Talk: Vector skin

I've already mentioned this elsewhere but I love it. It's more unified and even more of a LCARs feel than the current skin. I'm all for implementation of it. The fact that it will resolve many technical issues is gravy from my perspective. Judging from the preview pages, I'm not sure if my current screen is wide enough, but oh well. I vote in favor of the Vector skin in any event. Rayfire 12:45, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Vector is a variable-width skin. It adjusts to the width available within a certain minimum. (You need at least enough room for the sidebar, the left and right margins, and something reasonable left over for the articles, which is the part that adjusts.) — Eyes 13:03, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Well in that case I really have no complaints. And my compliments to who made it. Rayfire 13:13, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't have much of an opinion at this point. I assume the background will vary randomly? The demo picture of a blue California sky blends too much with the blue buttons. This was obviously a great deal of work for someone (Eyes I assume?) just to give it a thumbs down. It isn't the foreground I am even concerned about. At full resolution I notice a weird granular texture at the very top.

I never cared much for LCARS style to begin with, the yellow and orange is the worst. It is not only difficult on the eyes but I believe CBS has sued companies for even using it. Google was sent a notice to remove the android app "tricorder" from its site. But sometimes all you need to do is ask permission and some companies will respond giving you a fair use agreement. So if someone could generate another preview with a dark background or no background at all, I think it appears very functional.--Sanduku tupu 04:37, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I chose two backgrounds to test the random background feature and to test article contrast (making sure the text remained readable on the semitransparent black, no matter how bright the background). That's why I picked a light and a dark background. I'm figuring we'll pick different ones for the live site (I don't care for the logos on that Starfleet Academy background anyway). I was hoping the community might contribute some backgrounds, in much the same way that MatthewM has been contributing random banners for our current skins.

And yes, this was mostly my work. Credit for the new logo goes to Zutty, though.

As for the granular texture on top, that could go. I was originally planning on having random numbers up there like in the LCARS-style loading screen in-game, but ending up deciding against it, so there's no longer any need to contrast with a foreground element up there. — Eyes 10:25, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Personally I prefer the current skins, which closely mimic the STO in-game interface. MikeWard1701 12:15, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I love the vector skin better than the current skins. They feel much more modern and trekkish, and as said before, they have more of a LCARS feel to them. I recommend making the switch-over. awesomesocks42 23:13, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

I get laggy scrolling in Steam Overlay or on my netbook. I think it's the new (transparent non-scrolling) background. This will probably worsen when the site goes live (with banner ads). --GregBFM 23:18, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

The headlines for different boxes (e.g., on the mainpage) are too large. decrease the font size. --Akira-sensei 11:41, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Would it be possible to make the menu-system to the left, and the header on top "fixed" so that they are always there, while you scroll down the content in the main box to the right? Makes it rather cumbersome, to have to scroll up every time, if reading long articles. -- Darkthunder 17:23, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, yes, but there are too many practical problems for this to be a good idea. The biggest is that the sidebar can't be guaranteed to be small enough to appear entirely above the fold, especially on widescreen displays. The number of links in the Operations section can vary quite a bit with your user permissions and depending on what page you're at. Also, the kind of method we'd need to use wouldn't allow it to scroll smoothly; it'd just suddenly reappear when you stopped scrolling. And that's assuming I can get all those elements to move without affecting the page layout anyway. — Eyes 12:08, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi, just my two cents: I find the new skin not very pleasing from an aesthetic pov. I know the technical background of why a new skin would be preferable for our host Curse, but I personally feel this would be a step backwards. A flexible width skin is not very readable. Also, I feel the Preview skin tries to do too much at once visually, putting technology before usability (i.e. the large-scale use of graphics with transparency). There are no clear lines, that the eye can follow easily. I'm really sorry, that I'm so outspoken against the design, especially knowing how much time and effort Eyes has put into it and the wiki in the past months. I do not want to devalue any of that work. Regards, --RachelGarrett 20:57, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

I greatly prefer the current one over the proposed Vector skin - the simplistic design and limited palette is actually easier on the eyes and more efficient, whereas there is simply too much going on in the Vector design with the faux LCARS and busy background. --Sumghai 23:11, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Colors

