User talk:Toughpigs

Lines through picture frames

Okay, I'm glad to know that the template problem was fixable. While we're on the subject, do you know why header lines seem to go through the picture frames here? I haven't seen that on any other wiki -- I think it's something in the Transformers css that's making the frames not wrap correctly. Do you know anything about that? -- Danny<staff /> (talk) 19:20, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

That I'm still not sure on. Templates that use Template:Messagebox as their basis seem to do it the most, but it also seems to depend on where in the paragraph the template ends up. If they land in the middle of the picture, they wrap correctly. If not, they take up the whole column and often layer below image captions. Template:Spoiler is immune by design, because it's supposed to add a manual page break before it to make extra spoiler space.--Rosicrucian^Talk 19:30, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

And really, I'm mostly on stopgap duty while the admins are off at BotCon. I suspect you'll be able to get more meaningful answers out of Suki.--Rosicrucian^Talk 19:33, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

No, I'm talking about something different. Here's some screenshots to show you what I mean. On Transformers, the lines under the headings go through the picture frames, and you can see them cutting through the captions. That doesn't happen on other wikis.

• 
  Teletraan-I in Monaco
• 
  Teletraan-I in Monobook
• 
  Muppet Wiki
• 
  Wookieepedia
• 
  Marvel Database
• 
  Buffy

There must be something in the css here that messes up the frames, so the text doesn't wrap around the picture frames properly. -- Danny<staff /> (talk) 19:41, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

One thing I do notice- the two examples you give (Muppets and Wookiepedia) each have bgcolor traits set.--Rosicrucian^Talk 19:42, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not familiar with bgcolor traits... What does it mean? I added a couple more examples -- Marvel Database and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I look at tons of wikis all the time, and this is the only wiki where I've seen this problem. -- Danny<staff /> (talk) 20:02, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Well from an HTML/CSS standpoint, bgcolor is setting a background on a website or on an object within it (like a table object or a frame). If it's not set, the background is transparent.--Rosicrucian^Talk 20:08, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Is it possible that the bgcolor is set by default on Wikia, and this wiki has added something that accidentally over-rides the default?

This is in MediaWiki:Monaco.css (which is copied over from Monobook.css):

/*Fix the 'see-through image borders' problem.*/
.thumb{ background-color:white;}

So it looks like Suki tried to fix this problem in late February, but as far as I can tell, it didn't work. -- Danny<staff /> (talk) 20:13, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah, that makes a fair bit of sense, then. Like I said, Suki would know the guts of it better than I would.--Rosicrucian^Talk 20:20, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

The lines through captions problem was fixed. Looks like it got unfixed. --KilMichaelMcC 20:53, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Looking at it in Monobook, the line doesn't go through the captions -- but there's still something strange about the frames. If you look closely, the header line still goes through the picture -- you can see it peeking out a tiny bit on the other side. Also, the text wraps much closer to the picture -- look at where the [edit] link is on the Teletraan pics, and compare that to the [edit] link on any of the others.

It looks like the pictures are floated somehow... the page renders without them, and then the pictures are floated on top. The fix that Suki made was disguising the problem, but didn't actually fix it. -- Danny<staff /> (talk) 21:27, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Thumbnails are floated. That's why the text flows around them. Or are you referring to something else?

It looks like the existing .thumb selector (which should be blocking the lines throught he frame) is not working. (Which is strange because it /was/ working.) Either it's not being effected (due to markup errors of wikia overriding it) or the problem is something else- like z-index. (But that's nonsensical because it's not blocking the image inside the frame.) I recommend changing the declaration to a hex value instead of a color string. (The string shouldn't be a problem- but the mediawiki software actually parses a lot of CSS instead of just using it...)

/*Fix the 'see-through image borders' problem.*/
 .thumb{ background-color:#ffffff;}

You said that the muppet wiki actually sets 'bgcolor.' ...where? bgcolor is a HTML attribute, an old one you're not suposed ot use anymore, not a CSS property. Can you point to where this is being used?

Are the styles we're setting even being loaded? Is the reasson the non-Messagebox templates broke when we went Monaco because Monorail guy didn't port things right?

I see eight CSS files being loaded by a page. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. Some are print-only, some are IE only, some only load if you have Javascript. None of them contain the code on MediaWiki:Monaco.css. No .thumb fix, no messagebox styles, none of our nowrap fixes...

If you look at Units of time it's really obvious- the wikitable classes clearly aren't even being loaded.

Hey guys! I think I found the problem! Monorail Guy didn't migrate our styles properly! No wonder be broke all our old CSS-based templates-- he basically deleted all the code!

