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Forums: Index > Watercooler > Wikia's new look, November 2010


We admins have been sent a message about Wikia's proposed new look. I've been familiar with it for a few weeks since I volunteered to help with the Beta testing. The rest of you can see an update and link to a trial roll-out: http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Sannse/Important_Updates_on_Wikia%E2%80%99s_New_Look

There won't be an opt-out provision but we will be able to tinker with colours and fonts a bit.

I've said some of the above in a message to our mailing-list, but you don't all see that.

I like the changes except for the savage reduction in article width. Down to 55% of my screen width. And a few things don't appear that should, but that's probably teething-trouble, fixable.

Robin Patterson (Talk) 00:57, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

General appearance

I've noticed that on the Glee Wikia there are photo's from Glee and on the Red Dead there is also a custom background. Hoe do we do that? The happy little bird and clouds is doing nothing for me to say 'Genealogy'. Lanica 20:17, October 6, 2010 (UTC)

OK, looking at Special:ThemeDesigner, which admins can edit, I think I've removed the chirpy birds and used some colours reminiscent of antique book covers. Anybody see the browns (rich brown top panel and pale brown side panels)? Comments? — Robin Patterson (Talk) 03:05, October 18, 2010 (UTC)

Adjusting to narrower article space

As I said above, the width is reduced. Our former layout that let the child box sit bedside the infobox (unless one of them was extra wide) is somewhat at risk. It can still work - see Bruce Whealton Sr. (1940-) for a current example (until one of the boxes there is widened, which could happen any day when Bruce Junior adds more data).

We may need to get our template experts to chew this over. Can we force one or other of the boxes to be a bit narrower most of the time? Should we do more to urge the use of shorter page names (because when they are in an infobox and don't yet have a page they are unbreakable buttons)?

Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:34, October 18, 2010 (UTC)

Welcome to my world: since I am running my screen at 1024x768, I have always found the child box being forced to at least 3 lines. That is why I usually put {{clear}} before the children, so that the child box is forced below the info box. Thurstan 04:59, October 18, 2010 (UTC)
If that applies even to the above example, you are probably in a very substantial minority or even a majority and should be properly catered for. We should probably redesign the top of our pages. Such as widening the infobox to half the available width - only slightly cramping the mini-biography and whatever detailed bio users add - and using {{clear}} as part of the standard page just above the child box so that the children are always below the infobox; then we can give them full width and introduce a marriages column for them. The new look involves "fixed width" - doubtless our template experts know what that may require us to do to aspects of our coding. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 05:28, October 18, 2010 (UTC)

Seeing semantic facts

When I was Beta-testing, I reported that I could not see facts on sensor pages. Not checked since. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 05:28, October 18, 2010 (UTC)

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