Hmmmm, that's very odd. What's your OS version number?
User:SOTO/Forum Archive/A new Tardis, at last
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CzechOut
Hey everyone :)
Those who have been around this community for a while know that Christmas is a time of change more than tradition. Since the holidays are when one tends to get brand new Doctors, it makes sense that we at Tardis view it as a time of renewal, as well.
In past Decembers we've:
- given holiday amnesties to our entire block list
- introduced this particular style of forum
- added new admin
- come up with major CSS overhauls
This year will be no different. Not only are we nominating a new admin (more about that later), but we're also going to be an early adopter of the new article layout that most of Wikia won't see until sometime in 2015.
As this community experienced back in 2010 when the current Wikia skin first went online, it is simply much better and more productive to get out in front of these major code overhauls than it is to sit back and wait.
It gives us a chance as a community actually affect code design — as we did with the development of these very forums.
So, sometime probably tomorrow we'll see the new article design kick in. At some point over the next little bit, most of the CSS and JS for tardis will be stripped way, way back. Some things may not work as expected, and there may be a period where we have a "naked" version of Wikia/Oasis while we await the new layout.
It may take us a few weeks to get everything sorted and working. But it'll take a lot less time if you use this particular forum, Board:A new Tardis, at last, to describe things you don't like, or comment upon things you do.
Tardis has always been a community at the forefront of change here at Wikia, and I have no doubt this new phase of Wikia development will leave us a more attractive, consistently-coded site.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them below. :)
- TimeShade
I strongly believe wikia should create a new skin. The new one with the new layout and vabar while oasis gets it the way it was before the new navbar. The biggest issue I have with new layout is that infoboxes gets pushed down.
- Ashadj
same
- CzechOut
Thanks for the feedback. The position of infoboxes is indeed a key concern, and being actively studied. One of the points of pushing this article prototype live to a wiki that has well-developed, content-rich infoboxes was precisely to further study infobox styling and positioning.
Remember, this isn't even a beta design: it's full-on prototype.
Your comments will be of tremendous value in shaping the end results. So keep 'em coming!
- Smeg Head
If you made this the shade of fish custard, that would be better
- ŚPASTIC FRIDGE
I don't like how the info bar drops down.
- Smeg Head
I dont like the white background to be honest - its quite annoying on my eyes
- 0551E80Y
i feel like the white background is supposed to represent a snowstorm helping the Christmissy feel :D however it looks awful i like the old look, better yet i miss the round things as the background
- Smeg Head
0551E80Y wrote:
- D however it looks awful I like the old look, better yet I miss the round things as the background
What are the round things?
I agree that it looks, to use my native English, bloody awful at the moment. I think the Admins need to take note this is a vote against the new format
- 0551E80Y
Smeg Head wrote:
0551E80Y wrote:
- D however it looks awful I like the old look, better yet I miss the round things as the background
What are the round things?
I agree that it looks, to use my native English, bloody awful at the moment. I think the Admins need to take note this is a vote against the new format
you know the round things on the tardis interior walls
- Smeg Head
The correct answer would have been
"I have no idea" as in
11: Look, the round things
10: I love the round things
11: What are the round things?
10: I have no idea
- 0551E80Y
Smeg Head wrote: The correct answer would have been
"I have no idea" as in
11: Look, the round things
10: I love the round things
11: What are the round things?
10: I have no idea
oh i didn't realize sorry
- Smeg Head
0551E80Y wrote:
Smeg Head wrote: The correct answer would have been
"I have no idea" as in
11: Look, the round things
10: I love the round things
11: What are the round things?
10: I have no idea
oh i didn't realize sorry
Tsk tsk... Call yourself a fan? Its off to the Death Zone on Gallifrey for you...
- 0551E80Y
Smeg Head wrote:
0551E80Y wrote:
Smeg Head wrote: The correct answer would have been
"I have no idea" as in
11: Look, the round things
10: I love the round things
11: What are the round things?
10: I have no idea
oh i didn't realize sorry
Tsk tsk... Call yourself a fan? Its off to the Death Zone on Gallifrey for you...
galifrey's trapped in another dimension and i presume the death zone is too i don't think we should get too carried away with this
- 66 Seconds
I don't like how "Must Watch Videos" appears inbetween content on some of the articles. It splits the article in half and you can't choose where this section appears in the article layout.
Also, featured articles at the top of category pages seem to show images taken from anywhere throughout those particular articles. In my opinion, these should show the infobox image whenever an infobox is present on the page they link to.
- Imamadmad
Woah, I just came here to check a fact and can see that there are dramatic changes here. Although I rarely edit this wiki, I will give my feedback now on this new layout as it has a greater chance of affecting the way the final roll-out across Wikia will work than if I wait.
- The layout has been made to match the style of the new Global Navigation bar. That can be considered a good thing because it introduces consistency, but it could also be considered a bad thing if you think that style looks dull compared to the old one.
- On this topic, the Wikia logo on the global nav has slipped a bit, being aligned to the bottom of the bar and the bottom reaching a few pixels under it. This problem is not present on other, normally laid out wikis (well, specifically not present on DWA. Haven't checked elsewhere).
- There seems to be a lot of dead space above the titles of pages. See Last of the Time Lords. There is also a larger than needed gap under the redirection notice.
- Infobox should be above the Recent Activity module. Article content should always be prioritised over navigation on mainspace pages.
- On the other hand, it's really good that the space under the Recent Wiki Activity module is actually being used, rather than just being left as dead space.
- New Navbar is... OK, but not great. Stylistically wise I think it's good in the sense that it fits in with the style of the rest of the wiki and the new global nav. Functionality wise, I believe hiding the level 2 menus out of sight would only be detrimental to encouraging readers to explore further. If they have big buttons in their faces leading them to more content, they are more likely to click those buttons than if you first have to want to find them, then click the right heading (hovering doesn't do anything, which I think would make the new navbar more usable), and only then see the list of items to be encouraged to click them.
- As bracketed above, hovering over the top level navigaton items doesn't activate the drop downs to reveal the level 2 headings. This feels counter-intuitive and somewhat wrong to people who have been using Wikia for a long time, where clicking on the top level heading usually takes you to a page you didn't want to go rather than just opening up the sub-menu. On the plus side though, it does make it more usable on touch screen devices, where I can confirm it works quite well!
- Not sure if you're already aware, but the changing image in The Doctor's infobox is now displaying the images vertically one after the other, maxing out the infobox space very quickly.
- Speaking of infoboxes, the words "see more" are hard to see as they're dark blue on a dark grey background. There needs to be a higher contrast so people know to click and, well, see more.
- The action buttons on the side of the page are an interesting change. I think I like it, as it makes more actions available from the top of the page. I do however think that the sub-menus with things like "Edit", "VisualEditor", "History", etc. should be openable with hover as well as click, as I believe the navbar should operate, so that newcomers don't feel scared to click the not-very-descriptive icons in case something unintentional happens. Having the lists with words on them open up automatically would remove that extra barrier between readers becoming editors.
That's all I can think of for now. I haven't explored that many different pages to see how the layout changes between them as I usually just use this wiki as an information source rather than doing much editing, but that should hopefully be enough feedback to go forward with. As always, willing to expand or argue any points I've made.
- The layout has been made to match the style of the new Global Navigation bar. That can be considered a good thing because it introduces consistency, but it could also be considered a bad thing if you think that style looks dull compared to the old one.
- Masterpwn
I have been surfing around multiple pages in this new layout. There are a few pros and cons. Well, mostly cons I've noticed.
- Spacing between paragraphs. I've noticed several pages with spacing missing and spacing too wide, despite there just being a single line space during editing.
