 20:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, if one thing doesn't use the template, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be used. If it exists, I think we should try to use it if possible, and if not then we should try to modify the template to fit our needs, no?  Otherwise what's the point of having it?  And yes, smaller font would make a huge difference.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 20:44, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, imo making the regular navbox be able to handle the header column would be... well, painful. Right now, you just dump text and it formats it for you. the header column kinda messes with the table itself.  I'll think about it some more, though. --JonTheMon 21:01, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure. Your suggestion looks fine if you can fix the text sizes and make the headers not carry over the number of the series. RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 21:20, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Umm, check my version now? It should have the smaller heading text in column 1. --JonTheMon 23:08, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Your version had smaller text in the headings from the start (I think?), but the numbers (1:, 2:, 3:) drop into a third line, and all the text in the mini lists is still large. I'm viewing in Monobook FF3, if that matters. RoseOfKali 23:20, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, looked fine in Chrome monobook and IE monaco, but not IE Monobook. Well, added some width%'s, so does that render ok or should I widen the column? --JonTheMon 00:08, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Another shouting match? I got some suggestions being edited now that will dwarf yours so don't exert yourselves ;-) . -- ◄mendel► 00:39, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Huh? Who's shouting and what suggestions? And the headings are now ok (in a single line unless I shrink my browser width to like half screen), but the main text is still large, it should be the same size as the left column headers ("smaller?"). RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 00:57, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

version 3
(Reset indent) Don't you remember the big discussion on the Community Portal? Use class="navbox", people! :) However, please ponder whether this listing is really optimal. I think people who want to look up a mini they've seen somebody else use rarely know which series it comes from. To keep the listing alphabetical makes sense to me. We can easily list both Skree Tracker and Harpy Ranger, or Zippy and Greased Lightning.

I am thinking maybe we could color some of the links gold and green and purple and do this (assume we do it with templates so it looks better in wikicode): Hmm, maybe darker colors.... -- ◄mendel► 01:00, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * What are the chances they'll know what it's called if they see an unknown mini? If anything, they'll go lookup Mini and find it there, with nice pictures to look at and recognize.  Alphabetical was just too damn long with no other way to organize it.  And I didn't know how to use the template with the left column, which is why I started the discussion to begin with, it just took you too long to get to it. ;) Thanks, I like this how it is.  But the text colors need to be much darker if you want to match the rarity with the names, or you can use like a gray a background for a little more contrast, but that would be too much I think.  A dark green and dark orange might work, but the purple looks almost exactly like a previously-visited link, and colors just make the whole thing harder to read anyway.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 01:15, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * And organizing just by color>alphabetical doesn't make much sense, either, because if you see someone else's mini, you won't know the color of the wording on it. So really, when it comes to seeing a mini that someone else displayed, there's no better way to figure out what it is than looking at the pictures on the Mini page.  You will usually only see the mini navbox if you happen to visit a page of a creature that's also a mini, and then you can easily tell (the mini's link will be black and bolded) which year's present this mini came from, or if it's something "special" (i.e. "other").  Also, if you have a character who has a birthday coming up, you can easily see the possibilities of what you might get.  So, for the navbox I think that birth-year/other is the best way to go to somehow split the wall of links into something more meaningful.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 01:27, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Chances to find out the name are pretty good because you can ask the owner, or it may be mentioned in local chat. To use teh navbox for that really only makes sense when there's discussion about several minis and their advantages, but the discussion isn't likely to go by series. If you like the superscripted numbers, these would give the series at a glance. I changed the color indicator from text to background, have a look:

1,2,3: The number denotes the Birthday Present series.
 * Blue text on purple is kinda hard to read, we might want to color that text black or black-blue. Template use would be like  or  . -- ◄mendel► 02:20, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I thought about doing the backgrounds instead of text, but dismissed it because it looks just like I thought it would: blotches of random colors all over the place, plus a visited link is no longer blue, it turns purple making it worse. To me it looks bad enough in a single line, but imagine the whole 67-item box like that...  It might work semi-ok for the birthday minis in the current by-year order, because the same colors would be next to each other, but it would be horrible in the currently-alphabetized "other" section, or especially if the whole thing was just alphabetized.  The colors would also have to be explained in the footer along with the numbers.  Plus there was a discussion not long ago about there being too much color in the navboxes so the consensus was white with lightblue headers (or profession colors for armor pages), right?  And most alphabetized lists are at least separated by first letter, like in the Category pages here, they're not completely streamlined like the current navbox.
 * I'm sorry, but I really fail to see the usefulness of alphabetizing 67 items into a solid wall of text with no distinguishing features in between (other than possibly some scattered colorful strips?). While having the birthday series number as a superscript makes sense on its own, it doesn't help organize it, and in small text those numbers are rather tiny.  How long before it turns into this? (Just joking, no offense intended, but that's what it made me think of)
 * If you can ask the owner of the mini what it is, then what will you need the navbox for? Officially, what is the purpose of a navbox?  I think I might be misunderstanding what it's supposed to accomplish, because I see it as an extremely condensed overview version of the main article in case you want to browse the items without having to return to it every time and scroll through all the descriptions and pictures to find the link you want.  For those who don't know what they're looking for, there's the link at the very top of the navbox.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 03:35, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Just my 0.02, but I have great difficulty reading/deciphering the color-coded tables, mostly because I don't have any clue of the rarity color for most minis. I'd prefer the box to stay as is (navbox one w/moa chick). [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 03:48, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Version 3 by Mendel? (That's the one I'd like to keep as it is now) RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 03:54, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks good. a bit cramped, but, well, adding space would make it a bit bloated.  Pick your poison. and I feel like a pro-noob for forgetting about class="navbox" :P --JonTheMon 05:00, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