The current version is definitely easier on the eyes. I would suggest darkening the blue a little bit more (like the current color scheme/the in-game interface). I have the feeling the menu pops out way too much currently, distracting very much from the main content. --Backyardserenade 13:23, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I just saw the second demo, looks pretty good to me. Just as long at it is functional I have no problems. Just don't go cloning TOS displays, I don't know how you would do analog readouts anyways. That scope Spock used always gave me a headache. But seriously, the color scheme seems to flow well. --Sanduku tupu 13:49, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I strongly agree with Backyardserenade, but disagree with Sanduku. I also find high-contrast bright blue/cyan border colors to be harsh on the eyes. Also, please remove the borders from the individual navigation links. They are distracting. I suggest instead having the LCARS "swish bar" extend vertically downward, to provide a background for textual nav links. --GregBFM 23:18, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

As it stands, the header font is too big in some areas; it frequently clips below a header line, and sometimes onto the text below. Karika^Communicator 12:05, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Agreed with Karika. I feel the header font size is distracting from the content itself.--GregBFM 23:18, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I find it very difficult to read (particularly the sidebars) and both much too busy and too spread out at the same time. The current designs are far easier on the eyes. --Shadowfist23 02:49, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Being a tech admin on another wiki, I completely understand the administrative desire to go to a new skin that doesn't have to be tweaked so much every time your host makes an update. In principle, I'm not opposed to looking for a layout that will reduce this wiki's tech admin's workload. Unfortunately, the proposed skin ain't it.

I join with Shadowfist23's opinion in its entirety. There are definitely tweaks I personally would make to the current design — I hate, for instance, how the editing area is kept in the same color scheme as the rest of the wiki; the editing box should be light background/dark text with a monospaced font for maximum readability. But the overall design of the current layout is, in my estimation, far superior. It's better that the wiki look like Star Trek Online than Star Trek: The Next Generation. An LCARS design is precisely the wrong visual metaphor for this wiki.

Finally, a variable-width design is a bad idea these days. The site should look more or less the same for someone with a 17" monitor as it does for someone with a 30". Variable-width designs promote little "editing wars" between editors. A person who sees the site at 600px width is very likely to position elements on a page differently than someone who sees it at 1500 px. Far better for unified design to keep everyone's width the same.

If you tried a more literal translation of this current blue-on-blue design, I'd be more supportive. CzechOut 13:09, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Adjustments coming soon

I'll work on making the requested adjustments early in the morning tomorrow, and then leave the comment period open for a few more days. I'm tentatively planning to open the vote on Tuesday-ish, depending on response and such. — Eyes 12:15, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

All right, I believe that covers the requested adjustments. No screenshots yet, but feel free to use the preview links on the subject page to check it out. — Eyes 13:14, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Looks much nicer now. A few comments:

1. The Search bar and its associated buttons are clipping into the body slightly.
2. Some headers are still clipping, mostly the g's and y's (not that big of a deal)
3. The text in the tabs isn't centered, CSS ids pt-login, ca-nstab-* in particular
4. The tails of some of the g's in the sidebar are disappearing.

I can provide a screenshot if you would like. Karika^Communicator 14:37, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

On the example System Page the text marked as "missiontext" (for the system description) cannot be identified as such (i.e. no bounding box, indentation). --Akira-sensei 10:01, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Some further tweaks have been made. Should solve all of these issues, except definitely Karika's 3 (because I'm not sure if this is a bug report or suggestion... the text being right-aligned in buttons with a minimum width is intended) and I can't tell if the changes fixed 4 because I couldn't replicate the problem. (I've seen it once before, though, and I think the line-height and margin adjustment I made will probably fix it since a smaller adjustment had made the tails visible for me. I simply can't verify it.) — Eyes 16:45, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

The Links in the navigation bar on the left do slightly intersect with their bounding box.

AND: By default, the vector skin should stay at the standard display width. Looks horrible when it automatically adjusts to my 26 inch-display... --Akira-sensei 20:30, 17 July 2012 (UTC)