- I preferred the older design, it seemed a little more clean cut, organised. This one's a bit... I don't know. Too spaced out. The infobox is smooshed down and to the right.
- The buttons off to the left were a little foreboding, but the drop down is alright once I figured what did what. Pretty convenient I suppose.
- I think it's a bit bland, this new design compared to the old.
- Drop downs at the top of the page hiding some more commonly used buttons is a bit annoying actually. Hinder-some, somewhat.
Just a few things I feel about this new design. I really prefer the old one. That's my opinion though, the old over the new, not saying that it should be switched back. It should be simple enough to get used to the new layout.
- Ashadj
Maybe a red design. Cause of the Christmas episode and Clara
- Regos Krang
I don't remember any "round things", but having something like this as a background (but much lighter for readability) would be very cool!
0551E80Y wrote: i miss the round things as the background
- CzechOut
Hey guys :)
Thanks for all the specificity. It's really helpful. Keep it up!
Do want to make you aware, though, that there are some things you've listed which are more Tardis problems than article prototype problems. A good example is the picture changer at the Doctor and the Master. That's just something Wikia couldn't have contemplated because it's wholly unique to this wiki.
I've been working this evening to try to restore the more essential "special" features of Tardis. So you should find that, for instance, picture rotation has been restored.
Since it's difficult for you to know what's being caused by Tardis code and what by Wikia, though — don't even bother trying to work it out. Just keep listing the things you're seeing and I'll investigate each one of them in turn. And don't despair of the design; it's very much an evolving thing that will change rapidly over the next couple of weeks.
Thanks :)
- 0551E80Y
Regos Krang wrote:
I don't remember any "round things", but having something like this as a background (but much lighter for readability) would be very cool!0551E80Y wrote: i miss the round things as the background
yes yes! i miss that i'm hoping the background will be the round things of the twelfth doctor's tardis its both traditional and modern it would look marvelous
- Digifiend
This one will be a local problem, but has only manifested since the skin change and so may have been caused by it: the front page's colour switcher is bugged. The text appears white whether the background is blue or white. The text should be dark when the white background is used. You probably accidentally removed a piece of javascript code.
- HighlanderFan83
Can we have a choice for the background? I liked having the choice to read this wikia with the blue background, as it didn't hurt my eyes. Can we bring back the blue background alternative?
Why was that removed as a choice, anyway?
- Digifiend
See above. It was probably broken by the new skin they're testing.
- Ashadj
What about a light blue background for the title sequence. Or clocks.
- CzechOut
Hi guys :)
Thanks for all the suggestions of possible creative changes to the theme. However, our purpose here is to to hew as closely to the design intent of the Wikia Engineers for this article prototype. We're tying to showcase their design intent, and sublimate our creativity. This will allow the Engineering department to build a better baseline.
We can worry about our own communal creativity next year, as this project develops.
- CzechOut
0551E80Y wrote:
Regos Krang wrote:
I don't remember any "round things", but having something like this as a background (but much lighter for readability) would be very cool!0551E80Y wrote: i miss the round things as the background
yes yes! i miss that i'm hoping the background will be the round things of the twelfth doctor's tardis its both traditional and modern it would look marvelous
Guys, we haven't had any background skin on this wiki for almost two years. We stopped bothering with backgrounds once we figured out that most visitors probably weren't seeing the background anyway. On this design point, we basically concur with Memory Alpha, who are similarly unadorned.
- OttselSpy25
Can I just say that I notice that Wikia has redecorated and I don't like it.
- SteamMoose
I like the new design. My main problem is the infobox, but I know you are working on it ;)
- Mewiet
I might be blind, but I can't seem to figure out where the Add a Page button has gone.
I also second the comments about the white being very harsh on the eyes (the French vanilla pudding color of this page's background is far preferable) and not enjoying the Must Watch Videos popping up in the middle of pages.
- Digifiend
The Add a Page link is on one of the menus you get when you hover over those circles on the side of an article. It's on the third one down, looks like a cog. There should be an option called Contribute. Hover over this, and you get the links to add a new page, upload an image or video, or create a map.
- CzechOut
HighlanderFan83 wrote: Can we have a choice for the background? I liked having the choice to read this wikia with the blue background, as it didn't hurt my eyes. Can we bring back the blue background alternative?
Why was that removed as a choice, anyway?
I apologise for the temporary inconvenience of the removal of the local, Tardis option to read the site on differently-coloured backgrounds. At this stage, we're trying to look at the article prototype as it is, and then make comments about the way we'd like it to be.
Very few customisations are as important to me and I think the entire Tardis administrative staff than making sure we can return this option to our community. We think the skin switcher allowed more people, of a wider range of visual acuities, to stay on the site for longer periods of time.
I have passed your specific comments upwards, but I would encourage anyone who enjoyed the skin-switching option to send a sentence or two to our Community Support team via a Special:Contact.
- CzechOut
Imamadmad wrote: ...but that should hopefully be enough feedback to go forward with.
Thanks very much for taking the time to delve so specifically into things. Your comments have been passed up the food chain!
- CzechOut
Masterpwn wrote: Spacing between paragraphs. I've noticed several pages with spacing missing and spacing too wide, despite there just being a single line space during editing.
Thanks for your comments! I've passed most of them on to other Wikia colleagues. I was wondering, though, if you could explain this one a bit more. Got any examples for me?
- Mewiet
I no longer see a little box on the side near the top of an article page with an outline of the headings and subheadings for that page. Those were extremely helpful for really long articles and lists of appearance pages because they saved a tremendous amount of scrolling time.
- Ashadj
Sometimes when you add new images they don't show
- Regos Krang
I had the same problem, but eventually figured it out - you now have to hover your mouse pointer over one of those mysterious grey circles on the left edge of the page, usually the top circle (see example picture). This will give birth to a menu which has the same function.
Mewiet wrote: I no longer see a little box on the side near the top of an article page with an outline of the headings and subheadings for that page. Those were extremely helpful for really long articles and lists of appearance pages because they saved a tremendous amount of scrolling time.
- CzechOut
How do you guys think we might make that less "mysterious" and more naturally obvious? Is it just a matter of getting used to the new button functionality, or do you think that we could add or change something to make it work better?
- Regos Krang
CzechOut wrote: How do you guys think we might make that less "mysterious" and more naturally obvious? Is it just a matter of getting used to the new button functionality, or do you think that we could add or change something to make it work better?
Just so there's no misunderstanding: I like the grey circles. It's quite useful to have that functionality throughout a page, especially a long one, and I find it quite easy using them - it was just a question of noticing them and then figuring out what they do. Once the new look is pretty definitive, it might be nice to have a "help" page describing the major changes from the old look.
- PicassoAndPringles
Some short articles are having all of their content pushed down under Must Watch Videos. See Tom's dad.
- Digifiend
^Yeah, whoever thought that looked better then this (link to the same page in Monobook) needs to have another look at that. That text would easily fit in that big white space... I wonder if putting the text above the infobox would fix it (of course it would normally cause the infobox to appear lower, but the Recent Wiki Activity box is doing that already anyway)? Would only work on stubs though, and such a workaround definitely shouldn't be necessary.
- CzechOut
PicassoAndPringles wrote: Some short articles are having all of their content pushed down under Must Watch Videos. See Tom's dad.
Thanks for that report! It's not actually that it's a short article that's causing the problem. Rather, it's that the article begins directly upon the conclusion of the infobox. This wasn't a problem in any skin before this prototype, and in fact we've actively encouraged starting an article just like this:
{{infobox |blah=blah |blah2=blah2 }}'''This thing''' was a really important thingThe reason we encouraged this is that it meant that the article body started at the very top of the page, rather than one carriage return down from the top. So I'm seeing this, at the moment, as a bug. Until I get further instruction from other Wikia colleagues, let's just let articles like this be temporarily screwed up.