Does that help in pinpointing the source of the problem on this wiki? </scarcasm> -75.168.112.43 09:13, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

There's a selector in Common.css that's doing it. Monaco uses monobook_modified, a lighterweight monobook.css (modified by me) that removes a lot of the bizarre practices of monobook (big white borders around images instead of margins was one issue that comes to mind). With monobook_modified as a foundation, Monaco becomes much easier to customize than Quartz or Monobook. The selector in question is:

div.thumbinner {
    background: inherit;
    border: none;
}

The first line should be changed to:

wikiaSkinMonobook div.thumbinner, wikiaSkinQuartz div.thumbinner {

This will make the style only apply to monobook and quartz. Or, you can probably safely remove "background: inherit;" alltogether and ignore the prior suggestion. -- Christian <staff /> 27 April 2008

Monacoizing templates

Hi -- I saw that you "Monacoized" some templates... What was happening to the existing templates? I'm surprised that there were problems -- as far as I know, what happens in the content space should be exactly the same no matter what skin you're using. So I want to figure out whether this is a Transformers problem, or a global Wikia problem. -- Danny<staff /> (talk) 15:43, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what's wrong, but the affected templates were:

• Template:comingsoon
• Template:comingsoontoy
• Template:spoiler

Something in them did not like having their messageboxes manually coded in. Their borders did not show up, nor did their bgcolor or any images they had. I assume they called upon Monobook in some fashion. What I noticed however is that any template that called upon Template:messagebox was functional after the switch over to Monaco, so I converted these three templates over to use it instead of their own hardcoded messageboxes, which seems to have worked out with very little difference in the end product and no loss of functionality.--Rosicrucian^Talk 16:49, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

It should also be noted that these three templates were also the ones that usually broke when the admins farted around with Monobook, so I believe my suspicions are correct. This is likely not a fault of Monaco per se, but a fact that the admins tied these three a little too closely into the old skin. I've now tested all three in both Monobook and Monaco, and they appear stable now.--Rosicrucian^Talk 17:01, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Titles of comic stories

Look, we go by what the issue says. If it has a colon, then it has a colon. —Interrobang 19:04, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. So the first two parts of "Crossing Over" had commas, and parts 3-6 had colons? -- Danny<staff /> (talk) 22:34, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

You'll have to ask the people who have the issues for specifics, but yes, 3-6 have colons. —Interrobang 22:39, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, that makes sense. I don't have the issues myself, but maybe somebody else does. -- Danny<staff /> (talk) 22:52, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

WGU adds

I found another one. I don't know exactly what you need, so here's the offending code.

<!-- ADSERVER right --><div id="column-google-right"><SCRIPT language="JavaScript">bannerid="WSBL2073";</script> <!--AdRevolver code begin--> <SCRIPT language="JavaScript"> <!-- var rnd = Math.round(Math.random()*10000000); document.writeln('<IFRAME src="http://media.adrevolver.com/adrevolver/banner?place=20302&cpy='+rnd+'" width=160 height=600 scrolling=no allowtransparency=true frameborder=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0></IFRAME>'); //--> </SCRIPT> <!--AdRevolver code end--></div>

--FortMax 16:19, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Aargh. It looks like that's coming through from two sources. I'm working with the ad guy right now to make sure that we get it off. I'll let you know what I find out... -- Danny (talk) 17:50, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

On redirects to categories

I don't believe we have any rules on having pages in the main namespace redirecting to categories, but it probably isn't a good idea since most categories have an article with the same name or will at some point (e.g, Activision) --FortMax 19:57, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I think redirects to categories can be really helpful. As I was just poking around the site, I was trying to find the Books category, but searching for "Books" gave me kind of a random selection of article titles. I think that's a common experience -- people often use the search box to help them navigate around the site, and they won't necessarily go to the main page to find the major categories.

But obviously, I'm new to this site, so if those are inappropriate, I can take them out. I just wanted to explain my rationale for creating them. Do you think other folks on the wiki would have a comment about it? I could bring it up on the community portal. -- Danny (talk) 20:55, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Until the event that we create any of those pages for real, I think they'll be quite helpful. --ItsWalky 21:03, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Break template

We have a {{-}} template that encapsulates <br clear="all">. JW 20:18, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, that's good to know! Thanks for telling me. -- Danny<staff /> (talk) 20:35, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

And now comes the hard part... Remembering that for next time. -- Danny<staff /> (talk) 20:35, 17 April 2008 (UTC)