FGP Skin Change

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

In the absence of a suitable forum, I'll post the following here.

I've changed the design of the Fan Geeks Project, i.e. Mediawiki. The default skin is now set to "NGEFGP", a custom skin based on The Eva Monkey's design for the front page.

First and foremost, would any users, editors and browsers, of the wiki software please report any errors or oddities in this thread. Providing a screenshot of the error will be appreciated. IE users should be especially vigilant. Don't forget to report your browsers and operating system as well. Thank you.

Secondly, I am not a graphics designer, or even a web designer. I have been told when it comes to art I rank as a "philistine". As such, the new skin may be glaringly awful, in terms of both looks and css coding. Anyone knowledgeable in such areas is encouraged to be forward and blunt. If it looks bad, or is coded poorly, please say so.

To surmise the changes, the left navbar in mediawiki has been moved to the bottom of the main content, giving that content much more space on screen. The padding theme follows in some respect the main page. I hope it isn't too garish.

The ultimate goal is for different sections of the FGP, i.e. different namespaces in the wiki, to have slightly different skin designs. It's hoped this is one step towards that goal.

P.S.
If you're having a few troubles with the design in your browsers, first try a full refresh of the page by hitting SHIFT+reload(firefox) or CTRL+reload(IE).

EDITED -- fixed link

[Szmitten]

IE6 still:

Navigation, Toolbox and Search are randomly at the top. They block all of the links at the top.

[Ornette]

Looks ok to me. Although the default logo image looks a little weird by itself like that, with the 2 different chalkboard colors mixing. The other areas have that brownish border around it. What about something like this?


Would look something like this (obviously without proper alignment):
http://www.tesuji.org/images/fgp_screenshot.jpg


My visual design prowess is probably worse than yours, as I'm not critical with anything that doesn't hurt my eyes. I haven't even changed the design of my website in 9 years, it still uses embedded tables exclusively.

[Mr. Tines]

There are sites out there that will help preview your pages, the most obvious being

http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/

for multiple versions of IE; usually if you've got something rendering OK in Firefox, Opera and IE 7 on Win32 it'll work fine on the Konqueror/Safari rendering engine too. It's feeding stuff to IR6 and below that's annoying.

Also check out http://www.anybrowser.com/

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

IE6 still:

Navigation, Toolbox and Search are randomly at the top. They block all of the links at the top.

This is indeed, completely abysmal. I have no explanation for how things have gone so horribly wrong in IE. I've even rearranged the HTML of the page to make things easier on the browser to render. The only solution I can offer at this point is to revert to the default MediaWiki skin in the even of encountering IE. Now if only I could figure out how to do this....

[Mr. Tines]

things have gone so horribly wrong in IE.

the magic words are "in IE" IE-pre7 is an abomination of a browser. There's a lot of stuff fixed up in 7

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/08/22/712830.aspx

but note the fine print even there ... http://www.soxiam.com/Code/TheFinePrintsBehindIE7CSSBugFixes

[Omegagouki]

Looks and performs absolutely fine in Firefox. As for the skin, the chalkboard motif works pretty well and matches the message of what Evapedia is for - teaching people about Eva. I suppose the design could use a little work, but leave that worry to the graphics person, whoever that may turn out to be.

[V]

the skin is one of the least important aspects of Evapedia; don't worry.

the design has nothing to do with the content of the project, and is basically window-dressing.

thanks for trying to fix this up

However, I would much rather you put the Nav bars and Search engine on the top of articles, not the bottom of the page:

on very long articles, people would have to go all the way to the bottom to get to the Nav bars, and this seems counter-intuitive

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Hell and Damnation...

[V]

Hell and Damnation...

By the Left Frontal Lobe of the Sky Demon, the Nav bars should be on top of the page for easy access!! :shock:

[THE Hal E. Burton 9000]

I'm very surprised MSIE use is that high still.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

There's very little room for the navbar at the top of the page without them taking up to half a page just by themselves. However, what I can do is provide a small in page link at the to of the page which will redirect all the way down to the navbars. Would that be OK?

In the meantime, I've implemented a nasty hack in the Mediawiki Skin.php file, whereby if "MSIE" is detected in the user gent string, Mediawiki will revert to the 'monobook' skin. We can use this for now, so that at least people can still view the site. I'm hoping some kind of more elegant solution can be reached, but with IE, who can say.

Could IE users please check to confirm that that script is indeed working. What do you see upon refreshing the wiki?

[V]

of the three boxes, "Navigation", "Toolbox" and "Search box"...."Toolbox" can stay on the bottom of the screen, but you need to simply shift "Navigation" and "Search box" to the top. Eyeballing it, it looks like there is room.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

There really isn't enough room at the top for even one of the Navbars, especially if the site is to work on lower resolutions. In addition, the css used for the material at the top is very temperamental, and without a rather ugly absolute float hack, which may not work across browsers, I can't place any bar at the top without seriously affecting the current look.

[V]

then do it. It may take a lot of work, but putting ALL of the nav bars and search engine on the bottom is simply not going to function well.

On really long pages, this would be silly.

Frankly, I wasn't a big fan of removing the nav bar from the left hand side (what was so....wrong with that in the first place?)

the nav bars HAVE to be visible in a "one screen sized" top part of any article.


Yes, this is worth completely overhauling the skin and putting in the effort to change, and will be much appreciated, as its what the website will actually look like for YEARS.

Thx.

[V]

actually.....physically the only things REALLY needed at the top of the screen are the "Recent Changes" button, a link to the main page, and the Search bar.

The rest can go on the bottom.

[The Eva Monkey]

I'm working slowly on design work. Life has taken something of a stressful turn lately, and I'm having trouble doing design work. I'm hoping to do a bit tonight and over the weekend.

In good news, I'm learning how to build simple searchable databases, which I hope to apply to a database of images.

[V]

I was going to make an Image gallery using the Evapedia

[The Eva Monkey]

I was going to make an Image gallery using the Evapedia

That sounds counter-productive. Mediawiki isn't built to manage that volume of imagery.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I've put up a Navigation link at the top left of the article which takes you down to the toolboxes. It's a slight hack at the moment.

Frankly, I wasn't a big fan of removing the nav bar from the left hand side (what was so....wrong with that in the first place?)

They took up far too much room. This was especially a problem for the commentary, but in addition, more image intensive articles suffered from the permanent lack of space to the left.

the nav bars HAVE to be visible in a "one screen sized" top part of any article.

I could but the Nav boxes at the top of the page, but you seem to be underestimating just how much space they take up. I'd estimate between a third and a half of the of the usable screen would be taken up by the header if the nav boxes were moved to the top. They're very bulky items.

actually.....physically the only things REALLY needed at the top of the screen are the "Recent Changes" button, a link to the main page, and the Search bar.

That seems a little more doable. I was uncomfortable with moving the search form down so far. I'll try to find somewhere to but that and the recent changes link at the top without breaking the existing css. There's no need for a Main page link, as clicking on the logo should take you there anyway.

I was going to make an Image gallery using the Evapedia

That sounds counter-productive. Mediawiki isn't built to manage that volume of imagery.

Mediawiki does not mix well with images. I believe V is referring to the "gallery feature", but I don't think that will be suited to browsing a collection of images, a la the old evamonkey.com gallery section, without it being a strain on the server, and the editors. The Categories feature is passable, but requires the images to be categorised appropriately, and the thumbnail sizes are rather small. I think something like gallery is really the path of least resistance for such a section.