If needs be later on, I can do a bot run where I introduce a carriage return after the closing curly brace, and the problem will resolve itself.
- Rob T Firefly
As a frequent wiki editor, I quite miss having a single-click edit link on articles. Having to hover over the round thing and then slide over to the edit option on the popup isn't nearly as nice to use.
- 23skidoo
Where did the links to the Talk pages go?
- Tangerineduel
23skidoo wrote: Where did the links to the Talk pages go?
It's within the pencil menu.
- Rob T Firefly
Are there plans to bring back the customizable user toolbar? It seems to be hidden on article pages now.
- Digifiend
You mean the footer? It moved to one of the circle icons on the left, but I think the CSS classes are different and therefore customisations have no effect. It seems the guys at dev.wikia.com will have to update the scripts.
- Rob T Firefly
Ah, found it and it does seem to have my custom tools in it. Thanks.
- Lhikan634
Several things as a frequent reader here but editor elsewheres. First, the issue with short articles is in local to the article. Articles with the issue use the top version; fixing said articles requires using the bottom version:
}}content
}} content
As far as the new layout in general… you changed the desktop… I don't like it:
- I also agree that the Infoboxes should appear above non-article content so that the visual and the intro text are more in-line.
- I find the use of left-side icons are more confusing than the previous text-based links (i.e. edit, Talk, etc.). It is useful that the links follow with scrolling, but it's harder to tell what operation should be located where. There looks like there should be room for a text-based listing (i.e. Contents, Edit, Talk, Share, Tools).
- Left-side icons also aren't the same page-to-page. Some have individual icons for social media / sharing, others have a single share icon.
- I do prefer the format of the user tools at the bottom, it seems a lot cleaner and more "wiki" styled.
- Paragraph spacing is inconsistent (see River Song). Some have no lines in between, others 1 line, and the majority 2 lines. The source uniformly uses 1 line between paragraphs. This especially affects the Undated/unchronicled events section, resulting in a lot of negative space.
- There's also a lot of extra space after the article title, equivalent to about 3 lines of article content.
- Recommended Content seems disproportionate in length to article length, especially the featured article position.
- This may be a bit unrelated, but the drop-down for the wikia top bar seems overly sensitive. Even hovering over the pixels at the corners of that box triggers it to cover most of the article. Also, is there no way to change it? It sticks out like a sore thumb on darker-themed wikis. (Also, notifications try to cover half of the page unlike before.)
- Lhikan634
Oh, and edit comparison formats atrociously, all of the summary's forced below the Recent Wiki Activity. At least on my laptop, that means that I don't see any of the revision comparison without scrolling down a page.
- Commander Awesome
I don't know what it is precisely, but it's a lot harder to read
than the previous format to me. I think it might be the font and/or the color scheme. Also, I liked the infobox being at the top right of the article so you see it when to first land on the page instead of having to look for it. The liked it better when such things as the recent activity section, must watch videos section, advertisements, etc. were all shoved to the side of the page.
- Quest?on
On some longer pages, like Shadow Proclamation, the first text of the page is up to the right of the page title.
- 23skidoo
Tangerineduel wrote:
23skidoo wrote: Where did the links to the Talk pages go?
It's within the pencil menu.
What pencil menu? I don't see anything of the sort. I want to post a question to the Last Christmas (TV story) article and there is no link to any talk page to be found. I have clicked on everything.
There is no link to the page history either. This new design sucks.
- Rob T Firefly
23skidoo wrote:
Tangerineduel wrote:
23skidoo wrote: Where did the links to the Talk pages go?
It's within the pencil menu.
What pencil menu? I don't see anything of the sort. I want to post a question to the Last Christmas (TV story) article and there is no link to any talk page to be found. I have clicked on everything.
There is no link to the page history either. This new design sucks.
In the column of round things going down the left side of the page, the pencil menu is the second from top. You have to hover over that round thing, wait for the menu to pop up to the right of it, then click on what you want from that.
After using it this way for a while I feel it's pretty, but not great for functionality. And while grouping the navigation and editing tools together with the social-networking guff can't be a good idea for anyone, if we must do it this way why do Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Google Plus all get their own knobs? Collapsing them into one collective social-network round thing would be slightly less out-of-place than keeping only three functional knobs with all their useful things collapsed into fiddly submenus while keeping root-level single-click knobs for each individual social-network flavor out on display.
- CzechOut
Hey Rob,
I've asked this in another thread, but let me ask you here: are you actually having to wait for the menu to pop up? For me, it's popping up instantaneously, the very moment my mouse strays so much as a pixel over the border of the pencil icon.
- CzechOut
Rob T Firefly wrote: ...if we must do it this way why do Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Google Plus all get their own knobs? Collapsing them into one collective social-network round thing would be slightly less out-of-place than keeping only three functional knobs with all their useful things collapsed into fiddly submenus while keeping root-level single-click knobs for each individual social-network flavor out on display.
Both things happen with the social icons. When you first load a page, you get a series of icons for each individual social platform, like this:
Then, as you scroll down the page, or edit it, or use the TOC (on multi-sectioned articles), the individual social icons "roll up" into the social icon menu, seen here at the bottom:
- CzechOut
Lhikan634 wrote:
- Paragraph spacing is inconsistent (see River Song). Some have no lines in between, others 1 line, and the majority 2 lines. The source uniformly uses 1 line between paragraphs. This especially affects the Undated/unchronicled events section, resulting in a lot of negative space.
Thanks for your detailed responses. I've passed a lot of your thoughts along.
On the specific issue of the River Song undated events section, I don't think it's quite what you think. I've moved the entire contents of this page to a test wiki, and the spacing works the same way.
The space between paragraphs (that is the space after a <p>) — as well as the line-height itself — is greater in Article Prototype than Oasis. But I'm not seeing actual inconsistency in Prototype's vertical spacing, save between the first and second paragraph in some articles. (And even that's not inconsistent — it's regularly reproducible, and therefore a bug we can get our hands around.) So I'd quite disagree that it is generally true to say that some paragraphs have 2 lines between them and others have 1.
The issue really is that the section has an unusual number of single-sentence paragraphs in a row, thus naturally increasing the total amount of white space in that area, and creating the illusion of extra inter-paragraph space. This sort of writing is not encouraged around here; we'd much prefer to see "proper" paragraphs, and there's no particular reason why this section couldn't be rewritten into just a few paragraphs.
- CzechOut
Lhikan634 wrote: Oh, and edit comparison formats atrociously, all of the summary's forced below the Recent Wiki Activity. At least on my laptop, that means that I don't see any of the revision comparison without scrolling down a page.
I'm not seeing this at all. I'm looking at a diff on River Song here at Tardis and a diff over at aybs.wikia.com and I'm seeing no material difference.
Could you perhaps provide a screenshot of the problem you're seeing?
- Lhikan634
I think what I was seeing has been smoothed out since that post as I'm not seeing that issue now either. I am seeing that the Recent Wiki Activity box is no longer appearing on the Diff pages, and that was what was causing the mis-formatting. It was basically the same thing that was affecting some of the short articles.
I'm also noticing that line spacing looks completely different on the article versus preview. Notably, line-space discrepancies (article) mainly seem to occur when the intro section uses more than 1 paragraph. The difference is also present in preview but isn't as glaring.
- CzechOut
Yeah, I don't think article preview yet quite matches the reality of Article Prototype. Pretty sure you're mostly seeing a preview of how the article would have looked in Oasis. But again I'm not actually seeing these line space discrepancies of which you speak, and I think if you examined them closely in your web inspector, you'd probably see that it's a matter of the large line-height and <p> margin-bottoms.
