File talk:User Chriskang Skill infobox proposition.png

This is a proposition for a new layout of the Skill infobox template. Please comment. Chriskang 02:42, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I love it! :O It looks really nice. --Amannelle 02:49, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

It looks nice... but the only way I know of to get something to look like that would be by creating images and putting them in tables (i.e. the colored indicators and the Guild Wars 2 type text), which could be an issue with some browsers as the page size could get large... but perhaps with the proper optimization... --hnzdvn 03:06, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm confident I can create a template that looks exactly like this image on all browsers with a reasonable amount of code. Don't worry for that. Chriskang 03:14, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Could you perhaps recreate the image as with actual wiki code as a draft? That way I can see what would be involved in its making. --hnzdvn 03:21, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Sure, I'll do that soon. But I'd like to wait for feedback first, so I don't work for nothing. Making changes to take people's suggestions into account is much easier to do with images than with wiki code. So let's first agree with a format and then we'll upload everything and play with the code, OK? Chriskang 03:30, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

It looks good. Though I'm not sure about the fade out on the middle bars - mainly because it seems to send me cross-eyed for some reason. I have concerns about being able to scale the text and about being able to apply the style consistently through the wiki - I don't really want the skill infobox being one style but the nav bars and main page and so on looking completely different. The only other thing is you probably don't have to say (two-handed) for the staff because they all are that, but I could see how it would be useful for sword (main hand) and sword (off hand) so that isn't a big thing. -- Aspectacle  06:26, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

The only potential issue is the image at the bottom - is a visual of the skill necessary? But if it is kept, I say go with .gifs not images. videos>stills in showing a visual of a skill. -- Konig/talk 07:06, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I to would like those bars in the middle be solid, I think it would look better. The visual is nice, but hardly necessary, possibly scrap for a cleaner look? I must say, If you could make something like this with wikicode, you are pretty damn good.--Corsair@Yarrr 07:20, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Wouldn't be too hard,... I don't know about the border (with rounded off corners and stuff), but the rest is pretty much easily accomplishable by making images, uploading those and then putting them in their correct spot. --Naoroji 11:55, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

---

I so like this.--Neil • 11:25, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I'd prefer it without an image IMO, also the cooldown/energy whatever images might be different. I also liked the one before with the bars fading away :P. But that's just my opinion. --Naut 11:31, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Bars fading>Bars suddenly stopping, imo. The image is seeming more and more out of place. Until we know the actual icons, those will do I think, but once we have them we should change em if necessary. Finally: How do we know of those numbers, may I ask? -- -- Konig/talk 11:56, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

We don't. Just an example, I'd imagine. --Naoroji 11:58, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

It's.. dare I say it.. spe... specc... speculation! ON THE WIKI! IT MUST BE DELETED! :L But yea, its just an estimate I think. --Naut 12:01, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Aww, but I like an image/example at the bottom showing what it is. That's something GW1Wiki seriously lacked in, and if we get a jump start on doing it right this time I imagine we could pull it off on this wiki. --Amannelle 13:44, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of it. The text is using GW2.com's custom font, so they would need to be images and not text links that are standard everywhere else. I'm not sure how accurately we could match that font, anyway, and we're likely to need words that can't just be copy+pasted from the website.

Centre-aligned text makes reading from one line to the next just that bit harder (it may be a subtle thing, but it does get annoying, particularly when skim-reading); text should always start across one margin so reading is consistent, and skim/scan reading is easier. I also think labels like "profession:" and "weapon:" are needed, so that we can link to the appropriate mechanic. I think the screenshot at the bottom is supposed to link to the animation - how are people supposed to know that without a label or caption?

Rounded corners are inconsistent with most other styles of box formatting on the wiki, they tend to require browser-specific code, and they generally look out of place because the wiki interface has corners (the nav bars on the left, the tabs at the top, the content area itself, etc).

