Talk:Www.wikipedia.org portal/Catherine

Hello Catherine, this new design looks really beautiful :-))) However, some suggestions:

• limit encyclopedias in the circle to 8 - I think this looks better and less cluttered.
• would be nice to see a version with the search box (code is in Www.wikipedia.org template)
• a big "Wikipedia" written somewhere (maybe above the logo) is a must
• for the bookshelves (great idea ;-) maybe a blue with less saturation, maybe try also with image versions with numbers written on the pictures.

greetings, --Elian 02:46, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've made a few improvements to books and general layout -- couldn't get the search code to display properly though -- I'll leave that to someone else. I'll try a version with eight later, if others also think ten is too many. BTW, this is not intended for display with the usual left-hand sidebar, so there should not be redundant logos. Thanks for the feedback! Catherine 06:32, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'd prefer the word "WikipediA" at the top to appear as text rather than as an image. Does anybody know what font it is supposed to be in? Once we know the font, we can code something like <font style="font-size:xx-large; line-height:110%; font-weight:normal; font-family: 'Name of desired font', 'Alternative name', 'Another fallback', 'Times New Roman', 'Times new roman', Times, serif">W<font style="font-size:70%">IKIPEDI</font>A</font>, which displays as WIKIPEDIA. Compare that with the image: . Even if other people prefer to use an image, if I knew the proper font name then I could improve the way the alt text displays in browsers that have images disabled. —AlanBarrett 15:27, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Great improvements, Alan! I knew there had to be a way to arrange the "constellation" in CSS, thanks for showing me how simple it can be. I agree, the title might be better as text. According to the Logo page, the font is "Hoefler Text italic 13px" -- the italics probably just apply to the "free encyclopedia" subtitle, though, and the size to the standard size of upper-left-corner logos. It's not exactly clear from that page whether Hoefler Text is also used for "WikipediA", but it's a place to start experimenting. (You may also be able to contact User:Nohat who designed the original.) Catherine 16:35, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Nobody will have that font available to their browser, so we should keep the image. I've already converted it to have a transparent background. I'll fiddle with the font used for the alt text. —AlanBarrett 17:06, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Actually, most Macs have Hoefler Text installed as a system font. But a graphic is appropriate here. —Michael Z. 2005年01月22日 17:29 Z

In thinking about it, would it make sense to consider changing the "Wikipedia" title according to language setting? I definitely don't think this is reliable enough to do with the whole page or even sections, but might make sense for just this one word, so that visitors are more likely to see that bold title in a language they understand ("Wikipedia", "Wikipedie", "Vikipedio", etc.). In a graphics-happy high-bandwidth world, I could see the title "Welcome to Wikipedia" dissolving into different languages in a cycle, but that doesn't seem appropriate here. Catherine 16:35, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Anything that depends on the browser's language setting will need development work, so we can probably ignore it for now. Putting a translation above each of the top 10 languages in the circle woild be easy. As long as the page works fine (and preferably also looks reasonable) when I have images disabled, or image animation turned off, then I suppose it's OK for you to put some kind of fancy animation on the page, but I won't like it. —AlanBarrett 17:06, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I happen to agree in this case -- just because something CAN be done doesn't mean it should be done. Just pondering using time rather than space to display multiple languages. But I think the disadvantages outweigh the benefits. Catherine 17:16, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There are arguments both ways, but I feel that wikipedia is the one word we don't really have to translate. After all, they just typed in www.wikipedia.org to reach this page, so it won't come as a total suprise. (The French wikipedia is at fr.wikipedia.org etc.) Even though there are "translations" available, wikipedia isn't really an English word. GeorgeStepanek 02:19, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Looks great. CSS layout too! I would make everything a little smaller, though. If the wordmark and logo were half the size, then the search box and additional wikipedia listings would stand a better chance of appearing "above the fold" in average-sized monitors.

The bookshelf is a nice indicator of size, but it doesn't need to be a click target. So I would make them much smaller, or maybe make them a background behind the numbers 10,000+, etc.

