Page layout/format brainstorming

[Chris Day]

Also, both proposals are based on a html table. This makes life difficult for me to style using CSS. Can the html output of the template be change to use list markup <ul> and <li> rather than table. This make the code much more flexable for a designer to play with.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think these tabs, vertical or horizontal, are a precursor to a more elegant solution using CSS.  Your own work should not be directed by this quick fix solution.

So why bother with the subpages template?  The answer to that is that it does a lot more than just place a few navigation tabs. It controls:

• the categories for the article and subpages. 
• the placement and content of the approval and ToApprove templates. 
• the headers for each subpage.

By centralising all these functions in one template we can have a consistent look for all the articles.  More importantly, it can be done in a very user friendly manner (one template needs to be at the top of all pages, everything else is automatic). If tweeks need to be made in the future, we can do it with one or two edits rather than sending out an automated bot (or worse people) to make thousands of changes.

So regardless of the look this template will play a very important role in organising the CZ article clusters.

Just out of interest will the CSS skins be available really soon?  If so then what ever gets picked, we won't have to live with it for too long.

[Derek Harkness]

My reasoning is that if you make it a table now, then I have to rebuild it as a list to do the skin and I haven't learned wiki template markup yet. If you do it as a list, then you can lay it out however you like now and I can restyle it in the skin without having to edit the template code myself.

Greg, It's not a case of Tables or CSS. I'll use CSS to style a table just the same as anything else. The comparison is Tables v List markup. All the other menus on the wiki are <div>'s filled with and unordered list and styled with CSS. Even the current Article/Discussion/Edit/+ tabs are a list in the HTML. So it makes sense that this new menu should also be encoded as a list.

[Larry Sanger]

Sorry, guys, but those are the choices because those are the options that people (mostly Chris Day, I, and others) have developed.  If you want there to be more choices, you will have to create them.

[Chris Day]

If you do it as a list, then you can lay it out however you like now and I can restyle it in the skin without having to edit the template code myself.

I have never done CSS, I assume it is similar to wikimarkup, but I'm not sure how well it would translate into your skin. My guess is you should build it from scratch to avoid having to accommodate idiosyncracies in the wikimarkup I cobbled together. I am no coder, so inheriting my stuff might be a disadvantage.

The comparison is Tables v List markup.

Is there an example of list markup somewhere?  I'm not exactly sure what that represents at the code level.

[Derek Harkness]

I finally got my head round the code in the wikiskins. Boy did they do some things the hard way. Anyway, I have still to make many decisions about the skins. You can see one work in progress at http://www.dnselite.com/w/index.php/Biology and before anyone points out any bugs It's not finished yet!. It might not even be the one that we use. It's just me playing around to see what I can do with the system. However, I would like some ideas form people as to where to go form here.

I have managed to integrate the subpages template into the skin. So all the argument over the position of that template are now redundant. I can put it almost anywhere. In the skin shown in the link above, I've put is horizontally. It doesn't need to say there. I can move about. It could go diagonally if that will save arguments (I jest).

It is possible to add links and remove links from the current menus, change their order, position and appearance. So now comes the time to ask what do you want changed? What should be added? What should be removed?

[Stephen Ewen]

Derek, this is awesome. 

[Arne Eickenberg]

The German WP introduced some really neat alterations. The edit button is found right after the chapter title in smaller script… see e.g. here. This reduces editing problems with images to zero. And there's line spacing and footnote-numbers. See in this article how the footnote-numbers do not destroy the line spacing of the text. To my mind this should be applied here too. From a purely aesthetic point the English WP and CZ simply look shitty. (Pardon my French.)

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

Sounds like we Anglos can learn something from German quality control. Strange, that never happened before 

[Stephen Ewen]

The German WP introduced some really neat alterations. The edit button is found right after the chapter title in smaller script… see e.g. here. This reduces editing problems with images to zero. And there's line spacing and footnote-numbers. See in this article how the footnote-numbers do not destroy the line spacing of the text. To my mind this should be applied here too. From a purely aesthetic point the English WP and CZ simply look shitty. (Pardon my French.)

Very sharp. I think we should grab this bit of code and incorporate it.  Anyone around here speak German who could do that with the right folk? 

[Joe Quick]

It is possible to add links and remove links from the current menus, change their order, position and appearance. So now comes the time to ask what do you want changed? What should be added? What should be removed?

Very nice work.

I would like to see something not-gray, though.  Someone made a nice mock-up a while ago, but I can't find it anymore.  Tan might be nice...

[Derek Harkness]

I would like to see something not-gray, though.  Someone made a nice mock-up a while ago, but I can't find it anymore.  Tan might be nice...

That was my next question. What colour should CZ be? Wikipedia is a sort of purple if you look closely. I think we should go for a different hue to make us stand out as not the same. What hues take your fancy? Should we go for light blue like these forums, or what about Tan that Joe suggested? Maybe yellow or pink (Larry was talking elsewhere about girl boy imbalance, maybe a pink CZ would redress that issue?)

[Martin Baldwin-Edwards]

PINK?!!!! I hope you're not serious, Derek!

[Joe Quick]

PINK?!!!! I hope you're not serious, Derek!

The color scheme on the forums is too sterile.  I feel like I'm in the hospital.

I think yellow or tan would be best.  They're pretty neutral in color but still different than WP.  The goal should be to pick something that will make people feel welcome but something that noone would ever think to comment on (except for maybe: "Hey, I like the feel of this site a lot better than that Wikipedia deal.").  Pink would definitely draw comments.