Forum:Wikipediainfo tag seems to be broken

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Just noticed that the tag of Wikipediainfo doesn't seem to produce any result on the page anymore. Is this just me, or are other users seeing this as well? I noticed on the page Spitfire first, and confirmed it on World War II, Winston Churchill and Vincent van Gogh. Monkey with a Gun 03:49, June 15, 2011 (UTC)

Is it just not appearing or being placed oddly on the page? I had both issues a few days ago, but refreshing my cache seemed to fix it. I'm not seeing any issues on the pages you've linked to. --Tangerineduel / talk 13:23, June 15, 2011 (UTC)

From time to time, for reasons I don't understand, Wikia seems to disable its wikis' ability to "read" their CSS files. Usually it doesn't last very long, but there are moments where we lose various degrees of functionality. This certainly would have a negative effect upon seeing {{wikipediainfo}}. A good tip-off that things are being affected at the Wikia Central level is to examine the "Recent Wiki Activity" box. If it's suddenly got a totally different font, hold onto your hat; weird things are afoot.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 18:30:28 Fri 17 Jun 2011 

While we're on the subject of that tag, there's an issue I brought up on its talk page which I feel might be worth addressing sometime. For readers of the wiki using a 1024px screen width or smaller, or those with larger screens who are using a non-maximized browser window that size, the tag is never visible because the main content box it's outside of takes up the entire browser width. Rob T Firefly 22:41, June 19, 2011 (UTC)

I can't replicate what you're talking about, given the parameters you've suggested above. Could you please take a screenshot and post it here? I can, however, replicate it if I zoom in. You haven't mentioned it above, but are you sure you aren't seeing a horizontal scrollbar at the bottom of your browser window? You can't stop someone from zooming in. The best you can hope for is that when they're zoomed in, they can scroll to the left and right and see all elements of your page.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 15:31:47 Mon 27 Jun 2011 

Pictorial investigation of RTF's problem

You wrote at the template talk page:

I discovered the problem; it's not that it wasn't showing, it was that on the 1024px screen width I use the main text column fills the entire usable screen area, leaving the Wikipedia tag outside the screen's left border and unviewable. I've confirmed this on another computer as well as with this screen-width testing tool. It seems the tag in its present form is unviewable to those with smaller screens. Rob T Firefly 03:58, May 14, 2011 (UTC)

I've now had a chance to examine this screen-width testing tool, and think there's something seriously flawed about it. Here's the Winston Churchill page taken in three different resolutions. Look carefully at the green outer border, meant, I suppose, to suggest total monitor real estate.

• 

  1024 (green is practically non-existent on the left side)

• 

  1152 (green area still skewed right)

• 

  1280 (green area still skewed right, but comfortable space on left)

The software used at viewlike.us is, of course, free. And I think you're getting what you pay for. In my experience, browser windows just don't work the way they're described here. They're not automatically increasingly left-justified just because you drop the screen resolution. What happens is that the browser senses it's got less room to work with, and therefore the horizontal scroll bar comes into play. Here's what happened when I actually dropped my own screen res to 640 X 480 — a resolution so freakin' low that my computer actively warned me against doing it.

At 640 width. Note that the wikipediainfo tag is still visible, so long as I've scrolled alllllll the way to the left.

I'd point out, too, that if you are finding the site annoying to view in 1024, just change your screen resolution. It's been a long time – almost ten years — since anyone's maxiumum resolution width was a lowly 1024. Surely your adapter will let you go to at least 1280. Even if you don't have the ability to bump up your resolution, I find it hard to believe that your browser isn't allowing you to scroll left to see the borders. You must not be able to use the monobook skin at all if you can't see these tags, because they're at least 75 px to the right of the monobook left margin. But you must be able to edit in monobook, because you've been editing here since before this new wikia skin came in. And honestly, if you can edit in monobook you absolutely must be able to see these tags.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 16:56:40 Mon 27 Jun 2011 

Here's a shot of a page from this wiki maximized at 1024 resolution on a Windows box running Chrome, which is hardware-limited to 1024px; this is the view which caused me to first post about this issue when the template was moved from inside the content column to outside. Only the taskbar at the bottom has been cropped out.

