*sigh* Bu-bye nice quartz look... I kinda liked a bit of the V2 quartz... (T_T And goodbye Quartz Switch setup... I'm going to have to rewrite the way the buttons are put in and styled) How about integration of the styled look of quartz with the monobook/quartz(V3) layout.
Here are some of my ideas: * Returning the curved header to the skin: ** Could try raising that logo area a bit higher (It looks even more space consuming than in V2). ** Rather than on the right, the curve could be on the left and be used to make the logo part of the top bar. *** This would also provide the extra benefit of a flat background so that transparent logos don't end up unreadable because of gradients in the real bg). *** If people still wanted the logo to show up against the background all they'd need to do is remove/not-include the header image, as the top bar would use the current markup based background displayed. In that way both of the liked versions are kept available. * The curved look to some areas of the skin: ** The Article_bars type image could actually be returned to the top of the Article area. It should work with that mockup without causing issues in reading. ** The previous suggestions I made on how to reintegrate the bottom Article_bars into the V2 Quartz Article area could also apply to the V3 skin. ** The Search bar at the top of the sidebar could be given the Article_bars style to. ** A curve (Not really the article bars style) could be added to the very bottom of the Sidebar (The related communities box, or if that's not always it, the bottom box could always be given a .last css class) *** Overall, rather than giving the sidebar boxes each curves, this would give the entire sidebar a more unified curve to it. Primarily, I think the outcry against Quartz with people wanting Monobook was layout, not style. It should be possible to integrate the monobook layout, with a bit of the fancy styling of quartz. Though I do have a thought about that bar at the bottom of the page with the repeat spotlight ads. You ever seen one of those sites with a list which rolled from right-to-left with a bunch of affiliate buttons to a bunch of topsite lists. Rather than something ugly of course... How about letting us list, (In a MW message) a number of wikia which are similar/related/affiliated with the wikia you're on. And inside that box at the bottom, they'll roll from right-to-left. Basically it'll be a logo image with a link to the wiki. Also, the sidebar is nice. Looks like we're using a custom MediaWiki message to create that one? I could make a suggestion... Just for the users without JS. This time could we add in a little extra css styling to style it nicely with CSS, then turn it into a hover menu with JS after so we know that we're not going to make it unusable to those without JS. ~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) JohnQ wrote: > I hate it when that happens. :) Screenshots attached. > >> Hi everyone, >> >> I have what may be an early "Winter holidays" present for many of you... >> >> We've been working on a new look for Wikia based on both the positive >> and negative feedback we've gotten on the V1 and V2 skins. We know >> the effort it takes for you to adjust to these skins but we think >> we've hit the right balance based on all the feedback. To recap, the >> biggest criticisms we received were: >> >> * don't push the article too far down the page (V1) >> * the right-hand sidebar is too wide (V1/V2) >> * we want something more like Monobook (V1/V2) >> >> With that input, we built a V3 that we believe addresses your >> concerns while still including the things that will help us grow the >> site: >> >> * a left-hand sidebar >> * a wider article space >> * more like Monobook >> * incorporate the features from V2 that are working >> * browsing behavior via top content and the more prominent >> search box are up (V2). >> * search suggest is useful for visitors (~30% of all searches >> use it... on some wikis 70%). >> * we still believe giving the community more visibility is the >> right thing to do. >> >> In doing this, however, we had to make one big trade-off. The only >> way to reduce the width of the right sidebar was to remove our best >> performing ad size (some of the ad networks will only buy that size). >> So... we need you to understand that the box ad format is good for >> the long-term health of Wikia and, while taking it off 99.99% of >> pages, we don't want to get rid of it entirely but rather only show >> it on the main page of each wiki since that one page still gets a >> decent amount of traffic. This is shown as a "featured media" box on >> one of the mockups. >> >> I'm including some mockups that show you what we've been working on. >> In addition, there's a new forum topic on it here: >> http://inside.wikia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=141 >> >> Thanks, >> John Q. > ______________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > _______________________________________________ Wikia-l mailing list [email protected] http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l