Discrepancy implies to me that there is some actual difference in the line spacing between any two individual paragraphs. I'm not seeing that, except in the occasional case of the spacing between the first two paragraphs of an article that has an infobox being different than the spacing of all other paragraphs. But even this is a "regular irregularity", in that its cause is well known and it can be easily and consistently reproduced.
If you have screenshots of the irregularity you're seeing, it would be very helpful to take a look at them.
- CzechOut
Lhikan634 wrote: Several things as a frequent reader here but editor elsewheres. First, the issue with short articles is in local to the article. Articles with the issue use the top version; fixing said articles requires using the bottom version:
}}content
}} content
By the way, as I've said in another thread, this is not a fix. It seems that way on first blush, but the truth is there's an actual bug here, and we don't want to just go around making this "fix". Besides, it doesn't quite work out on all pages, depending on the amount of content that page possesses.
You've identified a cause here, more than a solution.
- 184.175.11.118
Personally, I don't like the colours. The old site it was a lovely tardis blue while now the colours aren't very doctor who specific.
- HighlanderFan83
First of all, let me just say once again, that this "new" Tardis wikia looks atrocious. Not an improvement over the design at all.
Second, I still can't alter the colors. I want my blue background back!
- Lhikan634
If I understand correctly, the current color scheme and layout are going to very basic while the prototype is being worked on by Wikia (as CzechOut mentioned, this isn't even to beta yet). It's basically a live test on this wiki before it goes live to all of Wikia.
Again if I understand correctly, they'll get the functionality working and confirmed and then work on the fluff. This wiki has a lot of customization (CSS, etc.). If the prototype is developed with all of that customization, almost every other wiki could experience errors in formatting.
- 23skidoo
Rob T Firefly wrote: In the column of round things going down the left side of the page, the pencil menu is the second from top. You have to hover over that round thing, wait for the menu to pop up to the right of it, then click on what you want from that.
I have been able to spot a bona fide bug from this. I went back to Last Christmas and the pencil menu was there. I then scrolled down the page to read it, scrolled back up and the pencil menu was GONE and would not appear again until I reloaded the page.
So that's why I wasn't able to see it earlier: it's disappearing if you scroll the page. I just tested this on several more articles (such as the Dark Water (TV story)) and the bug happened every time.
- CzechOut
Hmmm, I've tried it on Last Christmas in Firefox, Chrome and Safari for Mac, and can't replicate. We've had an intervening code push since you wrote your comment, though, so it's possible they fixed on Wednesday. Could you please confirm whether this bug is still present? If it is, could you please give your browser and version number so I can investigate further? Thanks :)
- Smeg Head
ITS BLUE AGAIN!!!!!!!!
WOO HOO - This is almost as exciting as finding out the BBC have a copy of Feast of Stephen
- HighlanderFan83
What the heck are you talking about? Its still white as paper.
- Smeg Head
Oh bugger... Its gone back to white again! I was reading the page for Susan (who I think is one of the most fanciable companions) and it appeared blue - now its back to white again
- 68.146.52.234
CzechOut wrote: Hmmm, I've tried it on Last Christmas in Firefox, Chrome and Safari for Mac, and can't replicate. We've had an intervening code push since you wrote your comment, though, so it's possible they fixed on Wednesday. Could you please confirm whether this bug is still present? If it is, could you please give your browser and version number so I can investigate further? Thanks :)
It's still doing it. I'm on Firefox 30.0 which I know is an older version (unfortunately until some add-ons I need for work are updated for newer versions I'm glass ceilinged). Lots of folks use older versions. Now that I know the trick (reload the page if I scroll down at all) it's not an issue for me anymore, though.
- CzechOut
It sucks to be, as you call it, "glass-ceilinged". Heck, I was severely glass-ceilinged from 2010-2012, so I feel your pain. And technically you are indeed outside the versions of Firefox that we support. Nevertheless, I have filed a report about this behaviour in Firefox 30.0. It might well get fixed; I know there are times when Wikia's Engineering crew fixes things for older browsers. Obviously, though, I can't promise anything.
In the meantime, I'd suggest that you perhaps avail yourself of this little trick from Mozilla that allows you to install multiple instances of Firefox on one machine. That way, you could have "work Mozilla" at 30 and "play Mozilla" at 35. (Of course, that's advice from one fellow user to another. That's not advice coming from Wikia in any way. And you should make sure you read and thoroughly understand the dual install instructions before proceeding.)
- 23skidoo
CzechOut wrote: It sucks to be, as you call it, "glass-ceilinged". Heck, I was severely glass-ceilinged from 2010-2012, so I feel your pain. And technically you are indeed outside the versions of Firefox that we support. Nevertheless, I have filed a report about this behaviour in Firefox 30.0. It might well get fixed; I know there are times when Wikia's Engineering crew fixes things for older browsers. Obviously, though, I can't promise anything.
In the meantime, I'd suggest that you perhaps avail yourself of this little trick from Mozilla that allows you to install multiple instances of Firefox on one machine. That way, you could have "work Mozilla" at 30 and "play Mozilla" at 35. (Of course, that's advice from one fellow user to another. That's not advice coming from Wikia in any way. And you should make sure you read and thoroughly understand the dual install instructions before proceeding.)
Many thanks and I didn't know about that trick. I'll give it a try. The good news is for me the workaround ends up being very simple (I just reload the page if I scroll down past the controls). I didn't realize I had been signed out of Wikia when I commented earlier so 68 was me.
- 68.146.52.234
I was forced to update to 35.1 this morning because 30 just stopped accessing certain sites. As a result I can no longer view Youtube and updating Flash didn't do anything. I always lose functionality when I update software. Anyway, with regards to the site, I am still getting the disappearing icons problem when I scroll down and scroll back up again so it doesn't have anything to do with what kind of browser I'm using.
CzechOut
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/A new Tardis, at last/Thread:167277
70.186.191.124
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/Problems with the new layout" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/Tardis to be rebuilt".
The new buttons on the side of each page don't seem to work for me. I can't bring up the page's history and my ability to edit the page is now limited. Are there still some bugs being worked out?
- CzechOut
Yes, we're still working some issues out. We're very much in prototype mode now. Could you please go into more details as to what you mean by your "ability to edit the page is now limited"? How has it been constricted?
- MystExplorer
Well, when I click on the button with the pencil, it doesn't work. Neither does the one with the gear. So I can't edit the way I normally would.
- CzechOut
What browser and OS are you using?
- MystExplorer
Safari Version 5.1.10 and Mac OS X Version 10.6.8
- Smeg Head
I'm not liking the "prototype" version at all... Its rubbish and is causing trouble for me reading it
- Dvaderv2
I don't know why, but it seems the content of most, if not all articles has been replaced by a lot of blank spaces, random letters etc. because of this 'prototype'.
I'm browsing this wiki via Firefox (Version 34.0.5) on a computer running Windows 7 (Home Premium, with Service Pack 1), if that's important to anyone.
- Ebyabe
It appeared that beginning text in some articles was not showing. Actually, it was still there, but appearing next to the article title. This only is happening in the case where the text is touching an infobox. That is:
{Infobox }'''{PAGENAME}''' was blah-de-blah. rather than {Infobox } '''{PAGENAME}''' was blah-de-blah.
In general, I'm not thrilled with the new layout. But then I'm not really a big fan of updates/upgrades/changes. Which is why I like Doctor Who so much.
Wait... :)
- Dvaderv2
No, what I meant is that most of the text, including the article title itself, is completely obliterated (i.e. replaced with several Vs, Is, and blank spaces).
Granted, if I were to copy the text and paste it into Word or a search box it would then show up as it normally would, but I'm really at a loss given that other wikis seem to be rendering text without any kind of problem.
