Talk:Beautie

From Herocopia

I'm using the Beautie page as a guinea pig for exploring the updated character page layouts I alluded to in recent discussion (mainly on the main page).

Please refrain from doing correction work here for a bit until I get it all smoothed out. It is still in a fragile state, and needs lots of work. However, once I get to a review point I will announce it here, and we can open things up for discussion, improvements, comments, opinions and suggestions.

Thanks for bearing with me. I know I should be using a sandbox or name a temp-page The TemplateTest-man, and work there. But hey! I'd rather be working and updating real data.

P.S. I moved the 1/2 issue discussion to the 1/2 page so we don't lose it.

InfoBroker 16:14, 17 May 2009 (PDT)

Updates: The mechanics of this page are about 90% complete. There are still templates to build though, so editing the page will be smooth and significantly more seamless. It will make editing a major-character page just as easy (if not easier) as what we are currently doing.

Once those are in place (a couple of days of evening work - assuming I get the free time), then we can discuss all the above mentioned things that need discussing.

Comments on how it looks so far are most welcome.

First Pass Explanations of the page areas:

The entries in the statsBox (that thing on the right), will be very flexible, with a set of templates that will allow particular stats to come and go as the need of the character arises.

The main bio-area on the left and flowing around the statsBox at the bottom (or will if this were a longer article, which it sorely needs to be. Beautie is such a wonder creation), is also very dynamic in nature. I envision being able to pull and push sections from here to the statsBox, again depending on the detail of the data, and the nature of the character. Although a couple of those sections are, or in most cases, should be locked to the bio-area, and there are a ton of minor entries (many not shown here), that should pretty much be locked to the statsBox. Things like lists (appearances, headlines, mentions (and displayed over here I am very comfortable with a mentions sections)), personal data, and all the other one-liner stuff.

A picture will help for the guidelines of what goes where, and once I get some time to play around in GIMP, I will provide one here and for future documentation/help pages.

InfoBroker 07:45, 18 May 2009 (PDT)

Forgot to mention...

I also have a rough draft page layout for minor characters, that don't have enough info (and for many probably never will) to justify wasting all that real-estate, just to be filled with "unshowns, not revealeds, and other webpage noise pollution.

InfoBroker 07:48, 18 May 2009 (PDT)

I like it. It gives that "best of both worlds" between the deeper texts and the simple facts that we talked about elsewhere earlier. Gives people who might drop by here a little variety..

Maybe there should be sorta a middle level characters as well as major and minor. The major characters are obvious. The minors I would classify as a lot of the non-Astro City based heroes who've been mentioned or shown a panel of, a lot of villains. You're right on a lot of them that's the only time we'll ever hear about them. But there's some characters who are just...well, mid-level. We've seen them a few times, serve some purpose, but might never get a deeper more expanded story/look at them. Examples I can think of Villains who've popped up several times(Brass Monkey), and The Black Badge even the Bouncing Beatnik, Sunbird and Nightengale(so far!)

Just throwing it out there and not wanting to create extra work. Probably just overthinking it and it'll be fine once you get the other one up. Then we can work on teams and whatever else...

Zack

Ok... I am done tinkering and building the basic templates used for building a major entry. Assuming we decide to adapt this format.

Please take at look at the structure of how this Entry uses the three main (and repeatable) templates: statusHeader, statusItem, bioSection. They are pretty straight forward with limited number of parameters. They are very flexible for editors, allowing open decisions about which character stats, or biography information seems pertinent to the particular article being used.

I had hope to buried the formatting details that currently occur at the top of the page with another minor (closing) section in the middle somewhere. They are identified with comment markers. But unfortunately, the wiki parser is not doing all the text substitutions from all the templates before assembling the webpage, instead it is processing final client served html in chunks at the end of each template call (the "}}" point in the master text. So things like tables and format definitions are being terminated, or assume terminated at each point of closure.

So the format stuff is exposed, which is a shame, because I had hoped we could control the looknfeel of all the articles that use this design process. There are alternatives of a sort, butit would mean eliminating the ability to pick and choose which statistics/status heading we would want, and instead build a monstrous master list. There are ways to suppress unwanted items, but that would required the wiki:extendedParsers functions which we don't seem to have right now, and it still wouldn't allow for on-the-fly new parameters.

So for now, if we decide to move to this format, it is a cut and paste operation to get started. I will provide a majorArticle template, complete with a cut and paste section for people to source from.

The things to do next:

Try using the new format. For now, do a cut and paste from Beautie, and then incorporate the formatting onto another page or two here at the site. I want to be sure authors can get comfortable with use these templates instead of the existing editing methods we have been using. The actual typing isn't too different from what we have been doing, just past parameters and make sure the statusItem entries are nestle inside the formatting sections that constitute the construction of the floating table or infoBox.

Give me some feedback on using them and what you think. I do think the improved visual design is well work the extra effort, and a bit of a new learning curve period.

If we decide to go with this design, then we should determine a very barebones list for the structure of the StatusBox entries. A good starting point for new article creation, with as always the ability to change if the need is there.

Don't use this on everything on the site until we get through this test period. Just pick one or two entries and get comfortable using it. Also, don't use on minor characters, as we will have a slightly different and more streamlined template for them.

InfoBroker 06:21, 19 May 2009 (PDT)

RATS! The Glitch with the edit links going to the templates (or worse) is a major show-stopper. If I can't fix it or find a non-cumbersome work around, then this reforming process all needs a rethink...

InfoBroker 08:33, 19 May 2009 (PDT)

Played around a little with The Gentleman. I still like the looks, may not like the new work going into a page. I'm not too technically keen or super familiar with the wikiformatting, just what I've learned around here. So, some of the problems you're commenting on JB are Greek to me. I'll definitely need some kind of template... But I think you've hit on something with the look.

Oh yeah, about the discussion I posted on the Silver Agent talk page, I'll just try to follow what you did on Beautie's. The only thing I would suggest is not have any # signs anywhere...

Zack

Yea those dirty rotten '#' signs do stick out. I'm cool with them being gone...

I'm probably going to shift to the more standard infobox with pre-established parameters. That should be easier for authors to work this, and then I can bury the formatting code out of sight. Course then I do indeed need the extended parser functions to work so we can surpress ones that aren't there.

We will have to do a pow-wow for a standardize infobox layout, but we can wait on that until we get some input from JG.

Still not happy with the clumsy workaround I did to get the edit buttons to go to their proper item. It means I can't embed section markers "==" in the templates. "sighs heavily"

I guess we should hold off on spreading the new format around too much. Cuz' it is probably gonna change. *frowns even heavier than he sighs*

InfoBroker 12:09, 19 May 2009 (PDT)