User talk:Suki Brits/Nightbeat

Clearly needs some polish (as the bars are more or less my thrown-together-in-sixty-seconds sample), but I think we're onto a good start here. It most certainly helps break up the major sections, particularly those that need separating lines WITHIN them (like any large fiction section, and probably the Toys section between lines, why not). And the colored image borders do make a nice addition to the look of the page.
Of course, the coding would have to become an easy-peasy template. {{DecepPic|_______}}, {{AutoToys}}, {{MediaTrivia}}, whatever. The BIG sections that are currently served by the ==Headername== shouldn't have all that much variety to them. --M Sipher 21:49, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Huh. I kinda like it. Would we use different colors for different factions, or is that too problematic (everyone gets blue or black?) -hx

I had thought of breaking it down like this...

• Autobot/Maximal/etc-sided (including *Master partners, Mini-Cons, mechanoids) - Red
• Decepticon/Predacon/Vehicon/etc-sided (same) - Purple
• Humans (Earth-folks) - Blue
• Aliens (Quints, Zabra, etc) - Green
• Unicron (Blentrons, Planet X, Armada Nem Prime... guys who are basically ONLY loyal to Uni first and foremost) - Black with white text
• "Media" (episode/issue pages, creators) - Yellow
• Misc (whatever doesn't really fit elsewhere) - Steel-blue/gray

That might should cover everything well enough. Suggestions welcome. --M Sipher 22:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Hrm. Blackarachnia? --ItsWalky 00:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Predominantly Pred/Decep. Yeah, there are faction-switchers aplenty, but really, pretty much every TF character is predominantly a "good guy" or "bad guy"...--M Sipher 00:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Nice work. I've been thinking that this place needs sprucing up. Given that its Teletraan-1, how about making the background borders orange, and the article area itself dark blue with white text? --FFN 22:30, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Please, no. Black on white is fine. Put some borders in, sure, but I am firmly against doing any mucking-about with the background colors. -hx 23:39, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I echo that. - Chris McFeely 23:56, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I am also firmly against background colors. --ItsWalky 00:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Always agree. The background/text colors as they are work as good or better than any other. We really only want a TOUCH of color to liven things up, not a massive deco change. --M Sipher 00:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

This header design looks FANTASTIC. I've always thought that the various headers and subheads and so on were confusing in appearance, and this helps tremendously in sorting out all the content. My one critique is that it feels stronger in terms of visual weight than it should be. It REALLY dominates the page. So I've tried shrinking both the type and the box:

Sample

And I also wonder how just a border would do:

Sample

The reason I would tone it down that far is that there's no way that I know of to increase the visual weight of the article title (say, by putting it in a colored box too). And it seems wrong to me for the headers to grab so much more attention than the title.

But anyhow. Take my suggestions as you will. I think the design is off to a great start, no matter how they end up. - Jackpot 02:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

You know, I like that border one. I kinda wonder if we could give it the same pale background the picture borders would have... that'd add color without being overwhelming and tie into the overall look of the page... --M Sipher 03:09, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Mm?

Sample

Subhead

- Jackpot 03:26, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I dunno. I think they should be toned down a bit farther. Formatting really shouldn't attract attention away from the content, IMHO. Perhaps smaller yet, and with less saturated colors? --Autobus Prime 13:19, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Sample

Subhead

I added subheads for comparison. My instinct is that the last header is too weak compared to the subhead, which should be subordinate to it. Also, the muted red doesn't look like red anymore to me. It looks more like purple. I agree in principle that a wiki isn't the place for flashy design, but the point of this is to establish a good visual hierarchy, which the default headers are terrible at. So we shouldn't shy away from strong headers; that's the goal. - Jackpot 16:53, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

(To play devil's advocate for a bit, I'm not sure the improved appearance of these formatting bars really justifies the extra 4 lines of code as opposed to the usual format modifiers, considering we'll have to go back and add it to every page, to be consistent. Well, I suppose we'll have a template, so there won't be code-retyping...still, there's all those existing pages to change. I suppose I am an olde pharte and just don't trust formatting. :))--Autobus Prime 13:19, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

It theoretically shouldn't be too hard to change the headers. It's such a simple change (replacing == with whatever template it ends up being). Likewise for images. --Suki Brits 18:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks good?

Okay. So, I like the "bordered" one with the outline and pale interior (third from the top of the page). About the only thing I think needs tweaking is the lower border of the text box; having it double-think as the line to the right looks off.
So, if this looks good to folks... next step is agreeing on a template name, then running a bot to replace the == bits? --M Sipher 02:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Thoughts welcome. --M Sipher 01:54, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I thought Suki said we could just replace the bracket code with whatever, instead of a template? No bot needed. --ItsWalky 04:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Whatever works. --M Sipher 06:42, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

It won't be quite that simple. We'll need to change the == code, just to get rid of that now-redundant underline, but unfortunately, we will still need to use a template in place of ==s, unless we only use one colour for headers; since the code for every colour is naturally going to be a bit different. We can probably do it by making a single template, then passing it a parameter (like "red"), but we'll have to change each page to do that. This also applies to images.

Replacing these can and definitely SHOULD be bot assisted, though. It'll depend on what criteria we use for determining the page's colour, but no matter what, it should have a relevant category, so it won't be that difficult. --Suki Brits 03:01, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

The shading on the black one is a little dark (though maybe that's the point), and the yellow's a little light. Other than that, looks great! - Jackpot 15:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)