Forum:New mobile-friendly infobox

Forum: The Situation Room > New mobile-friendly infobox

Wanted to get everyone's thoughts on switching over to the new Wikia infobox - much more device friendly and IMO a visual step up from the all-purpose one we currently use. To see it properly you'll need to copy everything on my stylesheet to your own; some of it won't look right otherwise. Examples here --Pyramidhead (talk) 05:57, September 1, 2016 (UTC)

They look good, a lot better and we definitely need to do something about our mobile skin. A couple of questions:

1. Is it possible to specify the width of the pictures in the infobox?
2. Do we need to make lots of infoboxes for each different use? Is it possible to keep it as one template?
3. Not sure on the "previous" and "next" fields on the events infobox - their placement for one, and really if they're appropriate (in what sense are the events "consecutive" to each other, in universe?)

But generally, really good improvement! Great work, I meant to do something about portable infoboxes ages ago--Acer4666 (talk) 09:42, September 1, 2016 (UTC)

Not really possible to set image width, probably the biggest downside. But with theming we can have a few different width/height settings to account for weird situations - check out the Norway example down at the bottom now. I haven't tried combining them all into one template yet but I think it would be a huge hassle - the episode one at least definitely needs to be its own. Should be simple to convert pages by category though with the bot. As for the event template - I was thinking of it as a timeline companion; the major incidents aren't directly consecutive but they do let you navigate through the course of the show in an interesting way. There aren't a whole lot of events at the moment so it should be pretty easy to put together the correct order. Could certainly move them elsewhere in the template though --Pyramidhead (talk) 10:33, September 1, 2016 (UTC)

One of my concerns is how much extra vertical space these will take up. Compare our current Solarz page to the new version. The page is almost twice the height with a load of empty space. Do the fields need to be stacked on top of each rather than "Key": "value" on the same line?--Acer4666 (talk) 14:11, September 1, 2016 (UTC)

Modified it - so we can independently set both stacked fields or not and group subheadings or not based on the situation. Obviously it doesn't make sense to have three different subheadings for someone like Solarz who only has four relevant fields, so the way it is now the infobox defaults to side-by-side and no subheadings except for "Behind the scenes." Actually, it might be good to make "Behind the scenes" collapsed by default - it kinda helps ensure that the whole top part of every article is strictly in-universe, while you can still see all of that up front if you choose to. --Pyramidhead (talk) 23:48, September 1, 2016 (UTC)

That's much better where you can group subheadings. I'd be against hiding the BTS info by default, I think it may not be immediately obvious to some visitors that there's more info that you need to click on something to reveal.

I still think the spacing of the fields is a little inefficient with space. I played around with

.portable-infobox .pi-item-spacing {
    padding: 5px 10px;
}

Altering those numbers to have less padding, and got something a little bit more space efficient in the way that the current sidebars are.--Acer4666 (talk) 10:40, September 2, 2016 (UTC)

If you want you could add the pi- classes to the site CSS - shouldn't affect anything already on the articles. --Pyramidhead (talk) 19:23, September 3, 2016 (UTC)

I'll put it on when we've made a decision on how to do these infoboxes. I set the padding to 2px 8px on my css, and think it makes the sidebars more compact.

I also think we don't need to split them into loads of templates. The episode one can be a separate template as it is with the current sidebars, but having one flexible template for other things is useful. How far will we go to split it up...Objects? Animals? Copmuter programs? Mr. Floppy? These all benefit from have a flexible template that can adapt. How many fields will need to be present in different contexts? The ability to manage what headers appear on a per-use basis means we can have all the fields on the one template--Acer4666 (talk) 23:18, September 3, 2016 (UTC)

I guess I don't see the upside of continuing to use one template for everything - can't tell you how many times I tried to add a field and had to scroll down for ages, or forgot to account for how it would impact other article types, or had to come up with some ridiculous workaround like the "OOU line" situation. It will be great to be able to know exactly what needs to go on each template, and if new ones are called for we'll be able to add them in seconds. As far as spacing honestly I think it works best as it currently is - tried 2 8 like you said but it makes the group bars way too skinny, and on stacked layout the fields seem to run together. --Pyramidhead (talk) 23:33, September 3, 2016 (UTC)

Tried it some more and 2 8 is okay actually, may take some getting used to though --Pyramidhead (talk) 23:44, September 3, 2016 (UTC)

Seems to look best with Npx (2n)px - I like 2 4, 3 6 --Pyramidhead (talk) 23:53, September 3, 2016 (UTC)

OK cool. Yeah the small padding is how the sidebars currently are, so it should look ok. There's surely some way to make the .pi-headers have extra padding by themselves? I don't know the css well enough to work it out.