- Ebyabe
Dvaderv2, what I'm seeing is a different problem than what you're having, I think.
Also, I just noticed that infoboxes of all types are not appearing at all. I'm using Chrome, if that matters.
- Dvaderv2
Looks like no one is having a particularly smooth transition then.
- Ebyabe
I revise my prior comment. The infoboxes are there, just below the 'Recent Wiki Activity' box. Yes, Dvaderv2, things appear to be going swimmingly. ;)
- Jamar Redstone
What about the pictures? Right now only videos are showing up; will the pictures previously used to illustrate examples be inserted once everything is done?
- CzechOut
Could you please link to a page where you're seeing only videos and no stills?
- Digifiend
Infobox on The Master doesn't look right. The photo and other items are breaking out of the left side border. It looks like Template:Infobox Individual may need to be updated.
- CzechOut
MystExplorer wrote: Safari Version 5.1.10 and Mac OS X Version 10.6.8
Hey, I'm really sorry, but neither Wikia nor this wiki supports either of those. Please see Help:Supported browsers for more information. (We haven't supported 5.1 for any part of 2014, and not much of 2013, either.)
- AdricLovesNyssa
Hey noticed that there is a random blue box underneath the information boxes. Mac OS 10.10.1 Firefox 34.0.5
- Digifiend
AdricLovesNyssa wrote: Hey noticed that there is a random blue box underneath the information boxes. Mac OS 10.10.1 Firefox 34.0.5
Confirmed in Chrome. Not a browser issue then, I suppose.
- KiumaruHamachi
For me, the infoboxes are all screwed up and "Recent Activity" is ON TOP of the Infobox. Not sure if anyone else is having these issues.
- CzechOut
Infoboxes are largely a known issue. The basic deal is that infoboxes must have class=infobox in order to get them to slide to the right. But because our infoboxes have class=infobox=exterior to create the nice, rounded, shadowed shell, and class=infobox-interior to create the, well, interior, it's confusing the prototype code. The result is an interior that's trying to be aligned with an exterior which isn't there anymore. instead, it's now a blue puddle underneath the infobox. Basically, base prototype code had split the infobox apart. It's an easy, if repetitive, fix in which the interior will have to get a new class name.
The issue of the Recent Wiki Activity (RWA) module being on top of the infobox is also something that's well known, and which the Engineering team are actively considering. Just out of curiosity, how many here find the RWA useful? Not talking about the placement here, but rather the actual content of the module?
- PicassoAndPringles
I think most casual users don't care much about RWA, and most people who do care just use Special:WikiActivity or Special:RecentChanges.
- Shambala108
CzechOut wrote: Just out of curiosity, how many here find the RWA useful? Not talking about the placement here, but rather the actual content of the module?
I find the content of the RWA useful.
- CzechOut
Dvaderv2 wrote: I don't know why, but it seems the content of most, if not all articles has been replaced by a lot of blank spaces, random letters etc. because of this 'prototype'.
Do you have examples of this? I haven't seen any replacement by "random letters'. That, obviously, would be bad and likely hard to correct. It'd be really important to track this down, so if you could give me links to pages where you see this phenomenon, it'd be really helpful. Thanks :)
- CzechOut
Ebyabe wrote: It appeared that beginning text in some articles was not showing. Actually, it was still there, but appearing next to the article title. This only is happening in the case where the text is touching an infobox. That is:
{Infobox }'''{PAGENAME}''' was blah-de-blah. rather than {Infobox } '''{PAGENAME}''' was blah-de-blah.</nowiki>Hey, I've tried altering the article Snowglobe 7 (novel) to be like your example, but I don't seem to be able to replicate the results. Would you mind taking a look and telling me where I've gone wrong? In my example, there's no difference in where the lead text shows up, regardless of whether it touches the terminal curly brace — } — or not.
- Ebyabe
The text is all showing below the article title on that page. Maybe b/c I'm using Chrome?
- Dvaderv2
CzechOut wrote: Do you have examples of this? I haven't seen any replacement by "random letters'. That, obviously, would be bad and likely hard to correct. It'd be really important to track this down, so if you could give me links to pages where you see this phenomenon, it'd be really helpful. Thanks :)
Actually, I did some testing on another PC and the pages showed up normally. I'm guessing that some custom font I installed is causing the problem. On that note, any ideas what sort of font is being used for the main body so that I might grab the original and hotfix my problem that way?
- Stephan222
I am having the same problem with the edit button and new TOC. They don't work at all, I have to either edit only in sections or add ?action=edit to the end of the url.
I'm using Maxthon 4.4.3.4000 on Windows 7 Home Premium and I really don't want to have to use wikia in Chrome, which is way to basic a browser for me.
- CzechOut
Well, I've just tried Maxthon for Mac 4.4.0 and I'm not having problems editing. Remember, you have to hover over the edit icon (the pencil), then select "edit" from the resulting dropdown.
That said, Wikia do not officially support Maxthon.
- Stephan222
I was wondering if it could be because I have my default editor set to source mode.
- CzechOut
Nope. I have mine set to source mode, too. Are you hovering over the edit icon and allowing the resulting menu to pop out?
- Stephan222
I am... I think it should be noted that when I hover over the contents section, it works for the first time, but doesn't work after that. Odd.
- CzechOut
Hmmm, I can't confirm that behaviour, not even in Maxthon for Mac.
- Stephan222
Well, I tried changing the user agent string, didn't do anything. Perhaps I'll have to look into my custom css and js
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/A new Tardis, at last/Thread:167283
89.2.39.39
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/Links!" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/Problems with the new layout".
With the new design, links have become invisible. The only way to see a link is to float the mouse pointer over the text in question. Seeing the links all the time may be very old-fashioned, but I like it.
- Regos Krang
Actually I think the colour of the links IS slightly different, but it's quite hard to see.
CzechOut
Passing your comments up the food chain...
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/A new Tardis, at last/Thread:167297
- AdricLovesNyssa
Also in relation to this, can the see more be removed, as I often use the navigation option provided at the bottom often to go from one story to the next story. Can I make a suggest for the background of the infobox to be made a different colour to the background of the main text just to stand it out
- Regos Krang
AdricLovesNyssa wrote: Also in relation to this, can the see more be removed
I have the same request. The Infobox is now truncated, and I don't like having to click on "SEE MORE". What's more, for me the text "SEE MORE" is hidden since it shows up as dark blue on a black background - I don't know if anyone else has this problem. Also, I agree with others who dislike having the Infobox below the "Recent Wiki Activity" box.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/A new Tardis, at last/Thread:167308
Regos Krang
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/Table of Contents" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/New Layout Side Panel".
Under the old layout, any article divided into sections would begin with a Wikipedia-style table of contents. This seems to be missing with the new layout.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/A new Tardis, at last/Thread:167367
Regos Krang
This is a minor thing, but when I navigate in the new-style table of contents the "sub-menus" always appear next to the top of the main menu column, whereas one would expect them to appear next to the chosen item. In the example screenshot one would expect the "sub-menu" to appear next to "Story notes", but it actually appears next to "Synopsis" (top of the column).
- CzechOut
That's actually a really good point; I'll forward that on.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/A new Tardis, at last/Thread:167423
Ryan0ry
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/Main Page - New Design Issue" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/Table of Contents".
The text on this page is coloured white and cannot be seen unless highlighted. Not sure if this is just for me or not? Thanks
- 163.153.221.62
As a temporary fix, you can hit the "change it ok" button to switch to dark mode so you can see the text.
- Tzvi
I hope the higher ups don't mind, but I removed the part of the template that specified the color to be white. So now all the text is the default color, which happens to black.
The page looks very plain now, but at least its readable.
