HRWiki talk:Projects/SBEmail Infoboxes

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Current revision as of 17:45, 11 December 2024

[edit] Earlier attempt

This might be a wiki of interest (as might its talk page). RickTommy (edits) 01:47, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Appreciate the nudge, I did reference that (and an expanded version from 2021) pretty heavily when putting this together, hence the use of replacement. Most of the objections to dot com's demo are no longer relevant ("it's too cramped on my 1024×768 monitor, you have to scroll down to see the whole infobox"), or have been addressed in my layout ("it makes the image smaller", "the cast list is too hard to parse in a sidebar"); there was relatively little of the "what information should be placed in the lede, infobox, or both?" discussion, or back-and-forth adjusting the design of the infobox to address content issues, which I hope to be start here. I also figured that the HRWiki:Projects namespace would be a better place for this than an individual's userpage (and because the last input to the discussion was nearly twenty years ago I figured it was best to start fresh rather than awkwardly resurrect it). -- Bleu Ninja 07:07, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

[edit] Feedback

If it's any small consolation, the draft and discussion were from 2007 so it's not quite yet 20 years old. *whew* ^_^; (It's only 17 years old, not even old enough to vote.) In all seriousness I do think simplicity is best. I think having long, wrapping lines is a general negative with regards to this potential design. To that end I added the nav bar to the second sample with the goal of making that the main candidate. I also simplified the nav bar itself. The original's design seemed a bit too busy for my tastes. I also move the descriptions to the bottom. Hopefully the changes are amenable to everyone. Although I'm still not 100% convinced towards using infoboxes in SBEs, the second simplified design has come a long way towards convincing me that this is a good change. --Stux 18:15, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Cool! I appreciate that the options were reduced to one and that many of my suggestions were accepted. :) I understand that the descriptions will be moved to the fun facts. That makes a lot of sense.

That said, the latest version doesn't fully jive with me. I'm not sure what it is. Actually, I think my approach is that making the infobox as understated as possible might be the better approach for strong bad emails: the content should be the "star" of the article. And that starts with the lede. I dunno. I'm kinda going by instinct here, so please feel free to disregard everything I'm saying.

Oh and the funny caption is missing. I mean I know it's there if I hover over it, but I gotta know that I need to hover over it. This is difficult. Figuring this out is difficult (to me at least).

On another note: I'm also wondering if the title should be in quotes in the lede. --Stux 04:55, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I've come to agree with you on making the infobox relatively understated. I think the real value is in shortening the lede, getting it down from nine lines of text to three gets you to the article body faster, and at least for my brain short entries like the runtime or email number are easier to see at-a-glance when aligned in the table instead of in uneven rag paragraph form. In any event, I'm going to try and pause edits for a bit. Both to let it sit so I can return with fresh eyes, and to acknowledge that the wheels of wiki-progress turn slowly and I don't want to put undue weight on two or three editors' opinions, see if anyone else pokes their head in here.

RE: Caption, I think it felt too busy having little floating objects above and below the picture. With the latest revision where the "watch" link(s) have been moved down, I think the stylized caption text can come back in. -- Bleu Ninja 18:37, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Okay, we'll have to play around with the captions to see if we find something that works. :)

But before that, I think I figured out what was bugging me so much about the most recent changes to the template:

• To me, it boils down to the margins around the template:
• In this original revision both templates are 260 pixels wide, while the image width is set to 248px. That's a 12-pixel buffer which makes the border seem to "hug" the image (6 pixels on each side). It also might help that the title was outside the border.
• Contrast this against the current version: the template is 280 pixels wide, while the image width is set to 256px. There is now a 24-pixel gap between the border and the image.
• The difference may be slight, but now the section headers inside the template (SBE, "Watch" and "Chronology") seem to "overhang" and maybe de-emphasize the image. The edges of the headers in the old version lined up rather neatly with the edges of the image. It was rather symmetrical.
• Speaking of symmetry, another thing that popped out but didn't mention was that the "watch" links don't line up. What I mean by this is that now that the "H*R.com" and "Youtube" links are under the "Watch" Umbrella, my brain wants to line the two up with the "DVD"/"Podcast" headers and the sections they link to. In the original, they were by themselves so this wasn't an issue. This feels even more nitpicky than the border thing above but I don't have a good suggestion on how to improve it.

So, yeah, those are the two items I think led to me having the "not fully jiving" feeling I mentioned above. I wanted to try to update the template but wasn't sure which way to go. Nevertheless, I hope this information helps. --Stux 17:45, 11 December 2024 (UTC)