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Forums: Index Watercooler Portable Infoboxes

Hi all,

We're contacting a few of our top communities, hoping to get you on board with the migration to the new infobox markup. And we have tools to help!

Why we’re doing this

Simply put: Most current infobox structure translates very poorly to mobile experiences, and indeed any device that doesn't use desktop-style displays. On desktops and laptops, they often look amazing. The problem is that Wikia's traffic is trending mobile.

There is an important graph from our forum post about infoboxes a couple weeks back:

Wikia mobile traffic growth

Mobile is the future. Not just for Wikia, but for the web as a whole. Take a look at the recent trends and future growth predictions for mobile traffic - it's staggering.

We worked with the Wikia community to create this new markup to make sure that your hard work can be displayed on mobile devices (as well as any future technologies) easily and without any new coding conventions. It'll take some effort up front, to be sure, but we're here to help, and the work you put in now will pay for itself tenfold in the future.

Tools we've designed to ease the process

We’ve enabled two new features on your community. One is a tool for migrating the "old" infobox code to the new markup. It identifies templates on your wikia that look like infobox templates and places a box on the right rail of the template page. When you click the "Generate draft markup" button in this box, it opens a new tab containing a draft of your infobox using the new markup.

The second is a new feature on Special:Insights that will highlight which infoboxes on your wikia have not been migrated to the new infobox markup. It's fairly intuitive - you can click on the infobox title link itself to see the old markup, or simply click the "Convert!" button on the right, which performs the same action as the "Generate draft markup" button.

This is our help page for the new markup. I'll make sure that one of my more techy colleagues is available to help if you need it, as well as watching this forum post for any questions. -- sannse (help forum | blog) 22:59, July 22, 2015 (UTC)

Well this all seems nice and well, but I must ask are there any drawbacks of that, meaning if the template is converted, is there something being changed, besides the mobile look?

Also, beyond that, looking at the list, there aren't that many infoboxes because most of them are centered, not being aligned to the right. Energy X 11:50, July 23, 2015 (UTC)

The new markup has some formatting limitations compared to tables, but my first look at your templates makes me think it should be possible to keep them the same.
The centered boxes that go the width of the page won't currently work with this markup, but that's not a problem, we can leave them for now and concentrate on the traditional infoboxes.
BTW, I notice that there are a lot of different formats and colors for infoboxes - is there an overall scheme for those? For example some have lozenge shaped headers and some have straight edges and others have curved ends. This could be an opportunity to get them all consistent, if that's what you wanted -- sannse (help forum | blog) 21:04, July 27, 2015 (UTC)

Hm, not a bad idea, considering we had a merge with another Wiki months ago. If there are no (major) negative effects after the conversion, I guess it would be fine to tag them all. Energy X 21:13, July 27, 2015 (UTC)

So the next question would be - which design(s) to use? You could do something like have the same basic shape/look, but different colors. Or they could all be basically identical in style. Or you could keep them how they are in all their variety :)
I've put examples of all the templates Insights found in the temporary page Template:Infoboxes_Demo (I know it's not a template, but it seemed a reasonable place to have it for a while)
You could either go ahead and start converting (once you've decided what they should look like) or if you need help, I can do a demo one to your design. What do you think? -- sannse (help forum | blog) 23:49, July 28, 2015 (UTC)
Who is your main template and/or design person? Is there someone who looks after the wikias theme etc. Maybe I could work with them in selecting or creating a unified design? -- sannse (help forum | blog) 21:35, August 4, 2015 (UTC

I guess that would be Avingnon, but he hasn't edited here much in weeks. Still, worth a try. Energy X 21:38, August 4, 2015 (UTC)

Great, I've pinged him on his talk page, thanks -- sannse (help forum | blog) 17:35, August 5, 2015 (UTC)

Sorry for the late response, been pretty busy with getting college squared away. The infobox looks good, I'm sure that it does help with mobile viewing, as the ones we have now are rather clunky. I'd hate to put anyone through trying to figure out how the "type" coloring works, so I guess I'll be doing that myself. How many different templates do we need, because we have many different templates that have all replaced infoboxes: PokéBox, Movesettop/mid/bottom/end ItemBox etc etc. Are we fixing all of these? Avingnon  (talk)  13:17,8/12/2015  [[Special:EditCount/Avingnon|Special:EditCount/Avingnon edits]]

I see now, okay, so whenever EX is on next I guess I'll catch up with him and try to figure out how to design these. We already have so much hinged on the infobox templates as it is with the "type" coloring, and i don't even fully understand how it works. One thing that may be necessary is to figure out a new method for the "type" coloring. Otherwise we're back to using the same multi-template pull and draw. Avingnon  (talk)  13:24,8/12/2015  [[Special:EditCount/Avingnon|Special:EditCount/Avingnon edits]]
Sorry to have disappeared, things got a bit hectic around here for a while. I've moved the demo list of infoboxes to User:Sannse/Infoboxes_Demo - that shows all the existing templates identified as infoboxes. Note that it doesn't include Template:PokéBox, which is likely to be too complex for conversion at the moment. There are going to be others that are in the same situation, but at least if we can get the standard infobox-type templates changed it's a start! Is it just complex boxes that use "type" coloring?
I think the first question though is whether you are going to consolidate the default style of all the identified boxes, or if you prefer to have them varied as on the demo page? And if you are going to go for one default, which infobox is going to be the model for that? -- sannse (help forum | blog) 19:59, September 16, 2015 (UTC)

Oh, there is no doubt we should follow one style. Some of these templates were added during a certain merge. At any rate, the infoboxes that don't change color should follow a model like Move Infobox, just add blue colors. But, this is just one input, so I asked Avingnon to share his thoughts. Energy X 20:56, September 16, 2015 (UTC)

If there is no any drawbacks when implying this, it should be okay. I agree also to follow just one style. If there is multiple styles, it can be quite confusing. Following the Move Infobox style, is a good idea, that template is designed well and has a good overview on everything in the template.--Lordranged7 (talk) 13:28, September 17, 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it's beyond my CSS/Template expertise (as in, I'm not an expert). I thought I could give it a try, but then I found all the fancies like tooltips and roll-over highlighting. I looked into the type coloring though, and that bit should be easy. You just tell the template which variable to look at for the theme, and specify the CSS that goes with for each. Probably very similar to how it works now. But overall, it's gonna take someone more knowledgeable than me! Hopefully that's you, but if you need help I can also rope in one of my colleagues -- sannse (help forum | blog) 21:07, September 24, 2015 (UTC)

That'd be useful. For now, it looks like the base model will be the Template:Move Infobox. Though that does not include the type coloring, due to that part being connected with the css. Energy X 21:17, September 24, 2015 (UTC)

Just wondering, would it change experience for desktop too? If yes, which ways, good or bad? Utkar22 08:01, October 19, 2015 (UTC)

The idea from above is to make the desktop view more consistent, rather than having so many varied formats for infoboxes. So that's good. There are some limitations of the new code, that will either need ingenuity, an update of the code (it's still being developed as people want various features), or a change in the box if the new code is to be used - for example, it can't cope with full width boxes yet, which is why it's not being used for that here. Otherwise, the look on desktop is mostly down to the skill of the person writing the CSS. Which hear probably means it will be fantastic ;) -- sannse (help forum | blog) 22:55, October 19, 2015 (UTC)
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