I also tried hitting the "change it ok" button and it rendered the page text in the default color of the old version, which happened to be white. So I have no idea why somebody specified white in the code when that color was already the default one.
- Tzvi
I did also try hitting the "change it ok" button and it rendered the page text in the default color of the old version, which happened to be white. So I have no idea why somebody specified white in the code when that color was already the default one.
- CzechOut
Hi :) Thanks very much for trying to help. However, I've reverted your edits as they don't solve the present problem. The issue at hand is why the front page background is white — not why the the font color specified by Doctor Who Wiki/Charity is white. As you point out, it's insensible for the font color to be set to white, if the background is.
- Tzvi
CzechOut, thank you for taking care of it, and also thank you for all that you do here.
- CzechOut
That's awfully kind of you. Thank you very much for attempting to solve it yourself. You were working along the right lines, but this place has, in some places, insanely complicated CSS. The front page is one of those places, so you can't at all be blamed for not understanding the precise interactions between several separate style sheets. Please keep on reporting what problems you find!
- Tzvi
I wasn't so much looking to fix it and more to just make it work so that the text could be read until somebody else came along and fixed it the proper way. Sorta like putting a spare tire on a car, its not a fix, but something to tide you over until you can get a new tire.
As the Doctor recently put it, I'm just "Passing through, helping out, learning."
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/A new Tardis, at last/Thread:167688
71.96.51.204
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/My opinion: too many advertisements" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/Main Page - New Design Issue".
I am all for generating maintenance revenue, but I feel the sheer quantity of ads on every page is a let down.
- Shambala108
That's not something we as a wiki can control; it's in the hands of Wikia.
However, you can control it — by registering for an account. If you are signed in as a registered user, you only see ads on the main front page.
- 71.96.51.204
Ok, i was unaware. I will do that; thanks for the advice.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/A new Tardis, at last/Thread:167751
86.9.74.98
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/Would this be helpful?" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/My opinion: too many advertisements".
http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/doctor-who-feats-and-source-thread.298198/
A list of topics and quotes from books and comics for some of the stuff for Doctor Who?
- PicassoAndPringles
On this wiki, only stories are valid sources. We don't use reference books or encyclopedias, and especially not forum posts. Looking at this, it seems to be a collection of quotes from novels and reference books with a good amount of speculation thrown in, and some of it is factually incorrect. Ultimately, our articles should be based off the stories, not what a forum post said about a story.
Shambala108
In addition, this particular board (A new Tardis, at last) is dedicated to discussing the major changes being done to the wiki. Therefore, this thread will be closed.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/A new Tardis, at last/Thread:167765
161.221.97.4
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/Searching for the search bar..." overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/Would this be helpful?".
I'm a recreational user... I visit whenever my curiosity is tickled.
I like the new layout (the home page looks nice), and even the article pages are nice.
My biggest problem: trying to find the search bar. One the home screen, it's at the top of the screen, apart from the actual page, part of the "wikia" menu bar. It's primarily gray, which to me symbolizes "not available" or "we want you to ignore this".
Hmm... checking Memory Alpha, it has the same problem. Guess someone should slap the Wiki Wizards around, or at least allow each wiki to insert a secondary search field within the Wiki's design.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/A new Tardis, at last/Thread:167766
TorstenAdair
I'm a recreational user... I visit whenever my curiosity is tickled.
I like the new layout (the home page looks nice), and even the article pages are nice.
My biggest problem: trying to find the search bar. One the home screen, it's at the top of the screen, apart from the actual page, part of the "wikia" menu bar. It's primarily gray, which to me symbolizes "not available" or "we want you to ignore this".
Hmm... checking Memory Alpha, it has the same problem. Guess someone should slap the Wiki Wizards around, or at least allow each wiki to insert a secondary search field within the Wiki's design.
- CzechOut
Here's a little pro-tip for you. :) On almost any page of the wikia, hit tab twice, and you'll be able to type in the search bar.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/A new Tardis, at last/Thread:167771
TorstenAdair
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/hidden hyperlinks" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/Searching for the search bar...".
Example: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/TARDIS
It's hard to discern, visually, which text is hyperlinked.
This is a problem even with the ad-less, stark white background.
The color of the hyperlink is too similar to the color of the regular text. #012c57 (very dark blue) vs #3a3a3a (very dark grey).
Perhaps a TARDIS Blue background, with white text and colored hyperlinks? (Memory Alpha uses a similar design.)
- Digifiend
Seconded, change the link colour please.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/A new Tardis, at last/Thread:167794
RomanaOnCaprica
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/"Must Watch Videos" is annoying" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/hidden hyperlinks".
This isn't so much a problem and more of a 'complaint'. At first I thought it was a bug, so I used the "feedback" form and was contacted by a really nice person from support who told me it was intentional.
I love the new design, but I really dislike the "must watch videos" showing up in the middle of each page. Although they're all Doctor Who related, I don't really care to have a bunch of Eleventh Doctor videos 'in the way' when I'm trying to read about Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks (novelisation). I understand this was done so you could eliminate the side bar, but could they possibly be moved elsewhere on the page?
Does this annoy anyone else, or is it just me being piddly?
- 104.32.214.184
I agree. They could at least do dalek videos featuring the First Doctor. Maybe a scene from 'The Survivors'?
- 104.32.214.184
Why is my reply in wikicode, or whatever it's called?
- 104.32.214.184
It's also very confusing, as it looks like the end of the page.
- Regos Krang
I agree. It's annoying, interrupts the page, seems intrusive. I wouldn't mind if it were simply eliminated.
- Shambala108
I agree as well. It was fine when they were on the side of the page; if a user was interested, they were easy to find but not in the way of users who weren't interested. Now they are smack dab in the middle of the page, sometimes on top of all content.
Like many of the other new design features, this one creates more work for users.
- Tangerineduel
Indeed, I echo Shambala108's thoughts. Their placement in the middle of the articles interrupts the reading experience. It's quite a jarring experience when you're reading through an article.
Especially on the in-universe pages where you're 'in the moment, in-universe' then suddenly "Must Watch Videos" in huge text interrupting you.
- BoatsAreRockable
Perhaps the must watch videos module could be placed after the categories at the bottom of the page.
- Digifiend
104.32.214.184 wrote: Why is my reply in wikicode, or whatever it's called?
Extra space at the start of your reply. If you'd been logged in, you would've been able to edit and fix it. Get an account!
As for Must Watch Videos, I have this module deleted by personal global CSS, but it has no effect on the new skin. I already hated it, and it's even worse now it interrupts articles.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/A new Tardis, at last/Thread:168143
98.21.245.18
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/crashes ipad browsers" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/"Must Watch Videos" is annoying".
The new design fails to load in Chrome and Safari on my iPad. The browsers lock and must be terminated. Works OK on MacBook, although noticeably slow. I like the look and menus of the redesign, but I think its bloated with ads and popups that bog it down.
- CzechOut
Could you please specify which iOS version you're talking about?
- 75.117.75.17
iOS 8
- CzechOut
It's still doing this to you? I'm having a hard time replicating. Are you on 8.1.2? Also, what version of OS X are you running that's "noticeably slower". I'm on this site every day in both iOS and OS X and I'm both genuinely concerned about your comments and unable to notice the problem.
Just to make sure we're covering all the bases here, let's make sure that you:
- are on iOS 8.1.2 and OS X 10.10.1
- have completely powered down your machines and then turned them back on (not just restarted them, but actually started them from a point of being completely turned off)
- are loading pages that are of roughly comparable size and noticing significant slowness on our side — so try getting a load time for Eleventh Doctor and for starwars:Yoda and muppet:Kermit.
- 98.21.244.15
Sorry to not get back to you. I don't check here that often. I'm going to amend my comments.