version 3a
Since the birthday series are sorted by rarity and not alphabetized throughout, I've introduced dashes to make that clearer.

Jon, since Ishy is on leave (Muahahaha!), we can add space to the .css pixel by pixel if you specify exactly where. -- ◄mendel► 12:04, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This looks good to me. Certainly more readable and navigable than the current template. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 12:20, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Love it. Thanks! :D If you're thinking of adding some space, you can add a wee bit more between the paragraphs. RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 17:15, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Rarity

 * I think having a way to differentiate the rarity would be good. However, it's not very clear, imo. Would it be possible to have, like colored dots/brackets/something surrounding each rarity? --JonTheMon 18:59, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Colored brackets actually don't sound like a bad idea. They're not as invasive as a background strip, and you can still read the text between them.  Would be cool if you could underline in a color different from the text, but I don't think that's possible. :P  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 23:29, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The brackets I think are the best of these 3, but it's like they're not there, too small still. Purple is always going to be a problem, because visited links are purple, and there's no good way around it. RoseOfKali 23:38, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Asura • Black Moa Chick ... ? (T/C) 23:40, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Was gonna suggest this:

But I think Entropy nailed it. RoseOfKali 23:42, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Just to test what it might look like... The spacing is a little off in the birthday series, but looks ok in the Other, not sure why it's different. Looking at this also makes me want to sort the "Others" by color first, then alphabetical.

RoseOfKali 00:03, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Someone up there said color = bad. Was gonna do colored circles next to the names until I realized the minis are listeded by rarity anyway. So sort the event minis by rarity and we're done, no color needed: the sections go green — gold — pruple — white anyway. Unless you want to go back to teh aphabetic listing, in which case I give up. Or just, like, do:

And someone needs to sort the event minis. -- ◄mendel► 00:09, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Was gonna suggest this:

Don't know about this now... Too rainbowy? How about:

Arrows Version
The color of the ◄ ► encasing a group of minis indicates their text color.

The problem with Mendel's is that it works nicely for birthday minis, but is not true for the special minis, where rarity does not correspond to color, so it's better to keep words out of it. This way the color is very minimal, but it's noticeable enough. RoseOfKali 00:32, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I kinda like the colored arrows, but I would omit the line between colored arrows. --JonTheMon 02:03, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I think I agree with the no-line. Mendel? Entropy? What do you think about this? RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 03:05, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The colored arrows will always remind me of Mendel's signature when looking at the box, though I am not sure if there would be better (I heard circles mentioned); I think the lines could be shortened to just a dash - or eliminated, as the arrows are differentiation enough. [[Image:Entropy Sig.jpg]] (T/C) 03:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I tried to find "hollow" arrows for the white minis and found a pair in the Webdings 3 in Word, but they come out like ... No arrows for whites, I guess. RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 03:56, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Funny enough, I wasn't even thinking about Mendel's sig until you said something. ^_^ RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 04:01, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I added the other two series to the last table. Is this acceptable, or are there any more comments/suggestions? RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 04:25, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

One last suggestion from me: how about the ◄ ► in the first year series? Barely there, but you can see them. Too bad the hollow ones didn't work. :/ But really, they're not needed for the whites I don't think, just wondered what you think. RoseOfKali 04:32, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Colored Text revisited

 * I know I Just drop in but arn't the ◄ ► very confusing? It's very confusing for me any way. Maybe this is somthing. Wanted to show it who knows :P (kind of the same as the others)

--   † F1 © Talk  07:46, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. I think the images of each mini make it too cluttered, and just one series is already half the size of the other navbox, plus you can't see what they are at that size anyway, just click the link of the mini to see a picture. The fonts don't look too bad if you color ALL of the minis the way you did, because then the default visited purple links don't interfere with the purple minis. But it's still kind of hard to read in some of these colors (also you have to remember that not everyone displays colors the same way, so colored text that's readable to some may not be so to others) and we were trying to avoid a rainbowy-type situation. Would it be better if we put a "legend" under the navbox the way Mendel suggested earlier to explain his superscripts? I added it to the arrows version, you can modify it if the wording is awkward, I can't think well in the morning. RoseOfKali 18:29, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Or we could also use what Mendel suggested right before the Arrows version, but change the text from "Unique, Rare, Uncommon, Common" to just plain color names "Green, Gold, Purple, White?" This way it will not impose rarity inaccurately onto the special minis.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 18:42, 4 March 2009 (UTC)