I still don't see a strong enough case for splitting the sidebar template. You're saying scrolling to the bottom of the template is a huge undertaking, but copying and pasting all the code to a separate template and altering the different fields takes "seconds"? I don't understand the "account for how it would impact other article types" (can you give an example of the problem you're describing?) and the OOU line is the same as this "behind the scenes" header that the new template has.

Having multiple ones also means that when someone creates an article they have to go through all of the different infobox templates to work out which one is appropriate for the article they're making. That's on a per use basis (until that editor is intimately familiar with the different ones), rather than adding extra fields which happens relatively infrequently--Acer4666 (talk) 10:32, September 4, 2016 (UTC)

I can't recall a specific incident - but I just tried to combine the new infobox and I'm already having problems. This time, it's the layout hacks I did for the character template causing problems on all the other ones - i.e. hiding the subheaders by default unless you specify "detailed = 1", etc. This is the kind of thing I mean. As you said, we already use a specific episode template - why not extend that to the rest? It won't be more than a dozen total - character, location, object, event, season, series, book, comic, game, person. As for new editors, that's who the newpage templates are for. Just add a bunch more of those with the correct sidebar templates already in place. --Pyramidhead (talk) 20:56, September 4, 2016 (UTC)

The solution is not to hack it together! I'm sure it's possible to do properly with conditional statements. I'm waiting on some tech help from community central but will work out a way to combine them all.

Also, it's possible to transclude the fields for the different types on their own subtemplates to solve the issue of scrolling through section you mentioned.--Acer4666 (talk) 21:48, September 4, 2016 (UTC)

Maybe you're right man - it just seems to me the supposed upsides aren't worth the headache. It's not like individual templates are unheard of - virtually every wiki does this. Different sidebars have different requirements, plus with themes we would have so much more flexibility to modify the look of each different type if we needed to --Pyramidhead (talk) 00:49, September 5, 2016 (UTC)

Modifying the look of different types of sidebars is precisely what we don't want to do! They should have a consistent visual look, and not splitting them up means any visual style changes need to be done to 2 templates rather than 12. Any use of the sidebar has different requirements, so depending how fine grained you go you could split them up endlessly.

I would suggest that if we split them, we split them based on visual style. To me, there isn't much difference between typing out "Sidebar |theme=detailed" and "Sidebar/detailed", so it'd make sense to have a "detailed" sidebar and a "non-detailed" one for the two different visual looks.--Acer4666 (talk) 17:19, September 5, 2016 (UTC)

Part 2

Really want to get this done sooner than later. How about this? You have "stacked" and "headers" params to handle every possible variant, plus themes to control the image and overall width. It's still divided by article type but that's to simplify setting these parameters for each one. Ideally we would use the sub-templates exclusively but we could keep the "main" template around in some form. I feel if it's really well documented - in addition to the new Newpage templates - it's really not that difficult for newer users.

Also have some other changes, you can see these on the linked documentation pages:

• Changing the affiliation field to a nested list. I think this is better than (for example) awkwardly listing "Counter Terrorist Unit" and then "CTU Los Angeles" in a separate field.
• Changing Birthplace, Birthdate, Deathdate, etc. into single fields, "Born" and "Died". This seems more encyclopedic and it also lets us list death places. Very easy to bot edit this for all the existing pages
• Probably more I'm forgetting - go check it out! --Pyramidhead (talk) 10:42, November 27, 2016 (UTC)

I'd like to keep the styling (e.g. the spacing and colour of the top header) the same as we currently have. As for the actual template, it seems like there's a few different parameters controlling the width, style etc. on an article-by-article basis: How are you proposing to carry out this change? Seems like you might have to go through each page individually to select the right kind of sidebar. Do you have a page of different examples showing off the different styles like this page (but for this latest example)?--Acer4666 (talk) 12:21, November 27, 2016 (UTC)

There are examples on each documentation page, should cover most of the ones on that page. The way it's set up there's a sidebar begin template that accepts the formatting params, so there's default settings for each one - for example the character one is automatically set up with the headers all hidden except the last one. Then you can change these individually on the actual article if you want to. To switch them all over we would go through each main category and add the "/character" or "/location" to the template. Then I guess it would be case-by-case to see which ones would benefit from being stacked, being extra-wide, and so on. --Pyramidhead (talk) 21:38, November 27, 2016 (UTC)

Is putting "stacked=last" meant to not stack the last group of fields? Cos it doesn't seem to have done that for the Jack Bauer example.