I've discovered that it doesn't actually crash, it just takes SO LONG to load that I thought it had. The main page, http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Doctor_Who_Wiki, loads quickly. But several subpages do not. One I used to frequent was the episode list, http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_television_stories. That can take over three minutes. I thought it had crashed.
The problem is now only in Chrome on iPad. I had tested it before with Safari. I swear it didn't work before, but now it does. Anyway, bottom line -- some pages take way to long in Chrome on iPad.
My iPad is iOS 8.1.2.
- CzechOut
I can confirm your findings, at least inasmuch as Chrome is concerned. I, too, am having issues with that page on both an iPhone and iPad, and using the latest version of Chrome. To my inexpert eye, this appears to be a flaw in the Article Prototype — but only on some of our largest pages — as I'm unable to reproduce elsewhere. I'm not having problems in Chrome on other large pages on Wikia like starwars:yoda. Can you confirm that the Yoda pages loads reasonably well for you in Chrome?
I have added my findings to yours and passed them on to our Engineering department for further review. Thanks very much for coming back every so often to give further information — it really helped!
In the meantime, I recommended that you just switch back to Safari. I'm not seeing unbearable waits — and certainly not wholesale program failure — in Safari for iOS — though I have latter day models of each.
Thank you again for giving us good, solid help in making our new article design better!
- 168.215.139.82
Good news bad news. The page on the Star Wars wiki loaded fine in Chrome on iOS.
However, on this page the reply button was dead. I tried it in Chrome and Safari on iOS. I had to go to Chrome on my Mac Laptop to post this.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/A new Tardis, at last/Thread:168222
Gokyr586
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/"Must Watch Videos" section" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/crashes ipad browsers".
I don't exactly know why, but at Boemina, the article content is shifted below the "Must Watch Videos" section, resulting in a large blank space between the article title and the "Must Watch Videos" section.
I don't know if the same problem affects any other pages though.
- 24.36.190.125
Yeah, I've seen it affect a couple different pages, for example the Dimensional control page
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/A new Tardis, at last/Thread:168444
23skidoo
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/Why fix what wasn't broken?" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/"Must Watch Videos" section".
The title of the thread pretty much sums it up. Maybe on the architecture side there were things that weren't working properly, but I've had nothing but problems with this site since the redesign. It's harder to navigate, ugly as Strax, and as I've noted in the "Tardis to be rebuilt" thread certain features have become impossible to find, including what I consider to be vital items such as Talk Pages and Page History. I'm all for improvements, but I've yet to actually find any in the redesign. If you're taking a vote, mine is for a revert to the previous version.
- Shambala108
You hit the nail on the head. Almost every "improvement" that's been made involves more work for the user. Things are harder to find — icons are harder to decipher than words — and previously simple one-click functions now require a hovering, then a click.
Pages with infoboxes also look odd, as the infoboxes are well down the page and the user needs to scroll down just to see the entire thing.
- Revanvolatrelundar
I perfectly agree here also. I've found that most infoboxes are almost cut off entirely. The first thing I thought of was my screen resolution, but finding that it was a very common 720p resolution it can hardly be the fault of my computer.
One thing that has disappeared altogether (from what I can see) is the page count of the wiki, and that of the photos also. By clicking on any article it used to give me the number. It's hardly the most important thing, but it was nice to have it there.
- CzechOut
Hey guys :) Thanks for all the feedback. The infobox issues — particularly those being caused by Recent Wiki Activity pushing them down — are definitely an ongoing area of concern and something we're working on. Let me leave those one side for a moment and instead concentrate on this issue of things being impossible to find.
When I even barely touch the edit pencil on what we'll call the "left rail", I immediately see a menu, and I gotta say I've never been particularly confused by where things are. Is that pop up menu not popping up for you so immediately?
I understand, Shambala, that it's another step, and one you might not want to take, but since it pops up if my mouse so much as breathes on it, I'm not sure I see that it makes things "impossible to find", as 23skidoo has said. If you could develop your concerns about the left rail icons, it'd be very helpful.
By the way, I should point out why this left rail pencil icon works as it does. It's because more of our traffic is working on touch devices. In a touch environment, hitting the down arrow chevron of the old edit menu is challenging. Many people using touchscreen had a devil of a time finding, for example, page history because they just couldn't trigger the edit menu. This method gives them a bigger target to hit with their fingers, and thus a much better success rate at finding all the stuff under the edit menu.
- Shambala108
Ok, specific concerns, here goes:
As User:Rob T Firefly stated in another thread, why do the 4 social network icons get their own button, but the more important functions need a hover (or in the case of page history and what links here, two hovers)? Are the social network functions really used more than the edit and talk page functions?
The table of contents icon is poorly placed. If there's no TOC, the pencil icon is on top, but if there is a TOC, its icon is on top. Also, aside from the fact that you need a hover (or series of hovers) to get to a specific location on the TOC, you can no longer get a look at the entire TOC in one glance.
I get what you're saying about the touch devices (though I often edit on my ipad, and I've always found the hovers more of a pain than the clicks), but most of the improvements just cause more work. For those of us with thousands or tens of thousands of edits, it will take a while to make new habits, and for new users, who might already be unfamiliar with how to edit on a wiki, it seems like it's just more confusing having to decipher icons that are not really intuitive.
I understand that a lot of hard work went into these changes, and that it can be frustrating to hear nothing but negative, but it's also frustrating to be used to doing things a certain way then have to make changes.
I do like two of the new features, though they cause more work as well. The larger font size is much easier for old eyes to read, and I like the hide function for the longer infoboxes. This will hopefully help keep our story articles from looking awful.
- CzechOut
Shambala108 wrote:
As User:Rob T Firefly stated in another thread, why do the 4 social network icons get their own button, but the more important functions need a hover (or in the case of page history and what links here, two hovers)? Are the social network functions really used more than the edit and talk page functions?
Rob is a little off in his assessment of what's going on with this — though completely understandably so. In fact, social icons do roll up into a "master social icon" once you start interacting with the page. The individual platform icons only appear on first page load. Please see Thread:167236#55 for an illustrated demonstration of the functionality.
The table of contents icon is poorly placed. If there's no TOC, the pencil icon is on top, but if there is a TOC, its icon is on top. Also, aside from the fact that you need a hover (or series of hovers) to get to a specific location on the TOC, you can no longer get a look at the entire TOC in one glance.
Good point. I'll be passing that one along.
I get what you're saying about the touch devices (though I often edit on my ipad, and I've always found the hovers more of a pain than the clicks), but most of the improvements just cause more work. For those of us with thousands or tens of thousands of edits, it will take a while to make new habits, and for new users, who might already be unfamiliar with how to edit on a wiki, it seems like it's just more confusing having to decipher icons that are not really intuitive.
I've already filed a report based upon the comments in this thread. However, i'm not entirely sure I agree with you that the icons are wholly arcane or counterintuitive. I think most people are trained by everyday use of mobile devices that a gear icon means "preferences", of one kind or another, and that a pencil means "edit", and that a box with an arrow coming out of it means "share", in some way or another. Still, it probably is less than ideal that the pencil seems to mean one thing at the sectional level and another in the left nav.
I understand that a lot of hard work went into these changes, and that it can be frustrating to hear nothing but negative, but it's also frustrating to be used to doing things a certain way then have to make changes.
No, I think it's much better to hear something than for these changes to just go through on the nod. All this feedback is helping!
- Rob T Firefly
Why not just start with the single master social icon in the collapsed state and leave it at that? Is the ability to spam Reddit or Twitter or whatever with one less hover-click that much more important than the ability to productively contribute to and maintain the wiki?
