I agree with you 100% on this. -Timothy
----- Original Message ---- From: DanTMan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Central Wikia Mailing List <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 1:53:02 AM Subject: [Wikia-l] Quartz Skin Layout Feedback #1 [Footer] ^_^ I think it's time for some nice positive feedback on what parts of Quartz I've liked as the skin has changed around having various different layouts. For this one, I think a bit of feedback on what I really liked in the different versions of the Quartz footers so that the nice features can be emphasized. Just for some information on the difference. This is the quartz footer before the recent update (From an old screenshot on the Animepedia): And this is the one after the recent update (From a recent screenshot on Inside Wikia [Since the coloring looks bad on Animepedia since I colored the skin before the update]): I'm not saying either version is better. I'm actually saying that each one has things that I love about it, and rather than a revert or stick, a merge of both versions would be awesome! Now I'll detail the differences: Feature Pre-Upgrade Post-Upgrade General Style Footer was contained completely in a colored, curved bar. Curved bar was removed, everything and more is now in white box. Rate this article Rate bar was located in the curved bar. Rate bar is now located at the bottom of the white box. Share this article Share this article was located in the curved bar as icons, and hovering over the icon would give you a nice transparent bubble with the name. Share this article is now a section in the footer box and has the icons with the name to the right. New stuff: Edit, Discuss, Edit information, Random page, New page, and Email article links were added, the first 3 had nice text to attract newbies to it. Now for a bit of input on what is great about each of the versions and a little bit on disadvantages of some stuff: * The new edit, discussion, edit information, and other buttons are nice for newbies and actually attract them to them unlike 90% of the other stuff on the page. In fact, just from looking at it, I can tell you that any new person would be more tempted to click on that link down there than they would be to click the edit tab. * The links on the right are nice an useful for new users who always want to find their way around the site, e-mail things to friends, and are always asking "How do I create an article?". * The curved bar worked quite nice with the visual flow of the page. Everything that was on it fit in it's place, and it nicely complemented the rest of the article contents. * However since the curved bar has been removed in the new version, it is missing the visual flow. The article no longer flows off it's island onto the background. * In addition, the new links are not as helpful for established editors. They take up more of the page than they help. Now is what I think would be a good step forward: * Don't remove the new links and stuff. It's great for newbies. * Put the curved bar back. * Since the links aren't as helpful for the experienced editors. Allow us to collapse the box and store that state in a cookie that persists across all wikia. (But yes, making it so that the collapse cookie for an anon is different than the collapse cookie for other users would be a good idea. That way users logging in on public computers won't end up collapsing the box in their account and making newbies using the same computer not see it). * Move the rate and share it back to the curved bar. * Since we'd have a curved bar, and a box. For visual style, why not make it a kind of folding panel. The curved bar slides down to reveal a helpful panel. And slides up when you don't need it. It's a very bad graphical representation because I used images from different wiki. But here's an idea of what it could end up like. As you'll see the new links are still there. We have the rate and share stuff back inside the curved bar and it is there. Just for a graphical tweak I moved the "Unrate it" link so that it is actually in a good location this time (It was a little high in the previous version). And I added an extra separator with a bad arrow made from the stars (Of course a proper one would be made for the real thing) that would allows you to collapse the extra section. [Perhaps we could even allow for widgets inside there? There is room for a third area for those people who have room, and Widgets are optional] -- ~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of: -The Gaiapedia (http://gaia.wikia.com) -Wikia ACG on Wikia.com (http://wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_ACG) -and Wiki-Tools.com (http://wiki-tools.com) ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs _______________________________________________ Wikia-l mailing list [email protected] http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l
