Forum:Width adjustments for the new skin

Wikia's new skin is something we're going to have to use as our default skin after the 20th of October, regardless of whether most users here like it or not.

Since we're going to be using it, there are a few changes we might have to make. One of the biggest issues with the new skin is the width of content pages. The width of articles, excluding the sidebar and borders is going to be 660 pixels. Problems with this are:

• Card articles usually have a 400 pixel wide image, leaving everything else squashed.
• Most if not all infoboxes are 300 pixes wide, so the article text next to it is just under 360 pixels wide. This one isn't too bad.
• Tables with lots of columns are messy.
• Galleries, I think will overlap the sidebar. (The sidebar doesn't appear in the "Card Gallery" or "Set Card Galleries" namespaces at the moment, but that will be changed soon.)

The reason for the width changes are:

• Everything looks the same in all screen resolutions.
• The 300x250 box ad can be placed at the top of the sidebar, rather than in the article itself, pushing everything out of place.
• People find it easier to read when the text is spread over many short lines rather than a few long ones.

I want to ask what changes everyone else thinks we should make to said problems.

• I think the width of the image in card articles is something that definitely needs to be changed. I suggest making it 300 pixels rather than 400.
• Infoboxes could be reduced to something like 250, but it might be okay to leave them as they are.
• Some tables could need complete reformatting.
• Galleries, I think we should change to three per row rather than shrink the images further.

I've added some screenshots of what stuff is currently like and some possible changes below.

If anyone wants to view the new skin for themself, they can change their skin in Special:Preferences or just add ?useskin=wikia or &useskin=wikia to the end of urls. -- Deltaneos (talk) 23:32, October 14, 2010 (UTC)

Screenshots

400 pixel image in a card article (current)

300 pixel image in a card article

300 pixel infobox (current)

250 pixel infobox

Messy table

Comments

I was hoping this would be brought up. I've been using the new skin since they released it, as I know I'll have to eventually, so I'm trying to get used to it. The squashed card articles are definitely an issue. I honestly don't think they 300 pixel one looks all that much better than the 400 pixel one, but it is an improvement. I think the infobox is more of an issue in episode/chapter articles than character articles. Because of all the crap on the right side of the page, everything ends up looking squashed. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 00:00, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

Why the episode and chapter articles moreso than the character articles? The infoboxes are the same width.

As an individual user you can have the entire sidebar disabled disabled for yourself only. It requires some changes to Special:Mypage/wikia.css. We're not allowed to disable it by default though. -- Deltaneos (talk) 00:14, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

They are the same with, but they are still different from one another. The character boxes have gray and black backgrounds, where as the episode and chapter infoboxes use blue and purple. For whatever reason (at least to me), those articles end up looking worse to the eye than the character ones. Good to know I can disable the sidebar, I wasn't aware I could.

Is there anything we can do about the extra whitespace that shows up decklists? Not really a big issue, but I personally hate how it looks. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 01:25, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

We could add more infobox colours. Dantman or Dinoguy would know more about doing that than me. -- Deltaneos (talk) 12:09, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

I'm fine with all the changes above. It makes the new skin looks less crappy in our wikia. Bold text is not working for the card set section. I'm having the same problem with Cheesedude, is there any ways to make the text a bit bigger and reduce spacing? Blackwings0605 (talk) 06:47, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

There might be some html we can use to reduce line spacing in the Decklist and CardTable2 templates.

The bold text is working for me in sets sections. Can you show us an example of it not working? -- Deltaneos (talk) 12:09, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

Look at this in the new skin. I think it sufficiently fixes the linespacing problem.

<div style="line-height:145%"></div>	Default
Blue-Eyes White Dragon Dark Magician Dark Magician Girl	Blue-Eyes White Dragon Dark Magician Dark Magician Girl

-- Deltaneos (talk) 12:27, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

The line spacing looks much better like that. I'm seeing the bold in card set tables too, so it could just be the browser that Blackwings is using.