- CzechOut
How does very temporarily having a few more circles on the left side of the page prevent you from productively contributing to the wiki? When I look at them I see them operating in a protected column on the left side of the page, and they don't interfere with reading the text or editing the page.
I would only say that they help me in terms of productively contributing to the wiki because they help me drive traffic to the site by making Tweeting a lot easier. I mean, if no one is here to read these articles, there's not a whole lot of point to the exercise, is there?
- Revanvolatrelundar
The massive video links in the middle of articles make it hard to read articles as they are placed slap-bang in the middle of sections.
- LelalMekha
I realize this "battle" is lost, since touch devices and social media features seem to be the future of wikias -- regardless of how much it displeases me. I mean no offense against you, CzechOut, or any other person who's working on this, but I needed to express my disapproval of that new direction, just for the sake of honesty. Of course, I'm a defector from Wookieepedia, where editors have remained much more conservative than on many other wikias. While I do think the new Tardis is harder to use and not really "good-looking," I shall abide by the community decision and get used to it. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Once again, I'd like to stress that you guys are working hard on that redesign, and are to be commended for all those efforts, regardless of my disliking that new direction.
- 68.146.52.234
LelalMekha wrote: I realize this "battle" is lost, since touch devices and social media features seem to be the future of wikias -- regardless of how much it displeases me.
The irony is that in my experience it is actually very difficult, and in some cases actually impossible, to add new text to sites like Wikia using a mobile device. I have tried on both iPad and iPhone and it just doesn't work. There's a site called tvtropes.org that hides spoilers using special coding and in order to view it you need to highlight the text. You can't highlight very easily with the on-screen keypad. So it's one thing to redesign yourself for people who are content to just read and not contribute, but for those who want to contribute, they're the ones being penalized with these types of updates. (I'm talking in general terms and not addressing a specific change to this wiki.) I'm only contributing to this discussion, for example, because I'm able to use a proper computer with a proper keyboard and a 24-inch HD screen.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/A new Tardis, at last/Thread:168623
CzechOut
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/Stub templates" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/Why fix what wasn't broken?".
Hey guys :)
One of the problems with our design that Article Prototype is highlighting is the fact that our vast sea of stub templates — and things that are similar to stub templates like {{lock}} and {{ImageLink}} – are not behaving well because of their placement in any particular page's code code. Sometimes people put {{stub}} on the first line, sometimes the last, and still others at different places in the middle. This wasn't so disastrous in Oasis, but in the Article Prototype, it's perfectly obvious that these tags aren't in standard places.
Thus I'm having to make truly gargantuan bot runs that basically stop on every page of the wiki to replace the template with a similarly-named category, so that I can then go back and place each template at a more precise location in the code.
The practical upshot is that all these tophat templates will be in flux for a few days. Please do not delete these oddly named categories. I'll be taking care of that in a later bot run. Thanks for your understanding. :)
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Regos Krang
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/Colours, Infoboxes" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/Stub templates".
Thanks for the new colour scheme, it's (generally) a vast improvement. However, now that links are a very nice light-blue, they are hard to see against the whitish background of the Infobox. I am still in favour of eliminating the "SEE MORE" and having longer Infoboxes, but I do understand that not everyone favours this. And I suppose you will have noticed that the new colours render this post itself very very difficult to read.
- Gokyr586
Hmm...for whatever reason, the forum still uses the old theme while the rest of the wiki uses the new one...
- Snow pea lover 100
Yes I understand it is hard to read your post.
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71.235.140.59
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/Link colors are impossible to read and other color issues" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/Colours, Infoboxes".
It looks like a change was made to the colors and now it's almost impossible to read many of the links on many pages because of the colors. For example the list of all of the Doctor Who serials - I can hardly see any of them. The article pages are all blue instead of white which makes it harder to read the text as well. Please change it back....
- 75.117.75.17
I agree. These colors are terrible for reading.
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CzechOut
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/Local styling changing" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/Link colors are impossible to read and other color issues".
Hey everyone :)
As some of you have already noted, the colour styling isi a bit off this weekend. That's because I'm actively trying to reclaim our basic commitment to a Tardis blue design, and to address some of the more basic concerns that were expressed when we were using the completely out-of-the box design. One of the biggest complaints was that links were unnoticeable. And that's really a local problem, more than a fault of Wikia's Article Prototype.
The problem I've found is that, since this is truly a prototype, it's only active in a single namespace. That means that changes I've made with universal CSS selectors are doing one thing on article pages, and quite another on every other type of page, like these forum spaces.
So for a few days, your indulgence will be greatly appreciated. Obviously, legibility is an extremely important issue, and it's one that has a very high priority here at Tardis.
- Kirby128
Try making the links green, yellow, orange, or some other color that contrasts well with blue (other than red or white).
- Ashadj
The doctor who logo or a reddish, purple and blue colour.
- Глючарина
Your changes seem to have broken monobook. Articles in main namespace are all now in this painfully ugly standard design.
Could you please fix it back?
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Tangerineduel
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/Firefox hangs on large pages" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/Local styling changing".
I'm seeing a brief hang of my browser (beachballing etc) under Firefox 34 on Mac OSX 10.9. CPU usage jumps to about 90% during this brief hang which lasts a second or three.
I can replicate the similar CPU usage with Opera 26.0, Yandex 14.12, SeaMonkey 2.31 and Sleipnir 4.5.1
I can’t replicate it in Safari 7.1.2
Only in Firefox do I actually experience a brief beachballing within Firefox.
This only seems to happen on significantly sized pages, I see it especially on TV story pages.
- CzechOut
Hmmmm. At first, I thought this was a remnant of the problem we had in 2014 with Mavericks. Safari 7.0.1-7.1 had a real problem with our largest pages, but that was — as you've noted — solved with 7.1.
And Firefox 34.0.5 is not the current version of FF, so I thought maybe that was the problem.
But after some testing, I can confirm your weird results in FF 35 under Yosemite.
It does seem to have something to do with page size, and it also seems to be something to do with the Article Prototype; similarly-sizeed articles on standard Oasis wikis, like starwars:Yoda are not having a problem in Firefox.
Are you also getting a non-responsive script error box?
- CzechOut
This issue is currently under review by people further up the Wikia chain of engineering command than me. We've now got multiple reports of similar results. Thanks to Tangerineduel for tipping us off on this one!
For other Tardis community members reading this, I do want to clarify that the issue is not Mac only. We're now seeing similar results in Firefox for Windows and Linux. It's also very important to note that this is not a generalised Wikia issue. Firefox works fine on over 99% of the network. Remember that we're running an article prototype here at Tardis, and — as with all things pre-alpha — some bugs are likely to be running around.
A temporary workaround here at Tardis is simply to use Chrome or, if on a Mac, Safari.
I'll advise when the issue appears to be resolved, but my guess is that those who follow Wikia's weekly technical update blogs might hear more about this issue there, as well.
in the meantime, we at Tardis and Wikia apologise for this temporary inconvenience, and we thank you for joining us on this voyage of technical discovery!
- DirectWest17
Thanks to you to. :)
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71.235.140.59
Warning: Display title "A new Tardis, at last/Table of Contents, Edit, Tools icons disappear?" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/Firefox hangs on large pages".
When I start scrolling down a page those left side icons Table of Contents, Edit, Tools icons disappear and the only way to get them back is to refresh the page. Is this intentional? I'm on Firefox with a OS X Yosemite.
- PicassoAndPringles
I was having this issue before and some investigation showed it to be an Adblock problem. You can either disable the Antisocial filter list in options or disable adblock on Wikia.
Category:SOTO archive threads YYYYYY Warning: Display title "User:SOTO/Forum Archive/A new Tardis, at last" overrides earlier display title "A new Tardis, at last/Table of Contents, Edit, Tools icons disappear?".