Where this conversation ended last time, we weren't going to split them into character, location, etc. What changed? Putting "part 2" in the middle of a discussion doesn't mean we ignore everything previous!--Acer4666 (talk) 23:18, November 27, 2016 (UTC)

Fixed. As I said: I've tried again and again and there's no way to use one template and have it behave the way it should for every possible article type, without having to specify those parameters on every single article. And to be frank, I've yet to hear a compelling reason to keep the existing one beyond noob-friendliness - which is just a matter of better documenting and explaining how each template works, as I've done. I just don't understand - why is it okay to use a dedicated episode sidebar, but everything else is verboten?

Now - technically, the way it's set up on the mirror wiki, you can still use Template:Sidebar on every article - you just need to add a "| version = character" row, if that works for you as an alternative? --Pyramidhead (talk) 23:47, November 27, 2016 (UTC)

Like I said, I'm not against splitting them up (or having a "|version =" flag) for different stylings (like we do with the episode ones) but having different sidebars with mutually exclusive fields for each is needlessly restrictive. The main upside to having one true sidebar is flexibility - right now, with the ones you've created, what do we use for objects, animals, computer programs, out of universe props? All these things have the sidebar in use, and the great thing about it is that it's adaptable to many different kinds of articles. Having one would also eliminate the need for nasty things like two sidebars squashed onto one page, which I think looks bad.--Acer4666 (talk) 00:00, November 28, 2016 (UTC)

Yikes! I hadn't seen those animal sidebars before, not sure how I feel about those - and object sidebars in general, honestly, but that's probably for another thread. So that's one more template for objects - easy enough! I can appreciate the flexibility of the universal template - and it would be a good idea to keep it around in some form for those situations - but it also makes it harder to maintain. There's value in being able to include possible fields for a particular article, rather than having to exclude them from the huge possible set we currently have. If, for example, we someday decided to remove a particular field from just location articles, it's much simpler to delete one row on Sidebar/location than have to iterate through every single location article and remove the parameter. About the two sidebars on one page: that's because the article covers both the plane and the attack. I can't imagine how you could combine those two since they refer to different topics.

Would really like to hear some other people weigh in - seems like it's just you and me batting shit back and forth lately, haha. I can see the appeal in the universal template - it's just that in my experience, with the group headers and the new formatting requirements, it's going to be a huge pain to keep it in one template compared to breaking them apart. --Pyramidhead (talk) 01:37, November 28, 2016 (UTC)

I'll echo the call for more opinions.

Seems to me like the use case you describe (deleting a field which is used across multiple categories, from just one specific category) is pretty niche - and for peace of mind, I'd probably want to run a bot across the category to remove the source code field rather than just not displaying it so as to not confuse editors who see a non-displaying field everywhere.--Acer4666 (talk) 23:17, November 30, 2016 (UTC)

Well, guess we're not going to settle it before the new episode - any objection if I update the existing template in place to use the new syntax? I have an updated version that keeps it in one template and looks the same as it does now. Also some other tweaks which I don't think were objected to:

• Allows tabbed image gallery
• "Born" and "Died" in place of birthdate, deathdate, etc.
• "character" in addition to "role" for cast/crew articles
• Allows bulleted lists

Things that are new:

• The Game missions will need to use sidebar/episode instead of the default
• Removed hour from The Game mission nav - seems pointless

--Pyramidhead (talk) 04:46, February 5, 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, sounds good! Maybe the time at which a Game mission takes place could be just another key value option along with the other parameters--Acer4666 (Talk) 09:38, February 5, 2017 (UTC)

Got a little while before next ep - if I promise not to break the site again (lol) are we okay to fix up The Game missions and then add the new sidebar? --Pyramidhead (talk) 01:58, February 9, 2017 (UTC)

Sure - one thing you didn't mention above was the shortening of the titles and making a tooltip to hover over and see the remaining letters. That feels kind of awkward to me, as there seems to be space for the full "production number" text in our current templates. Is it possible to keep that the same for the episode ones?

Also, when you switched this over earlier, as well as the bold font, the spacing was different (much more of a blank margin around the text beneath the picture). Is it possible to make a test template on this wiki to see how our styling affects it before switching over all the infoboxes?--Acer4666 (Talk) 08:34, February 9, 2017 (UTC)

Well that one's unnecessary, I upped the flex-basis a little, but in general it's just to make abbreviations clearer, not necessarily to replace full words where it's unnecessary. For instance I think it would be better to do that with "Sig. others" rather than have the whole term which spills over a line. As for the padding, that was a bug w/pre-existing .pi- classes on Common.css. If it doesn't look the way it should I'll fix it! --Pyramidhead (talk) 22:13, February 9, 2017 (UTC)