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Project: New FootersEdit

Other NotesEdit

As you may have noticed, the new skin has made 'small' text unreadable, almost certainly due to a general shrinking of font size. The biggest issue that this has caused is that now many of our footers are unreadable, as they used small text. Initially I planned to fix just that, but in the process I went a little nuts and redid them all. The new versions are at User:JakePT/Sandbox/Footers.

As you can see they are also now all consistent with eachother, whereas currently, for example, Series, DLC and Classes all look entirely different.

I've also made them all the full width of the page. On the old skin this may have looked comical on large monitors, however, now that we are fixed width, and not an incredibly wide width I'll note, I think using the full width looks just fine and gives us room to use a more readable font size.

Other changes you may notice are that I've broken the DLC footer down into Free (Cerberus Network), Paid and Promotional. This, despite adding very little in the way of words, conveys much more information in that small box. You'll also notice that I split the classes footer in two. When trying to redesign it, anything other than separating them looked clunky, or inconsistent with other footers, as the current one does. However, I would simply have both boxes in the same template, and just have them look separate.

So, in short, I think we should replace all our old footers with these ones, or variations on these ones. If not, I suggest we still move to make our footers consistent and readable, which they currently are not, even if we don't use mine.

I'd also like to suggest a Powers footer, which will make navigating around Powers much easier, especially when starting from the page of an individual power, and even more so if arriving at that article from anywhere other than the Powers page.

CommentsEdit

Yeah if that is what we have to switch to, then I'm saying no and my stance won't change without whole scale changes. The new tables are too standardized for my taste and I whole heartily prefer the older ones which have a flare of individuality. I won't say no to modding those templates, but making them all standard is something I very much oppose. You can barely see the images anymore so why even have them at all. I like those images and I have to say that modding the current templates to fit is a much better option, IMHO, than replacing them with standardized templates that make the images smaller than the text in the old ones. So that's my opinion and again while consistency is nice, we can take some liberties with styling things like templates as the Squad Members templates matched, and the class template is now broken into two templates, why have two when someone may want to navigate to one of the specializations from the class page so having two templates makes more code and is less efficient because we have to replace all of the current templates with two ones. So, as you can see I have a lot, a lot, of issues with this and I propose modding the current templates rather than scrapping them altogether for more standardized ones. We can have individuality people, that’s never a bad thing. Also we already have way to many standardized tables here so the current ones break that up nicely. Lancer1289 16:13, October 9, 2010 (UTC)

I feel the opposite. I'd prefer standardization, at least in the templates' layouts, and the simpler the templates are the better. The larger links in most are certainly an improvement. And JakePT: I think you missed the template for ME2 weapons. -- Commdor (Talk) 18:34, October 9, 2010 (UTC)

And I prefer standardization too, but this just turns some very nice and already useful templates into cookie cutter copies. When I go to some wikis and see a bunch of cookie cutter templates at the bottom it can be an eyesore and sometimes hard to pick out which is which. Each of the templates has a purpose and making them all the same just makes the look tacky and like simple copies just with the features changed, and that I have a problem with. Also the images, which had a purpose before, now serve no purpose as they now looked tacked on as an afterthought and they also look tacky because of their size and they are now in the header. They are now too small to serve any purpose and again they just looked tacked on as an afterthought like someone who looked at them and tried to separate them, again tacky. When looking at these templates, the ones currently in use, at the bottom, they are different and they look interesting compared to the new ones where they are all just cookie cutter copies. I will vehemently oppose this change without significant modifications. Lancer1289 19:10, October 9, 2010 (UTC)

(narrowly averted edit conflict :P) I'm not to sure about the new classes/specializations footers. I don't really see the need for two footers instead of one. The only possible advantage I can see is that class pages can just have the one smaller footer, but at the same time, specializations would now need both. I'd be much more comfortable keeping them in one footer. Overall, the new ones don't look too shabby, IMO, but just throwing this out there: even in the "New Look", the current ("old" for the purposes of this page) footers are pretty easily readable for me, and I've got some pretty crappy eyes. SpartHawg948 19:15, October 9, 2010 (UTC)

Ooo. Me likey. Standardized footers would be good IMO. Right now there are so many different styles of footers... it looks kinda sloppy, if you ask me. I agree with SpartHawg's sentiment regarding the splitting of the 'classes' and 'specializations' footers... seems kinda pointless. Also: The updated series template dropped the "Downloadable content" section. Any particular reason?

I'm not really sure how to strike a compromise that keeps the "individuality" (sloppiness, in my opinion) of each current template, while working towards a standardized style. What exactly are you suggesting, Lancer? (or is it just 'no change'?) -- Dammej (talk) 19:29, October 9, 2010 (UTC)

Good call on the Series footer. Hadn't even noticed that... SpartHawg948 19:31, October 9, 2010 (UTC)

I prefer the new proposed change. Navigation layout shouldn't be made "unique" from each one other (Usability 101) and standardization helps in visual and navigation consistency. Also, the old template font size is too small (it is not meant to be fine print!), thus, bad for readability. Although I agree on one thing Lancer point out which is the image being too small. Other than that, the new one is much better. On the issue of image, may I suggest that it be made a little more prominent rather than the 15x15 icon it is now. — Teugene (Talk) 20:13, October 9, 2010 (UTC)

