Forum:The New New look

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Moving this from the front page talk page to here, which is slightly better suited for discussions.

I've looked through User:Imperial Grand Survey/wikia.css and extracted just the changes to User:Tjoneslo/wikia.css in order to try them. I have the following comments:

• Pick a cleaner background image. The scratchy image is distracting.
• Because there is no gutter (white space) between the background image and edge of the article, the text in the background overlaps that of the article making it confusing to read.
• The WikiArticle and WikiRail must be side by side. This is one of the can't be changed rules from Wikia. I think this is because the rail holds advertising for the not-signed-in users. So you will need to make the two chunks work together.
• We may have to be careful of the black background with colored stripe. Mongoose has claimed the look as trademark for their Traveller line. I'm not sure how far we can push the look without getting in trouble, and I'd rather not find out the hard way.
• I like the idea of using percentage widths, as I don't like having my browser set to the full width of my screen. But my preferred browser width is too narrow for the default Wikia width.

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, it's not supposed to be. Too much time testing software, not enough interfacing with real people. Tjoneslo 00:00, March 30, 2011 (UTC)

Not harsh at all, just honest opinion which is all I could ask for. This was very much a first cut and I made multiple changes (without keeping perfect track of them, remiss of me I know but....) so some of your comments relate to things I still want to change or fine tune but time has conspired against me to get them done. I must sit down with the original version of the css file and document all my changes and see if I can get them sorted better before having another shot at getting things right.

• The image - yes it's scratchy - it is in fact a scan of the lid my original black box - purchased I think in 1979! The original is a lot scratchier, I did a bit of touch up work with PaintShopPro. I actually thought the slightly scratchy look made it look a bit "battle worn" a bit like Beowulf itself, but I can see how it might be distracting.
• Gutter. This will require a bit of work with the positioning of the article in the body part of the page. It seems there are about 4 or 5 places where this needs to be defined to get it to work correctly, I don't think I've set them all exactly the same in this version, something to work on.
• WikiArticle and WikiRail; I was unaware of this stipulation and I've actually simply made WikiArticle 100% of the centre panel, partly because I wanted a quick fix but mostly because there is no guide I can find to the actual layout from Wikia which means most changes are a matter of suck it and see. Easy enough to fix (when I can work out how I've changed it in the first place).
• Mongoose. Bugger. There are a number of options, including asking them for permission and finding a better image. I wanted an image that was quintessentially "Traveller" and I thought the original black books were about as quintessential as one could get. If anyone else has other suggestions for an image please speak up.
• Percentage widths. Frankly if you are doing CSS without them then you've obviously never heard of wide screen monitors or people like Tjoneslo who use reduced widths and you shouldn't be doing web design, let alone css. I'm surprised the supposed gurus from Wikia went to all that trouble to design Oasis and did it all in fixed width. The only real issue with it is when people have really narrow screens, but they have just as much trouble with fixed widths as percentage ones. The rolled gold solution is to have a test for windows under a certain size and have then default to a fixed width with scroll bars, but that is very, very hard indeed with such a complex css installation.

I'm open to any and all suggestions, hopefully this week I'll get a chance to have another play with the look and see if I can get it a bit better. Imperial Grand Survey 23:46, April 2, 2011 (UTC)