Forum:Color/font coding of namespaces
If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.
Just to make wiki navigation a bit easier for new editors, I've made some changes to the way various namespaces look. Basically, the idea is to make the serif font associated only with the main namespace (normal articles). Sans-serif is to be used for things outside main. And monospace is for those namespaces having to do with the base operation of the MediaWiki software — where quickly seeing the difference between an O and a 0, a 1 and an l are important.
Furthermore, color coding helps in those cases where pages have exactly the same name. This is important now that we have hundreds of pages in the property namespace that have exactly the same name as they do in main. In other words, this helps to distinguish between director, talk:director (if it existed), forum:director (if it existed) and property:director.
| Namespace | Font | Background color | Hex |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main, File | serif (unchanged, but tables in both namespaces, and thumbnail captions are always in sans-serif by default) | transparent — approximately #ececec (but changes slightly depending on the site background) | |
| Talk[1] | sans-serif | #ddd | |
| Forum, User, Blog | sans-serif | #b1c7ff | |
| Forum archives[2] | sans-serif | #ffdf33 | |
| Tardis and Help | sans-serif | #cccce0 | |
| Howling | sans-serif | #ffebcc | |
| Howling archives[2] | sans-serif | #ebb06a | |
| Special | sans-serif | #d1c2b2; | |
| SMW namespaces (property, type, etc.) | mono (page headers, too) | #d1c2b2 | |
| Category namespaces | sans-serif | #c7c78c | |
| MediaWiki, Template | mono (page headers, too) | #eb9999 (but things in <pre> statements are #fae6e6) |
- ↑ "Talk" means ns:1 — talk pages on articles in main. All other talk namespaces, like File talk, Category talk, MediaWiki talk, and the like, are the same color/font as their parent namespace.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Not really a namespace. Refers to the shading applied by the use of {{archive}}, which must be in harmony wih the namespace's background.
A lot of the above has now been abandoned. Trying to colour code every namespace proved problematic as there were just too many namespaces and not enough colours that would go with black. Plus, it was all looking a bit "Skittles Dalek", if yanno what I mean.
I've therefore simplified a lot of this design ethos. Now, all pages in the main namespace are a blue-white background that fades to a darker blue which underlines the right rail. That way, I don't have to mess with any of the font colours. Everything still shows up basically the way it did with a simple off-white background, but we get a little artistic flair around the edges. So, a washed out TARDIS blue for the main Tardis pages. That makes good sense.
All other pages have a high-contrasty grey. So newbies will now know, "If I'm on a blue page, I'm in the main part of the wiki. If I'm on a grey page, I'm on a page that supports' the main article space.
Much of what was said above about fonts still holds true. Monospaced fonts where ya need it in the more code-heavy namespaces. Serif in the main namespace, sans-serif in discussion/help/tardis pages.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 11:31: Tue 21 Aug 2012
