User talk:Gatoatigrado/Sidebar redesign proposal

rationale

And partially to provide the most concise summary of Wikipedia:Reference pages and Wikipedia:Start possible, in a permanently accessible location. Thoughts? --Quiddity 02:43, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

If anyone likes the general idea, there are many options for which links to include, where to put the box in the stack, and whether to try and merge some links from the "navigation" box (perhaps move some of the site tools like "recent changes" and "contact wikipedia" down to a new box)). --Quiddity 02:43, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

This is obviously a very significant change being suggested, and would need to be discussed by many people. I am simply bringing it up here first, to gauge initial reaction. Thanks. --Quiddity·(talk) 01:18, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

2nd revision comments

"Overview" became "Overviews", to prevent confusion with the Overview link on the Main Page. "Other index schemes" became the menu name "reference pages" (The page is now called Wikipedia:Reference pages.

I also have some suggestions for the rest of the sidebar:

"Recent changes" should be moved down to the toolbox. The toolbox menu name should be shortened to "tools" and linked to Wikipedia:Tools (though that page could and should be improved as part of this project).

The Help link in the navigation menu should be moved to the top of the list, or to the end of it, not buried in the middle. The name of the top menu box (navigation) should be removed, as it serves no purpose, and would be the primary function of the reference pages box - while the reference pages box would serve navigation of the encyclopedia proper much more directly and explicitly (while the navigation box has non-navigation pages listed in it).

The name of the search box ("search") should be linked to a searching superpage, with augmented search features and/or links to the best external wikipedia-specific search tools.

Quiddity, how did you create the mock up of the sidebar in the picture above? --Nexus Seven 03:20, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Exactly.

(mock up created with just cut and paste in XnView (freeware ACDsee replacement)) --Quiddity·(talk) 04:04, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

questions for programmers

What would it take to implement the above discussed changes to the Sidebar? I'm a bit unclear on the procedures involved here. Assuming we arrive at a final design via consensus building, what happens next? What files need to be changed? Is there code involved? Etc. --Nexus Seven 03:40, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, what do we need to keep in mind during the discussion of design specifications? Like what is and is not doable, etc. --Nexus Seven 03:40, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

It is trivial to add a new box in the existing software. Similarly, it would be no problem to modify the names on any of the boxes. Existing software doesn't allow links on the titles. Making them do so would take a bit of work (or javascript tricks) but is not impossible. The items displayed in the toobox are dynamically determined by page context, can't be modified in existing software, and I would suggest changing that would be a bad idea. Dragons flight 03:43, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Do you know about MediaWiki:Sidebar ? --Splarka (rant) 07:29, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Here's another example of how this works (on a differenct wiki): http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sidebar

What are Mediawiki:Navigation, Mediawiki:Search, and Mediawiki:Toolbox? Are these pages in any way relateed to the sidebar as is Mediawiki:Sidebar? --Nexus Seven 21:05, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

As Splarka implied, the proposed updates seem fairly straight-forward 'coding' wise. Most aspects of the Wikipedia 'interface' are controlled by pages in the MediaWiki namespace. For instance, MediaWiki:Sidebar contains a line 'contact-url|contact'... which is evaluated as a call to MediaWiki:contact-url, which in turn points to Wikipedia:Contact us, and displays the link text as the contents of MediaWiki:Contact. Kind of roundabout in that case, but nothing tricky... though any changes would require an admin because the pages are protected. I doubt you'll need to get into CSS or javascript changes for this, but those are also found in the MediaWiki namespace at MediaWiki:Common.css, MediaWiki:Monobook.js, et cetera. --CBD 10:31, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

seems logical enough...I didn't know...thanks for the info. I don't completely agree with all of the content. I don't think the top should be links anyway. --gatoatigrado 20:06, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

third revision

Your examples are ambiguous between the "lists" and overviews. The "topics" links only give lists of things, which in my opinion aren't as useful. --gatoatigrado 21:03, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

integrate "contact wikipedia" to "help", most users know this. use small line breaks. --gatoatigrado 21:03, 10 August 2006 (UTC)