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)

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)

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. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 17:26, October 15, 2010 (UTC)