User:SOTO/Forum Archive/A new Tardis, at last/@comment-188432-20141212015511/@comment-4189499-20141214155152

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.