Minor suggestions:

• Try a white background, please.
• Thousands places in numbers should be denoted by a comma, in English (e.g., "10,000")
• Number ranges indicated with unspaced n-dashes (e.g., "1,000–10,000")
• No need for parentheses around the number ranges.
• Middle dots as separators in the lists? E.g.:

עברית · 中文 · Български · Русский · Українська · Català · Dansk · Esperanto · Norsk · Română · Suomi

—Michael Z. 2005年01月22日 17:43 Z

I like the layout too. Personally, I prefer the space in the numbers, as that's an international standard, rather than having a comma or dot to separate out the thousands.-203.118.140.195 19:11, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I added a white background, and changed the number ranges to use spaced en-dashes. Unspaced dashes look ugly to me, and I like the parentheses. Not all languages use commas in numbers, so spaces are more neutral. I agree that the logo and "wordmark" should be smaller, but I didn't change them. It's impossible (or at least difficult) to have images that are not clickable links to the image description page. —AlanBarrett 19:40, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I tried to do a version where a pale bookshelf image is the background to the number labels ("10 000+", etc), but wiki doesn't allow CSS background images. —Mzajac 06:06, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

So, for this to actually work, we need a way of embedding a search form in the middle of the wiki page, and a way of embedding the wiki page in an HTML page, and a way of making the web server output the HTML page.

The webserver part is done: it automatically outputs the HTML from Www.wikipedia.org template.

The outermost HTML is easy: The code at Www.wikipedia.org template just needs to be stripped of anything we don't want, leaving a "1ドル" in that code as a placeholder for the wiki page.

The search form seems to need some magic from a developer to allow this wiki page to include a template (or a new message in the mediawiki namespace) that is written in HTML rather than in wiki code. Are any developers listening? —AlanBarrett 21:47, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I like it a lot.

Aside from liking it, I think the languages stick to the ball a bit too much, and am not really convinced by the book design.

But generally, good work ! Anthere 23:17, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Holy crap this is nice! --Daniel Mayer 03:49, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think it is great too. The only thing I would suggest is to remove the blue backdrop to the Logo, so that the words dont appear on both white and blue. Danny 05:13, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There is no blue backdrop to the logo. Image:Nohat-logo-XI-300px.png (which Catherine used) has a transparent background, and Image:Nohat-logo-nowords-bgwhite-200px.jpg (which I have recently added) has a white background. I suspect that you were seeing the effects of a browser bug, or perhaps a stale web cache. I saw similar effects myself at some point yesterday. —AlanBarrett 10:04, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I copied the source of catherine's version yesterday to my computer to see how it looks without the meta-wiki navigation around. The problem I found is: you see only a very small part of the page without scrolling (at least on my powerbook), and this shouldn't be. I experimented a little bit to fit everything on one screen, mockup on http://djini.de/upload/portal/portal4.html (doesn't work on IE atm, and you have to switch manually to utf-8). If someone wants to build on this... --Elian 16:32, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yesterday? That would have been before I reduced the logo size. Avoiding horizontal scrolling on narrow screens is much more important than avoiding vertical scrolling on large screens. As far as I am aware, the wikipediasister table is the only part that requires horizontal scrolling at 300px screen width. Vertical scrolling is normal and expected on just about any web page, and I don't see the point of writing everything in tiny fonts just to avoid vertical scrolling. With the current version of Www.wikipedia.org portal/Catherine, people with reasonably large screens should see the logo, the top 10 languages, the search box, and some of the lists of smaller languages. —AlanBarrett 16:54, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I see only the major ten languages (1024x768) and that's definitely not enough. I agree with you that scrolling is usually necessary, but it should be avoided on a start page as much as possible. (horizontal scrolling shouldn't be necessary at all)--Elian 16:58, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If it works better design-wise, it can be reduced to eight, or even the current six -- I just thought it would be nice to plan ahead and address scalability issues by trying what looked like the largest practical set of top languages -- and ten gave a nice "round" shape surrounding the globe, where eight looks more square and blocky. Let's keep working on this; I think it's going someplace good. Thank you for taking it and running with it, Alan and Elian... Catherine 18:34, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea of highlighting the "top ten": it's a nice round number. GeorgeStepanek 23:47, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

What if the wordmark and logo were a bit smaller, and only the language and number of articles appeared, omitting translations of "the free encyclopedia"? I like it the way it is, but it would be worth trying that combination out. —Michael Z.

