User:Greg Noel/Sandbox

Modified Estate Plots & Area Map Table
Working draft, mostly obsolete now.

Area Map Table
These are four possible cases of connecting a number with its associated icon. The first is the way it is now, which can counter-intuitively flow across two lines if the browser is so inclined. The other three are possible changes. The advantage of the latter is that they stick together when flowed, so the number and the icon stay adjacent on the line. The question is what's the best spacing between them. (I prefer the thin space; there still seems to be enough separation to keep them distinct visually without requiring a full-width space.)

12,345 (space)

12,345 (&amp;nbsp;)

12,345&thinsp; (&amp;thinsp;)

12,345 (no space)

Here's a modification of the estate area map that I've been fiddling with. With the extra column from the new expansion, it no longer fits in the width available on the web page, so I wanted to shrink the width a bit. I pulled out the row and column labels and shaved a few pixels in other ways so that it almost fits. Picking either the third or fourth option above should shrink it enough. If you guys think this is reasonable to pursue further, I'd reverse the row numbers (numbering from the bottom up), because you just know that the next expansion will add rows on the north (note that Jillian's estate is two rows larger, i.e., to the north). Numbering from the bottom will make it easier to add more rows when that happens.

12,345 (space)

12,345&thinsp; (&amp;thinsp; and doober set to 18px width)

Jester: You can shave a couple of pixels off the coin icons. I also looked into hiding the side rail, but it would be in violation of Wikia's ToS so the other alternative is to drop the table underneath the side rail and/or fill the blank space with associated content.  Jester (Admin)    Message Me   edits made  Contributions  10:36, 27/5/2012

Hi, Jester; thanks for your interest.

The coin and trophy icons can afford to be shaved (and probably should be, to make them a little closer to the font size), but the clue icon is already unrecognizable at its current size. On the other hand, the algorithm used by browsers to expand/shrink images isn't intended for a case like this. There are specialized graphical algorithms that will create an icon of the appropriate size and not lose as much resolution. Unfortunately, I don't have access to any tools that use such algorithms. Do you?

As hinted in the paragraph above, I think all the templates that show a game quantity, including hearts, stars, shields, and the like, should use the same technique so that the icon doesn't flow away from the number. This is a simple tweak to a template in most cases, but I notice that some places don't use the template.

What are the parameters for tweaking Wikia's side rail? Or for the overall page itself? If you can specify a wider minimum width for HC content, that should take care of the problem. (I briefly looked for the template(?) that controls the overall page, but didn't find anything. Is there such a thing? Or is it black magic, outside the provided wiki?)

Speaking of font size, I'm an old fart whose eyes don't see as well as they used to. My default browser font has been set to a larger font. As a result, I'm very sensitive to things set in pixels. It's almost always better to use ems instead of pixels, as the size is relative to the font size. It's too late for the HC wiki, I think, but it's something you should retain for the future.

One last thing: is there a way to create a template (macro) within a page for use just on that page? The requirement that all macros be in separate pages seems rather ham-handed, even by control freaks brought up in the Micro$oft tradition. There are fifty-odd occurrences of the same pattern on this page; it would make just too much sense to create an on-page macro for that pattern so that all the expansions were identically generated from one place. But I've already seen a couple of cases of ham-handedness in this wiki, so I guess it wouldn't surprise me that the wiki designers would enforce such a restriction.

We really need talk pages for each wiki page to discuss things like this...

Estate Plot Table
Draft secondary table. Working possibilities: only have the plot ID in the first column; remove the clues and coins for sure (that's what the primary table is for), maybe keep the trophies, as this table will be sortable; put all objects in one larger field, including buildings, objects, trunks, and trees/bushes/plants; default is 1x, only use nx if more than one; if onhover popup possible, pop up contents of trunks; other stuff?

LunaC: At the moment the Clues&Coins need to stay there, because I need some more time to validate the ones in brackets (and if I add that to the Area Map it's looking terrible). But as soon as I have verified those they can be deleted from that table. The other suggestions are good. I already started to list the things from the Trunks at Lost Trunks but I'm still working on that, having it as a popup is a nice idea, I think it must be possible if I just add the content to the image link (i will test it with that edit). I hope you don't mind that I try to add a structure to your sandbox...

B1 shows a Content of the box on mouseover now, there's surely a way to show it in the popup too but I don't know it yet.