Character infoboxes that include parameters with more than one listing (such as characters with multiple previous affilations) are being spaced the same way as the decklists were. Not a huge issue, but I still don't like how it looks. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 17:26, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

Infoboxes in the new skin and anything using {{DynamicNavigationBox}} should now have their line-height at 160% now. -- Deltaneos (talk) 23:42, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

Not sure there was a problem with my browser or my eyes yesterday, but it's working fine for now. Blackwings0605 (talk) 05:34, October 16, 2010 (UTC)

What's going to happen to the Home Page, I can see that being completely messed up with less room...BassNettoHikari2...Chat Page... 06:56, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

The Main Page doesn't use the sidebar in the new skin. It should have pretty much the same layout. -- Deltaneos (talk) 12:09, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

How about messing with their skin, by adding <div style="width: 980px"> to the top of every page, forcing the stuff on the right off the page. So it looks like this: 1, 2, 3. That way, we don't get in trouble; because technically, we did not disable it by default xD -Falzar FZ- (talk page|useful stuff) 07:49, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

That's against the terms of use. -- Deltaneos (talk) 12:09, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

My only problem is that the level stars for monsters level 5 and beyond are on 2 lines. Maybe we could use a smaller alternative? Toob (talk • contribs) 13:17, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

I must agree... But that whole side just looks smooched (the Descriptions/Set Lists), the words are overlapping the (show) button, and I think we should fix this if possible. Is there a way of putting some of this stuff under the card? And we should really get the four drop downs made...BassNettoHikari2...Chat Page... 14:25, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

Everything on the right being crammed is the whole idea of reducing the width of the card images to 300 pixels. This way only Level 10, 11 and 12 monsters' stars run over two lines. We should probably remove the word "Level" before the number, since that's already made clear by being in the Level section. That should stop level 10 and maybe 11 going over two lines.

I don't think we should put the content below the image. Users already have to do too much scrolling to get to the content.

What four drop downs are you saying we should get made? -- Deltaneos (talk) 14:47, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

I like the idea of removing the phrase "level X" "Top Content", "Community", "Help", and "Forums", I really think we should change them to fit the Wikia, it was being discussed on Forum:Sidebar links...BassNettoHikari2...Chat Page... 17:53, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

Provisional solution + card pages redesign?

I think the width adjustments proposed are an excellent provisional solution. But it is to be a provisional solution, isn't it? I mean, even with width adjustments, the card pages are looking wrong.

I think the whole card page needs to be redesigned. The card information table has up to 3 columns (card imagem column, stat label column and stat value column) is too much when we are talking about, for example, card names and level stars both having, some times, very long values.

It would make more sense to present those stats in 2 lines in the same column, instead of 2 columns in the same line. Width is limited, so we have to use height.

Of course, high is also valuable, and we should prevent as much scrolling as possible. One way of doing that would be hiding card names by default, giving the "[show]/[hide]" option.

The "Anime/Manga/OCG&TCG Statuses/Card/Deck/Starchip/DP Costs/Video Game Numbers/Video Game Statuses" table is a height-eating beast too.

I have no idea how to do that or if that is even possible. And I understand it is not easy, it would take time and nobody is paid to do that. I'm just giving some suggestions away, I'm not demanding a redesign.

Sorry for my poor English. I hope it's understandable enough.

188.82.191.34 (talk) 15:17, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

Even if we did add show/hide to the names section (which we probably should have done years ago), I think it's still adding too much height by putting the values under the labels and not as neat. Besides the sets sections already have their values under their labels and don't have enough room, so the image needs to be made thinner anyway. -- Deltaneos (talk) 15:47, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

One idea would be to have multiple names under a single [show]/[hide] link - I think we could put them *all* in one, since the big colored banner heading the table already contains the official English and Japanese card names. If anyone wants it (e.g. users who work on card name translations), we could have someone proficient with JS write a script to pull individual language names from the collapsing box, determined by settings in a user's whatever the hell they're naming the Oasis personal configuration files.js file. I've been working on rewriting {{CardTable2}} in its sandbox anyways; I could probably whip something up really quick. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 05:41, October 22, 2010 (UTC)

I'm running out of template work (practice) on narutopedia, I'd be willing to help code a few new templates here and there. And I'm sure some of them are transferable from there to here, if you wanted, albeit with minor changes. SimAnt 22:54, October 22, 2010 (UTC)

Another possible solution?