It is not always possible to change screen resolutions on older flat-panel monitors or laptops, and new netbook screens still generally top out at 1024px wide. Browsing on netbooks and other smaller devices such as smartphones, ebook readers, and tablets will only continue to rise in popularity. Additionally, though I don't know the stats for this particular site, statistics-gathering organizations still show 1024px or lower screen widths in current use ranging from roughly 15-20% [1] [2] [3]; while it's slowly trending downward, it's not at all obsolete. The logs on all of the websites I myself work on or contribute to, personally as well as professionally, all place the portion of users at 1024 or lower within this range. While this may not be considered a majority segment of the potential userbase, it's still what I would call a significant portion worth including in full use of the site if at all possible.

I wasn't posting my issue just to express my own personal annoyance. Looking at it from a professional standpoint, I believe excluding any significant segment of the userbase from any general functionality, especially in a manner entirely invisible to them (even if they could do so, how would someone who cannot see that anything's missing know to "just change" their screen resolution?) is just not a positive step to take if it can be avoided. Rob T Firefly 04:37, July 8, 2011 (UTC)

I never thought you were expressing personal dissatisfaction. But I couldn't replicate your issue, and no one else was talking about it, so I needed to look at it from your perspective. I don't want to exclude anyone either, but I think you're over-estimating the difficulty of using this site at lower resolutions. Again, as I've demonstrated above, I can go down to half the 1024 width — far below what anyone's using, and still get horizontal scrollability. I know, even at that tiny 640 width, that the page is scrolling to my left and right. I know to move the scrollbar. You seem to be suggesting that you don't see this. Are you saying that you're not getting horizontal scrollbars at any point when your monitor is at 1024? Is this issue only happening when you've maximized the window? I can't tell on your picture, because you've cropped it above the line of where a horizontal scroll would normally be.

It would shock the hell out of me, however, if you've got your browser preferences at absolute default, and you're not getting any horizontal scrollbars. Are you saying that you can't move your mouse wheel to the left and have the page scroll left? Or that when you scroll to the very bottom of a page that you aren't greeted by an intersecting horizontal scroll? Is there nothing you can do to access that part of the page?

I know that you've said upthread you've tried other browsers, but are you sure this isn't browser specific? You've shown me only Chrome here. Have you thoroughly tested it on different browsers, making sure that you're using each browser under default conditions?

Also, I return to this question that you haven't answered. I know you edited here when we were on monobook. These tags are well within the monobook footprint. It's inconceivable to me that you could use monobook but yet not see these tags in the wikia skin. When you look at Baseball in monobook, what exactly do you see? Monobook is even wider than Wikia. So if you're able to see the whole of Monobook, you should be able to see the whole of Wikia.

Finally, we also need to explore your OS settings. Have you done something within Control Panel that's having a knock-on effect in your browsers. Have you somehow reduced an accessability setting? Have you done something within Internet Options that's limiting performance across all browsers that access Internet Options? Is there some global setting that you've tripped that other users around here haven't?

I know I'm grilling you with questions. But I have to. Because I don't have this experience at all, under any width. With any browser. Even on my iPhone, when I choose to look at the site normally, I can scroll all the way to the left and see the wikipediainfo tag. Point is, if we're going to solve this thing, you're gonna have to do more work and report back here, so that I can understand why your experience is so radically different from mine.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 10:14:24 Sat 09 Jul 2011 

Sorry for leaving you hanging. I've demonstrated what's going on in this video. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 22:11, October 9, 2011 (UTC)

The incorrect positioning of the tag in Firefox which I demonstrate in that video has stopped happening. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 23:37, October 10, 2011 (UTC)

Wikipediainfo tag's position has changed

For some reason, the tag no longer appears near the top of the article pages in either skin, but according to its position in the article itself, which usually means that it shows up at the bottom of the page. Doug86 15:34, September 23, 2011 (UTC)

This sort of behavior is usually temporary. Wikia can issue a command which makes local wikis stop reading their own .css files. Weird things happen in the hours surrounding the issuance of this command. It can also happen when we do something locally to our .css. Either thing could have happened in the last month. About the only thing an individual user can do aobut it is refresh their cache until it goes awy. In any event, it's been long resolved.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 01:36: Tue 11 Oct 2011