Template talk:Storylink
Oh... wait a second, now that I made a change I finally realized why it was written the way it was in the first place. I didn't understand that "result in a simple tab" thing. I guess... I can sort of see that point of that. If somebody doesn't want any text to appear, but just have a little marker off to the side.
My preference would be for it to defailt to the name of the article being referenced, which is how I just set it up. I can see the potential appeal of a textless link (to some people, at least, just not to me) though. I think the mess of characters that was there, though, wasn't good. I mean... it was this, right? "([|" Plus those things appeared around the text if you did choose to include link text. If we're going to do it textless, I think a simple asterisk would be fine.
I'm also inclined to say that giving the template a background color might help to make it obvious that it's something of interest and not just random floating text.
(My *most* preferred preference, of course, is to explicitly cite sources within the text of the article, but I feel like that is never going to become the majority opinion.)
Anybody else have any opinions?
--Steve-o 22:36, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
On reflection, I like making the article title the default. You can get a 'blank' tag with an extra pipe if you want.
However- I think changing the right-bracket to a right-parentheses makes the underlining look dorky. (Or at least dorkier.) The purpose behind the underlining was to make the link appear more structural, less text-y, so the eye could skip over it if it wasn't interested in the margin-notes-- basicly tryign to overcome the natural human inclination to cet caught on readable text.
What do you think of the 'attached to the right side' version on the wipe-out talk page? (the one with the outline/background) -Derik 22:44, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
The one that just looks like a little doohickey in a grey box? It's unobtrusive and small, which is good, but it's also totally obtuse: seeing that, I would have no idea what it was. I could hover over it and see that it's a link to another article, but even then, I'm not going to be sure why it's there. Something that is more clearly a reference link would be more to my liking. --Steve-o 23:31, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
([ MF ep 6 ] Like adding a note in it? The one problem with a note like this? It doesn't 'stack' well. (more than 1 note per line) I guess my question is- how much of a problem is that? Do we really expect story-refs to be so dense that they're stacking? ([ WotD ] ([ MtMtE ] I always assumed they'd be used less like, well, Ratchet's, which has a story ref to every damn story he's in, and more like 'here's a semi-lengthy chunk, like a paragraph + that's all lifted from one source, this is the provenance of that source.' (and here's an example of them stacking impolitely.) -Derik 00:03, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I cleaned up the instruction text and example. I also increased the size of the link text because it was a little too small to read comfortably. I think that in its current form, the template is okay for use. I am still dissatisfied with some aspects of it, and personally prefer the footnote system (which we didn't know existed when you -- Derik -- made this template), but I think both are acceptable. Thoughts? --Steve-o 04:46, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
I think they need to be in a colored box or something, to make it more apparent that they're not part of the paragraphs they jut out into. --ItsWalky 16:19, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- I'll do some experimenting. -Derik 18:22, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- It's better. I'll hafta work with the positioning on Optimus Prime's page to see if this is all the fixing we need. --ItsWalky 20:04, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- I could give it a rounded edge, with the words 'story link' above it, reaaaly small. -Derik
Derik, do you have your web browser set to show everything in really big fonts or something? Because you're always making things with little fonts that are like, totally impossible to read for me. You reduced the font size on this template from 90% to 70%. And... look at this image of what that looks like on my screen:
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~sstoneb/misc/tinyfont.jpg
Granted, it is technically still legible, but only because I can extrapolate to figure out what the jammed-up letters are supposed to be. The font can't scale down that far without parts of the letters appearing to be of the wrong thickness, or the kerning getting messed up, etc.. Am I the only one with this problem? Or, is Derik the only one without it? --Steve-o 00:59, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
- I can read them fine. How big is your resolution? http://www.shortpacked.com/transformers/storylinkscreencap.jpg --ItsWalky 01:30, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
- 1280x1024, which isn't especially big as far as I know. I see now that Opera seems to be showing smaller fonts than Firefox and MSIE do... which is... strange. There could always be different default font sizes from browser to browser, but when viewing a styled page like this I'd think they would all have the same size. Regardless, it appears as if... Opera is using Arial 9pt and the others use 10pt. So, since it's a thing about Opera, I can confidently say that yes, I am the only one with this problem. Good to know. --Steve-o 02:42, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
- It's a question fo visual hierarchy. (Plus, iw anted ot see if I could get the storylinks to not bump the line under them over too.) I thinkt hart these storylinks are not, as a rule, a thing someone attempts to read (thus my reasons for often using abreviations- if you mouse over them you get the full title.)
- And yes,t here si signifigant browser variation on layout here- my MIE doesnt' even reach the right-edge of the frame, and Safari goes one pixel too far IIRC. There's... really very little you can do to control that. (I may end us moving the whoel affair a few more pixels left just to clear it of the edge, and thus make it mroe visually consistent across browsers.)
- This is 80%, is that legible Steve-o?-Derik 03:08, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
- Yes. --Steve-o 04:25, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Nothing useful to add, but I like the use of "lorem ipsum". Good old print shop gibberish that. -Autobus Prime 13:28, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