I have a couple of ideas that I'd like to throw out. The first idea would be to decrease the size of the card image in card pages but add code so that by clicking on the image, you can see a larger version—like what Shriek has done here for the cards in the Marik structure deck. This way the width of the standard image display could be reduced significantly--maybe to 200 or 250 px as opposed to the current 400 px. Although we would need to accept smaller images at first glance, the larger pictures would still be easily available and we could otherwise keep the current card page layout. My second idea would be to move all text for cards, except for the title, to beneath the picture. I'm not sure this idea is as good as it will mean more scrolling plus excess white space on either side of the picture, but it would keep image sizes the same—albeit at the cost of a change to our current layout.
—Narchibald84 (talk • contribs) 04:47, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

It sounds like you're suggesting uploading lower-resolution versions of card images, which isn't necessary - when an image is used on a page at a resolution lower than its native resolution (e.g. taking a 200x200px image and using it on an article at half-size), the MediaWiki software automatically generates, caches, and uses a thumbnail version of the image at that lower resolution. Clicking the image leads to its description page (unless you're on Wikia ¬_¬ ), from which the original, full-resolution version can be viewed. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000} 07:11, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

Watchlist and tabs

Moved to Forum:The New Wikia Layout#Watchlist and tabs

Is there any "proper" way to view the changes to the pges I watch? the only way I have been able to see my watchlist page is http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Watchlist and that I got from saving the page in my favorites. Is there any place on the site I can click to get there? Also, will anything be able to be done about the tabs that were in the upper right of the pages? For example, go to a card page and then where is the tab for the rulings page and tips page? --LordGeovanni- (Talk To Me) *Kupo* 04:24, October 24, 2010 (UTC) This thread is really for discussing adjusting pages to suit the new skin. There's another thread Forum:The New Wikia Layout for more general talk on the skin. Anyway, if you click on "My Tools" in that bar at the bottom of the page, then "Edit My Tool", you should be able to add the watchlist link from there. The tabs to those pages at the top of card articles were added by JavaScript, which was only compatible with the Monaco skin. Dantman wrote that JavaScript. To re-add it to the new skin, we would need him or some other JavaScript guru to write something similar. The links to those pages are also available further down the page in the "Other Card Information" part of the table. (Sorry if you already knew that.) -- Deltaneos (talk) 18:50, October 24, 2010 (UTC) It would be nice to have those links "backported" to Monobook as well, for consistency between skins. 「ダイノガイ千？！」? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000 19:31, October 24, 2010 (UTC) Thank you for your comments. I am sorry I placed this in the wrong section. This new skin is messing with everything I do on the Wikia. For example, I cannot even type this responce in the available box. My mouse refuses to place the cursor where I click. When I scroll with the scroll bar, the page instantly reacts as if I hit the 'Home' key. If I use my directional arrows, the page jumps the cursor around randomly. Even when I get the cursor where I want it, I cannot see what I am typing because it is always covered up by either a pop-up message or it is outside of the text box somehow... On top of all that, each symbol I type takes about a second and a half to appear. I have had to type in notepad and Copy/paste my responce just so each of these messages I type do not take me over an hour each. Thank you for answering my querstions. I did already know about the other section but for someone who only ever used the tabs, I am having severe difficulties adapting. I will make sure to leave any other questions I have in the appropriate section. --LordGeovanni- (Talk To Me) *Kupo* 20:30, October 24, 2010 (UTC)

I've moved this discussion over to Forum:The New Wikia Layout#Watchlist and tabs so this page doesn't get distracted from its original topic. -- Deltaneos (talk) 20:58, October 24, 2010 (UTC)