The translations of "The free encyclop[a]edia" are essential. This page is not just a language selection switch for people who already know what Wikipedia is, it's also an introduction to Wikipedia for people who have never heard of it before.

Copying comments from the English WP Village Pump (as of 17:10, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)), to consolidate discussion and demonstrate consensus. Catherine 18:13, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

--begin copied text--

Please come look and comment and improve on an idea I had for the multilingual portal at www.wikipedia.org -- see [this subpage]. I'd really appreciate some feedback (and help with getting the graphics properly transparent and all). Thanks! Catherine\talk 06:47, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

1. I really, REALLY like your design. Especially when compared to what's currently the portal page. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 18:06, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
2. I like it a lot. There would be no sidebar, right? - Omegatron 18:08, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)
3. Looks awesome! --Stevietheman 19:13, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
4. I like it a lot Catherine ! Very neat :-) SweetLittleFluffyThing
5. Looks like a proper entry page/cover of a book rather than a hack on monobook. Love it. --BesigedB (talk) 23:21, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
6. I like it a lot. However, this design does not work with some khtml-based browsers (Konqueror, though it might work with very recent versions of it, and perhaps Safari). Perhaps an image map would be safer. David.Monniaux 23:28, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
   1. It works okay (now) for me with Konqueror 3.2.2. Alan Barrett has changed a bunch of the CSS - can you try again with your khtml browser and see if he's fixed things for it too? -- John Fader 15:37, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
      1. Does not work with Konqueror 3.1, really horrible results. David.Monniaux 21:41, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
   2. No image map for text, please! A table would be preferable to that, but hopefully the CSS can work in all the modern browsers plus MSIE/Win. —Michael Z. 2005年01月23日 19:00 Z
      1. Have you tested with Safari? I do not see how a table would help - for me, the image map would just be for the logo and 6 texts around. David.Monniaux 21:41, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
7. That's really nice. The only thing I would consider is left aligning the "10,000 - 50,000 articles" titles and text below the top part. Beautiful! --Alterego 23:34, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)
8. Really cool-looking, although it perhaps de-emphasizes the Littlepedias (no differently than the current design does). Deco 04:40, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
9. Excellent. Can I suggest you add "background:white;" to the styles for the names surrounding the globe - this way, when the browser window is so narrow that these guys must overlap the globe, they're still legible (sure, it's ugly, but marginally less so than without the background specification). -- John Fader 04:50, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
10. Just to chime in - I love it too :) →Raul654 07:53, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)
11. Me too ;-) And even table-free! -- Gabriel Wicke 11:51, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
12. Beautiful! — Pt (T) 13:26, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
13. Wow! :ChrisG 21:47, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)
14. That's a beauty. Awesome! — Gwalla | Talk 02:05, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
15. Very classy - lets go for it Apwoolrich 08:49, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
16. Gods Of - aherm... I mean, definitely very impressive. I would suggest adopting at least something like this. Works at least in the Konqueror 3.2.0 I am using - Skysmith 11:51, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

--end copied text--

Since the divs are pretty intricate, and use all too many parametres I have no idea about, I'll let others who know this better than me edit this page. (I tried; I couldn't do what I wanted.)

So, here are some small thoughts about the Layout, nothing big, but I want to contribute.

• We could try arranging the top ten languages in a rounder shape. Right now, the arrangement has two pointy ends, and it would be nicer if they could be laid out in circle-arcs on both sides.
• The bookshelves are nice, but can't we shove them to the side? How does it look if we remove half of them, leave the text in the middle, but right-align the books? (Or something like that; the books are really peripherial illustrations, and we should keep the text alone in the middle.)
• Do we need to show the full range? 100-999 makes it seem like the accuracy is important, to tree significant digits; it's not, we do rough groupings. Also, I'd like the text better if it was without parantheses, in a serif font, and possibly bolded.
• I made a stab at this once, but; the icons in the WikiSister Template should leave less whitespace between the icon and the name of the project.

Just to come with some small ideas. In general, I think this portal is so much more professional than the current one (but still simple). ✏ Sverdrup 21:44, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)