Talk:Main Page/Archive 20

message: Yay for monobook :-) A mainstream press story on wikipedia some time back (think it was CNet) started off with "its home page has a web design from the early 90s" or something like that. I guess they can't say that any longer :) Its going to take a while for my relflexes to adjust to the new postions edit link and other links, but I'm sure it'll be worth it. Arvindn 18:48, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ooooh! 

message: Hey, it's really cool! A great improvement over the previous design. That said, I have a few suggestions that I think might improve on these changes.
# The Wikipedia logo looks to be a transparent GIF antialiased against white. With the new background in shades of gray, there's some ugly fringing going on here. The logo needs to be redone against the new background or (ideally) changed to something that's not quite as ugly.
# Why no margin on the sides and top of the page? Disconcerting.
# Body text is rendered in Verdana, but headings appear to be in the browser's default sans-serif font; this should be corrected.
# Not enough spacing between paragraphs, so body text is muddied. I would suggest either double-spacing paragraphs (as before) or adding a first line indent.
# Bright red color for links to nonexistent articles is jarring and calls too much attention to phrases that don't deserve it--maybe a dark gray would be better?
I'm not sure if this is the appropriate place for comments, so I apologize in advance if this is out of place. I'd try to fix these problems myself if I knew how. Ideas?
-- Wikisux 18:55, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Just adding on to your last point, if a link to a nonexistant article is clicked once, it takes on the same color as a visited existing article. That can be quite irritating. Would be nice if that could be changed as well. Aside from that, good job to all those involved in the re-design. Yardcock 07:59, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  strong agreement on both counts, re: the red links.  I hadn't quite put my finger on why those links bother me so much, but this is why. +sj+ 08:15, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

text:  Consider it a strong moral obligation to start the article once you've clicked the red link ;). Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 10:01, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia redesign 

message: Eww, ewwww, EEEEWWWW!  Sans-serif fonts are so very twentieth century.  They look lazy, as if the typographer couldn't be troubled to finish them; and besides, they make the baby Jesus cry.  Unfortunately, changing the main page has broken the main page in the traditional skin, making the entries much too wide for a single screen.  -- Smerdis of Tlön 19:01, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sans-serif fonts: almost as bad as the International System of Units 

message: From the main page:


Note: <a href="http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers"
 class='external' title="Meta:Wikimedia servers">New server computers</a> 
are being added to the site over the next few days and Wikipedia may occasionally
 be unavailable for a few minutes at a time during this process. 


is extraordinarily poor markup, when the page content suggests that

Note: <a href="http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers"
 class='external' title="Meta:Wikimedia servers">New server computers</a> 
are being added to the site over the next few days and Wikipedia may occasionally
 be unavailable for a few minutes at a time during this process. 

would be more appropriate. Result: lots of unnecessary whitespace on the main page. -- The Anome 19:11, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Generated HTML on the Main Page 

message: Sorry, but I liked the old style better because with the new style the links just dont show up.
:Yea, and that underline-only-on-mouseover thing is a gimmick that I do not like.  67.169.129.118 00:49, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  I can´t see the links anymore! 

message: Very nice work, whoever you are. Now if you can bring the same clean lines to the edit page, that would be appreciated. The one thing I did like about the Cologne skin was the clear color difference between visited links and unvisited/expired links. While dark red may not be necessary for visited links, it needs to be a little more distinctly not blue. Perhaps the green that was previously used for external links? Denni 20:06, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  New skin -- YAY! 

message: Is there some way to fix it so horizontal rules separating sections don't interfere with photographs, diagrams and such?  Some tend to run right through images and their captions.
Gerald Farinas 20:37, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: New Skin and Uploaded Images

message: Given that this is an encyclopedia with some very long articles, I suggest altering the new design to use serif fonts, in alignment with other similar comments. Serif fonts are easier to read in long blocks of text -- see the wikipedia entry on typeface, in the categorization criteria section. There are numerous studies related to human factors that support the better readability of serif fonts. Robert 21:37, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: More sophisticated studies suggest you will find serif fonts more readable if you learned to read serif fonts, and you will find sans-serif fonts more readable if you learned to read sans-serif fonts. Though studies about readability of fonts on paper do not necessarily generalize to reading on a computer monitor... I imagine somewhere there's a place where one could customize this preference... (either within Wikipedia or on your browser). - Nunh-huh 21:46, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

text: The majority of web users don't have antialiasing enabled, which makes sans-serif fonts much easier to read than serif. Arvindn 05:48, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I much prefer a sans font. Just reading the heavily serifed monospace on this edit page is enough to make me pull my hair. I quite like Helvetica, and Verdana/Arial/whatever it is works for me too. Denni 22:24, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Serif fonts are easier to read 

message: the boxes have corners, some should be round. The tabs above "article", "discussion", etc, should have round corners.
the font is not the best.
In the article the area of pictures, is pretty terrible, the boxes of images should have some color, like a lite orange.... Some articles that were pretty cool, now they seem awful and amateur :-(
: I'm starting to get used to the font. give a nice color to the images boxes in the articles and it will be fine... -Pedro 08:47, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too much White, too many squared boxes, please return the colour to the picture boxes 

message: Pretty please, do let the main body of articles be in a serifed font. Unserifed fonts are fine in headers, but they strain the eyes, if they occur in blocks. There is a reason why Times Roman has withstood the test of time (See Ransom note effect, which isn't an article but should be). Io 23:57, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: While I agree with with you, I'm uncomfortable with how you cite your sources. Perhaps you could write that article, or at least a stub? -- llywrch 00:02, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