If this is to the final version, then yes I say no change. I'm certainly not opposed to change, but this just makes them way to standardized. I see this too often where there are three templates that look the exact same, but with different wording of course, on a page and it becomes hard to pick out each one as they tend to blur together. I can see them being brought into line to a degree, but this is way too much as it turns them into cookie cutter tables, which IMHO we already have enough of on this site. I'm saying that a little more work could go into them to make them more, appealing for lack of a better term, because I really have a problem with tables as it can turn an article into an Excel spreadsheet, and those aren't fun to read for any length of time. The images is one of the issues I currently have. If that is to be their permanent size, then just scrap them altogether as they are way too small to serve the purpose they do now, but I'd be opposed to that as well. If we are going to go with a standard format, then I'd suggest something along the lines of the {{Cerberus DLC Footer}}. That one looks much better on the eyes and in the article IMO than the "standard template". Now every one doesn't have to have an image and for that I have to say the series template, new or old, doesn't really matter, seems to work for that. However some have images and I say that getting rid of them makes them even less appealing.

As to the size of the text, I really don't see a problem with it as it looks fine to me as well and it doens't look line fine print. If it was that small, we couldn't read it altogether, but that's me.

As the split of the class template, I am also opposed to that as it just creates two templates where one worked fine before. Lancer1289 21:09, October 9, 2010 (UTC)

I'm not too sure how "too standardize" is a problem. I thought it's sorta our ethos to keep things standardize but I can understand where you are coming from. It may be bordering on "boring", but I believe we are here not to make things appealing but easier to use (which ironically, has a side-effect of being more appealing!). My suggestion is the images can be used as a differentiation between the templates, maybe to the size of the spoiler icons such {{Spoilers (Mass Effect 2)}} (the spoiler text is too small here too, but that's a separate topic altogether). Other than that, the overall layout arrangement should be consistent. And I agree about having the classes and specialization combine as it was. Helps keep pages simpler.

On the issue of font size, what I meant is it's too small to read comfortably. Screen resolutions and sizes play a part in this. On one of my 22" screen (1680x1050), it's 0.2cm (0.1") and on another 17" (1280x1024) it's a tad smaller. Bottom line is, users shouldn't really be squinting to read text (or I may need thicker glasses).

And I forgot to say this, good work Jake! You put much effort into this! — Teugene (Talk) 22:47, October 9, 2010 (UTC)

@Lancer, It's not two templates. It's two boxes, but they'd be in the same template. Only reason being merging them looked odd. I'll play around some more, I did these all very quickly (as you can see by the number of mistakes.

Also, the text is readable, as in you can read it, but it's unnecessarily difficult. I should note I'm on a Mac, which uses Helvetica on the new wikia, which may be harder to read at that font size compared to Arial, which I'm guessing you're all seeing. I'll take a look when I boot into Windows later today.

@Dammej, DLC isn't meant to be missing, I guess it just got lost in all the cutting and pasting I did. As I mentioned, I did these quickly, and there's bound to be more mistakes.

@Commdor, Must've missed the weapons, looking at the navigation category I musnt've have noticed it because it has an odd name. However, now that I look at it I see a fourth kind of footer.JakePT 02:30, October 10, 2010 (UTC)

Sigh... no @Spart. Sidelined again. I guess my comments and issues just didn't merit a reply... :( SpartHawg948 05:19, October 10, 2010 (UTC)

I addressed your concern in my reply to Lancer. Sorry, next time I'll consider your feelings. :P JakePT 05:55, October 10, 2010 (UTC)

If there's no @Spart, what more me? :) — Teugene (Talk) 14:59, October 10, 2010 (UTC)

I've made some changes (and I just realised Sandboxes don't have history, dammit). I actually prefer them this way. Basically they are more like the current ones, but fill the page and have more legible text. I also gave images to Classes (Spectre logo) and Races (Citadel logo), which I felt were appropriate and I removed promotional items from the DLC footer, since they're not DLC per se. I can either put them back in, make a promotional items footer or leave them off. So I think I've been able to address Lancer's concerns, while keeping them consistent and readable.JakePT 05:55, October 10, 2010 (UTC)

Sandboxes don't have history? Because I've always been able to access the history on all of mine. Anyway I do like the changes, but I still thing that if the images are going to be that small, then they need to go, and I don't want that either. The images for the DLC, Classes, Armor, and Races can all be bigger, especially the first two and the last one. Lancer1289 05:59, October 10, 2010 (UTC)

I think Jake is referring to the fact that there's no easy way to see history on a page in the User namespace with the new skin. Kinda annoying.

Also... How are the images too small? Aside from the Cerberus DLC footer, they're all 30px wide... exactly the same width that they are now. Making them fill the table will make it look tacky. I still prefer the templates from Jake's original proposal, but if the images are really that important, I can live with it... -- Dammej (talk) 07:53, October 10, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I can't see a History button anywhere, but it wouldn't be the first time I couldn't find something that was right there. Is there a way to do it still?

Also, Dammej is right, making the images any bigger would make them pretty huge, though maybe the Races and Classes ones could be bigger, since their shape makes them look small. The DLC one is smaller though, since the original image is taller, so I resized it to be proportional to the other images, so it looks the same size.JakePT 10:05, October 10, 2010 (UTC)

The new one looks like a good compromise to me. How about retaining the background colour for the headers which was in there previously or does it not look good with it? Overall, feels like a good balance between standardization and maintaining the "uniqueness" of each template. — Teugene (Talk) 14:59, October 10, 2010 (UTC)