User talk:LordBiro/Archive/Style and formatting

Be afraid...
Check out these animated GIFs... You are facing some serious competition, sir. :) --Karlos 00:42, 21 September 2006 (CDT)

Old image revisions
What do you think is best to do with this Image:Crystalline Sword.jpg? &mdash; Skuld 19:37, 21 September 2006 (CDT)
 * If someone uploads a completely new screenshot for something, the older things can go. If it's a modification of an older image, the older revisions should stay.  Ideally, people would say "I took this screenshot" on the image page so we know for sure that it's a "new" image.  --Fyren 20:36, 21 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Bare minimum, all the "reverted to an earlier revision" entries could be purged. --Rainith 21:25, 21 September 2006 (CDT)
 * I didn't see this conversation until after I deleted some of the images. I've purged all of the "Reverted to earlier" posts (other than the current one).  I've kept the original upload of the current image, as well as the original upload of prior images. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 22:52, 21 September 2006 (CDT)


 * I am opposed to deleting previous revisions of images because we have to be careful not to delete history, and because we cannot get images back if we delete them. Therefore I have a very "inclusionist" opinion on image retention, I think it's best to keep as much as possible.


 * The main reason we have for deleting images is to save on disk space. I'm not sure how much of a concern this is at the moment (I don't know if Gravewit has made any announcements) but I do think that focusing on unused images is a safer way of freeing up disk space.


 * In the instance of Image:Crystalline Sword.jpg I would not be opposed to deleting revisions if they did not have any relevance to the final image, but equally if it were left up to me I would not delete them.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 05:37, 22 September 2006 (CDT)


 * My opinnion is that all reverts should be deleted, but one copy of each different version of the image should be kept. Ie, if there is some reverting between 2-3 different versions, keep one one of each version and delete the rest. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 07:11, 22 September 2006 (CDT)


 * I think that's a difficult situation to get yourself into though. Sometimes it's not always clear which images you should remove. For example, Image:Dervish-icon.png has several versions before the final version, but I would certainly not advocate any of them being removed because they did play a part in the current design.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 08:10, 22 September 2006 (CDT)
 * But why keep the rest? My screenshot are always the best ;)  Signet of better image resolution &mdash; ├ A  ratak  ┤  09:11, 22 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Biro you didn't understand me. I ment that we should delete all EXACT copies of an image version. If 2 users go into a revert war, only keep both versions once, not a million times. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 16:05, 22 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Yeah, in that case I would not be opposed. But I think a situation where users perpetually re-upload images must be rare, unless you know otherwise :P  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 16:11, 22 September 2006 (CDT)


 * It has happened on a few occasions. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (talk) 16:13, 22 September 2006 (CDT)


 * Well certainly in any instance where there are identical revisions of a file I would not see the harm in deleting some of them, provided care was taken.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 16:14, 22 September 2006 (CDT)
 * In the case of Image:Crystalline Sword.jpg, the image had several original uploads of the image (all of which I left in the history), but the history also contained six or seven tagged as "Reverted to earlier version" (or text along those lines) that were just caused by someone switching to an earlier revision, then back to a different revision. I deleted all of these from the history to clean it up; but left the original upload of each version in the history logs.
 * In the future, I can leave these reversions in the record history - those I really don't care about. But, as long as we have sufficient disk space, I believe that all original copies of each upload should be kept in history (not including vandalism / image abuse). --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:20, 22 September 2006 (CDT)
 * Note: Someone has since also deleted an unused image that was a cropped version of one of the originally uploaded versions. Not sure who; but as the uncropped version was retained, that doesn't really concern me either.  --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:22, 22 September 2006 (CDT)


 * That's fine Barek, as Gem says, there's no point in having loads of items in the history that are identical copies.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 16:40, 22 September 2006 (CDT)

Web design?
Not sure who to ask, but at least you apparently have some interest in the tangentally related field of graphic design. Do much web design? I'm trying to move all the appearance-related aspects of the skill boxes out out of the templates (and out of the old HTML attributes) and into a stylesheet. I have no idea if the way I'm applying classes and defining them in the CSS is good or not. At best, I'm doing what makes sense to me and results in stuff looking like they did already. The CSS is at User:Fyren/monobook.css (put it in your user space, gamewikis.css if that's the skin you use) and some examples of things using it at GuildWiki talk:Sandbox/Skill box ias and Sandbox/Symbiosis, if you're willing and able to help. --Fyren 08:54, 16 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Nesting tables is often messy, and CSS for tables is always going to be equally messy, but looking through what you've done so far it all makes sense. One thing that I've noticed (although I think this is just how all skill articles have worked for some time, and I hadn't noticed) is that there is no h2 in the template. I guess this is because of the way MediaWiki treats headlines in the TOC? Anyway, other than that it all looks good so far. There are a lot of rules in your CSS, but that's generally unavoidable when you have nested tables. I'll have another look later tonight if I'm a bit less busy and let you know if I can see anything that could be improved.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 10:49, 16 October 2006 (CDT)


 * The header is fake (see div.fakeh2 in the CSS) since a real one would add a section edit link that would end up showing people the template source. That's probably bad and unexpected.  Currently, there's a link that looks the same as a section edit, but people complained about it not being obvious how to edit skills details, so I moved it down to closer to the skill box and made the text "edit skill details" instead (and out of the fakeh2 div and into the skill box table).  I was thinking about rewriting it to use divs instead of tables, but I didn't think it would make the CSS much different.  --Fyren 11:00, 16 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Yeah, I had a look at the CSS but I didn't realise it was because the edit link would go to the template. It makes sense I suppose. Overall I think that tables are used more than necessary on the GuildWiki. The progression table, however, is definitely not an instance of this.