text: I agree, paragraphs should be in serif and headlines in sans-serif. Fredrik 00:06, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

text: This is a matter of taste. I don't have sources. Io 00:12, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

text: PS: Except for every human being I have ever known , of course. Io 00:17, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

text: As I'm reading this in Arial(?), I can at least definitely state that I would prefer to have the text in some serifed font. Georgia vs. Times vs. Bookman? I'll let the experts figure that one out. But computer screen resolution has become so good in the last few years, that you can readily use the rules of visual presentation of print and transfer them to the screen. In any case, isn't it a maxim of Wikipedia, and probably Open Source altogether, that you put something out and technology will catch up? Io 00:36, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Layout again

message: *It seems that virtually everyone prefers a serif font. 
**Let me be the lone dissenting voice then :-) I can't stand serif and have infact disabled serif fonts in my browser.
**I also prefer sans. I don't mind a light serif font, but most are too heavy. Times? Gaaah!
*Everyone also seems to agree that the links are not prominent enough. They should be in a bright blue. In fact the lack of colour is very puzzling - why are we suddenly so dull and monochrome? What is that ugly grey swirly thing in the background?
**That ugly grey swirling thing is an open book. It's what I first noticed when I bumped into the new skin, and I quite like it.
**When reading articles, I find the color contrast between links and text distracting. I like the unobtrusive color.
**I agree there should be link-color preferences, with the default being somewhat more prominent. +sj+
*It is very irritating that there is no Edit button at the foot of the page, as there was in the old design. Please fix this. 
**There's an Alt-e keyboard shortcut, which might partly address your issue.
**Definintely agree.  *please* add this back into the default layout, especially since there's no shortage of space at the foot of the page. +sj+
*Is the style junta taking notice of these comments? Is Wikipedia a democracy? Adam 03:30, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The "ugly grey swirly thing" is a book. See the full image. You can change the fonts and link colors in your own stylesheet. See m:User styles. You can add an edit link at the bottom. See m:User styles/bottom tabs. Any other problems, see m:MediaWiki 1.3 comments and bug reports. Angela. 04:12, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Just a note -- having to change your stylesheet on every WP is a pain; having to create a user account (and figure out how to config those prefs) is non-trivial; and I also really miss color.  The Standard skin needs to be maintained until many more of these issues wash out... +sj+ 08:27, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: More comments

message: Who's monkeyed with the program?  The Main Page no longer fits onto the screen - and there's no way to make it fit.  Graphics aligned right now sit left.  Tables (such as Wikipedia:Multilingual statistics) have gone crazy.  Has my browser gone awry, or has the program gone crazy?  Does anybody know what's going on? David Cannon 03:46, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I had that problem once too. Try hitting refresh or hard refreshing (control+F5). →Raul654 03:51, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thank you, Raul.  It works now!  I'm wondering whether what you've told me could be posted as a brief warning on the main page, so that anybody else encountering the same problem will know what is going on and what to do about it.  Again, thank you for telling me. David Cannon 12:30, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

text: The main page is very broken on the Standard skin.  See this screen shot (beware, large) that I took for the myriad of things going wrong.  Many other pages are exhibiting similar behavior: images go all over the place, and text that should follow the bottom linkbar are coming before it.  Generally the whole appearance of the Wikipedia is broken, but I suppose that's a rant for another place.  P.S., what's with showing the url after the external link.  Bleh. —Ed Cormany 01:53, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: What's going on?

message: Is that squiggly thing the Prime Minister of Iraq? Non-alignment between text and images is a chronic Main Page problem. Adam 06:34, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Main page image

message: Please make this page work properly under the standard skin!  right now it's doubly wide, and the external-links-inside-mediawiki-msgs expand in a very funny way (see bottom of page).  +sj+ 08:32, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Standard Skin 

message: With the new skin, "other languages" shows up on the left "navigation" area toward the bottom.  Shouldn't this be true on the Main Page as well, to establish consistency across the interface. dml 13:02, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language bar 

message: The colours of the "Featured article"(pink) and "ITN"(violet) do not go well with the rest of the skin, however the "Category" section (blue) is okay. How about changing at least one of the colours- either pink or violet? KRS 16:02, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Colour scheme 

message: Sure would be nice to have a comma in that 6 digit number that is the current number of articles. nroose Talk 18:26, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not so sure - some people like separators like that, some don't; and in some countries (but perhaps no English-speaking ones) a comma would be a decimal point, which is why some people use a space instead. Personally, I think it can be helpful in really long numbers, but anything less than 7 digits it seems a bit wasted. More importanly, that number is automatically generated, so inserting a separator would require a change to the software to work out where to put it - not difficult, but don't hold your breath amongst the fixes and enhancements to this new version. - IMSoP 21:27, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current number of articles 

message: A lot of images now seem to report "There are no pages that link to this image" when there really are links. The first one I noticed was :Image:Airspeed Oxford.jpg which is used in Airspeed Oxford article - there are many more. --Keith Edkins 06:59, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems OK now. --Keith Edkins 11:14, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image links 

message: The Special:Allpages link is blank; can I take its link out of the main page until it's updated?  --Merovingian ↕ T@Lk 02:58, Jun 1, 2004 (UTC)
:Special:Allpages/€ works though. Maybe that could be linked to, or is there an index page that could be linked to? Angela. 05:46, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: All pages link

message: I've noticed (in Internet Explorer at least) that the images have white spaces around them, clashing horribly with the coloured backgrounds of the sections. I suggest changing the sections to paler backgrounds until this bug has been fixed. See the example I have prepared at User:Mark/temp. - Mark 06:49, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  White spaces around images on Main Page