Proposal-pick one mandatory skin/appearance for all

[Peter Schmitt]

I have never bothered to change the default skin, but I also never found it particularly nice.

* The background changing to darker grey is bad for png-formulas (white on grey),
   and also is bad because there is less contrast to the text.
* It wastes space on the screen because it has a larger frame.

* It certainly is much easier to develop a good layout for a single skin than for a list.

Besides Monobook I would also consider Modern which is quite similar.
In case of Monobook the new WP beta should also be considered.
Nevertheless, there should be something -- some layout feature -- that clearly identifies CZ among many similar sites.

But, unless the change is easy to perform, it should wait for a review of CZ layout as a whole.

My personal prefernce is a puristic style: Nothing flashy, colours only where they really are helpful.
For instance, I do not like the workgroup icons on the welcome page:
     Without the accompanying text they were not understandable -- why have them at all?

[Peter Schmitt]

Besides Monobook I would also consider Modern which is quite similar.
In case of Monobook the new WP beta should also be considered.
Nevertheless, there should be something -- some layout feature -- that clearly identifies CZ among many similar sites.

A disadvantage of Modern is the position of the search box. (Could this be changed?)
WP beta has the search on the top.

[Meg Ireland]

I tried out and like the Beta skin. Maybe this is the way to go for the future. Can we modify the Beta to give it something special for CZ? The plus is the editing console across one line at the top, for special and additional characters, rather than spread out at the bottom.

[Joe Quick]

I agree with Shamira.  What we have is pretty gross, and I could have sworn that the forum discussion way back when was leaning toward another design entirely.  So I definitely think we should make a change.  But branding is important too.  We need a "look" of our own.  It doesn't have to be drastically different from other options, but it should be at least a little different.

A white background for formulae and images is a must and adding too many colors or too much of any one color is clearly a bad idea for aesthetic and usability reasons.  Without a developer to help us out, we will need to put off getting any new skin, so one of the ones that are already available is probably the best decision right now.  But in the future, I'd really like to see us stand apart.

[Dan Nessett]

Every professional website has a "look".  You know it when you see it.  I would like to make a new EC proposal that we enforce the same.  At present, for one example, someone changed the templates so that we have an ugly yellow/orange template (discography?) on top  of a bluish gray background.  It looks horrendous.  Many of us have made articles with lots of equations in them that looked great on the original white background, and which now stand out like a sore thumb with white rectangular blocks inserted over the same background.  These examples and many others give us a very non-professional appearance.  In additional, expecting our limited technical folks to solve image problems in multiple browsers and multiple skins is simply more than most websites would put up with.

Someone brought up this same issue in the forums some 6-12 months ago, talking about our lack of professional look and web presence, but never went to the next step of creating an EC proposal.  Before I make this proposal, I would like to get some input from others as to how they feel about the issue.

I just read through this thread and still don't quite understand what is being proposed. If it is changing the default skin to Monobook so visitors see CZ's content in a consistent way, then I have no particular problem with it. However, if it is that there is exactly one choice of skin for users, both registered and non-registered, then I think it would be a very big mistake. CZ already has a reputation (deserved or not) of being somewhat authoritarian. Eliminating the possibility of registered users choosing the skin they want to use would only reinforce that reputation. While WP's default skin is Monobook, there are 8 other skins that are available for selection. If we wish to attract contributors from WP, then limiting their choice of skin to exactly one would definitely go into the cons column.

To make my own preferences clear, I currently use Pinkwich5, not because I especially like it; rather, because I have been too lazy to change it. I am not all that energized by appearance. Of course, that is not to say appearance isn't important; it just isn't that important to me.

[Peter Schmitt]

Besides Monobook I would also consider Modern which is quite similar.
In case of Monobook the new WP beta should also be considered.
Nevertheless, there should be something -- some layout feature -- that clearly identifies CZ among many similar sites.

I have now  tried out Modern, and like it and its appearance.
Disadvantages: As it is it does not indicate "Citizendium", and the search box is rather low on the page.

Both Modern and Monobook have two features which Pinkwhich lacks (why?):

* When typing in the search box it shows a list of possible completions.

* Print page only contains the page, while Pinkwhich adds the frame.