 * You could reformat the quick reference as an unordered list but, in honesty, I'm not sure if that would be worthwhile. It would make the wiki code look a lot cleaner, but you would have to use a lot of CSS in order to have it look like it does now. Maybe that means we should use a different layout, but I don't really think that that would be a straightforward change.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 14:12, 16 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Hi, you can see an example of what we can do with a CSS moding: http://www.gwiki.fr/wiki/index.php?title=Forme_de_brume, (sorry it's a french wiki, and sorry for my english ^^), I can give the source to make this, if you want to copy or modify the look. My skill template looks messy but I'm working on an Mediawiki extension to make it easy to edit (with forms). --Ouroboros 16:59, 16 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Hey Ouroboros, that looks pretty cool, although I do have to say that I prefer the simplicity of our skill box design. I can't view the wiki source on your wiki because of the permissions, but looking at the HTML source I can see that you use divs for the skill box which is really what I'd like to see us doing more of.


 * Ideally I'd like to see a situation where the skill box is a div, the progression table is a table and the quick reference is an unordered list since this would make the most sense from a semantics POV. But as far as the amount of work involved in achieving this goes I really wouldn't feel comfortable saying "this is the way it should be done", because I think that the quick reference in particular would be a nightmare to style.


 * I'll give it some more thought but, in honesty, I think the way we are doing things at the moment is adequate, and the changes Fyren is putting through are good.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 19:45, 16 October 2006 (CDT)

gamewikis.org index
I've been pretty frustrated with the current gamewikis.org index so I decided to make a new one. It caches the number of articles in each wiki seperately for 1 hour, so if it's not 100% accurate right now try it again a bit later :)

Let me know what you think.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 15:47, 23 October 2006 (CDT)
 * I like it, the original had annoyed me for some time, but I usually bypass it, so kept forgetting to bring it up anywhere. Good job!  I know that someone else (I think Tanaric) was working on a new gamewikis portal, using a wiki-styled layout.  You might want to point him over to look at this as well. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 16:12, 23 October 2006 (CDT)


 * I talk to Tanaric occasionally over jabber/google talk and I think he's quite pleased with it. I thought Tanaric was more working on a meta wiki for gamewikis? I'm in favour of that as well! :)  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 16:34, 23 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Aye. I love it. And, yes, I am working on a metawiki... hopefully we'll get it sometime soon. &mdash;Tanaric 16:51, 23 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Looks VERY nice. Good show, old bean. :) --Karlos 10:13, 24 October 2006 (CDT)
 * I just noticed, you have the forums link, but no blog link. Any particular reason? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 10:20, 24 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Probably because the blog is 1) totally unwiki and 2) rarely updated. But that's just a guess. &mdash;Tanaric 12:53, 24 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Well, I didn't mean to be too political by leaving off a link to the blog ;) But I was having trouble thinking of an icon that would be particularly blog-ish, and then I had a look at the blog to see if there was any inspiration there. I didn't find any :)


 * I think for a site that isn't almost entirely community run a blog would be suitable. Since we are almost entirely community run I don't think a blog is necessary; the forum does the job of propagating gamewikis information very well.  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 17:53, 24 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Very nice. Do it! &mdash; Skuld 10:23, 24 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Would it be possible to decrease the box/icon size so you don't have to scroll down? In Firefox if you've got a few tabs open there's a scroll bar in 1280x960. It'd be nice if even you didn't have to scroll, even in 1024x768. If you didn't want to decrease the box/icon size you could perhaps lay them out in two columns or maybe layed out like 2,1,2. ie:
 * GW OW
 * HW
 * NW Fo
 * I dunno, just a thought, you know more about this stuff than me. --Xasxas256 04:48, 25 October 2006 (CDT)


 * Don't put yourself down Xasxas! I tested it in 800x600 where the scroll bar is always there. I decided on a design that was big and friendly, so that's why I went with such big boxes and big text.


 * One thing to bear in mind is that the page is dynamic. If another wiki is added then another box will appear (above the forum box) and the boxes will be sorted based on which wiki has the most articles. If I was to create a more rigid design that would allow the boxes to all display on 1024x768 (at present) then it would no doubt still overflow if we were to include a new wiki. That's why I don't think the 2,1,2 would necessarily solve the problem.


 * That's my thinking at present anyway. :)  &lt;LordBiro&gt;/&lt;Talk&gt; 09:02, 25 October 2006 (CDT)