I don't actually find anything wrong with the design of GWW's skill template - it's clean, simple, and easy. Considering that, it might be a good idea to keep infobox styles consistent with GWW so interwiki-navigation is finer; if that's not an important issue with skills, it might be with other infoboxes, and obviously infoboxes across GW2W need to be consistent. I think this proposed idea is more to do with prettifying the infobox than making it more functional. pling 14:37, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

While I agree with your points Pling, I personally thing that a bit of beautification would be good, though maybe not to the extent suggested here. It's a new game, with new stuff, so let's try and make it shiny :D Shadow Runner 14:44, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I'd rather stay with whatever the default font is. I don't like white text on colored background, we'll have icons that can quickly distinguish these things in the future. I like the idea of a demonstrative picture, if most of the skills have more graphical variation than they did in GW1. Manifold 15:46, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I too think beautification is good; GWWiki's setups are so plain and dull that it can be almost unbearable at times. The only real "good looking" part of it is the profession symbol that is added in the background. Yes, functionality is good, but if you've ever used old computers, you can see what it's like when functionality doesn't have beautification. So I personally feel we need a good balance of both; having an image linking to an animation would work marvelously, and seeing as how ANet is trying to make GW2's skills more unique in appearance, it would be only sensible to do so. I see what you mean about the rounded edges; though they look nice, they don't quite fit with the rest of the wiki's design, and looks a little bit out of place. --Amannelle 16:47, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not saying pretty is bad, just that it shouldn't be at the cost of functionality. pling 16:52, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

oooh ok, I see what you mean. :) So yes, I guess we're on the same page then: balancing beautification with functionality, right? ^_^ --Amannelle 16:54, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

@Aspectacle: Yes, the parenthesis after the weapon name is there to differentiate one-handed weapons when they're used as main hand or offhand. So, even if it was useless for staves, I kept it for consistency.

@Konig: The image at the bottom is supposed to be a still image redirecting to the animated gif, as discussed here. The energy cost and the like is just a placeholder to show where the real informations will be.

@Pling: If we want to use precisely this font, it might indeed require a bit of work. But it's not that hard if you think about it: 8 professions, 16 weapons, even if you add specific mechanics (like attunements) you can still fill the 3 central boxes with less than ~50 uploads. The only part that is slightly more complicated is the skill name itself. But if we can upload an image for each skill icon and for each skill animation, then why not for each skill name in this specific font? I think it's feasible. And in any case, there's always the possibility to use a simple similar web-font like Comic Sans.

I disagree with you when you say that "profession:" and "weapon:" should be part of the template. I know that mechanics are an important part of the game but repeating the link on every single skill page is far too much in my opinion. If you want informations about the weapons, you can still find them from the "Staff" page. I know it's 2 steps instead of 1, but overloading more than ~500 pages just for this is not my idea of "ergonomics design".

I like your suggestion to add a line saying "click to see the animation" at the bottom. I'll add that.

You might be right about the difficulty to read centered text too. I'll try to create a left aligned box to see if it's better.

Rounded corners just seem more appealing to me. The wiki software doesn't have them because it's technically complicated to have them working on every browser. But IMO, if we can create them, it's the way to go. Wikia does it everywhere. Ok, I know wikia is far from being a reference but still, I think rounded corners give a nice "fresher" look.

And finally I have no problem with recognizing that the whole point of this model is to have a prettier box :))

@Manifold: The idea of having white text in front of a colored background comes from the "profession reaveal" animation by ArenaNet (when you put your mouse over a character). I don't find it that bad but I can understand that it might be hard to read for some people.

The suggestion to have icons instead of text (or next to the text) is actually excellent. I'll try to create another proposal with that. Chriskang 16:58, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

The bars in the middle of the infobox break it up just a bit too much, and the contrast with the white-ish top and the white around the image is a bit too jarring. And while color-coded might be nice, it seems that at some point you're just gonna be picking arbitrary colors (like for Staff now, but what about strength vs tactics? Do those have colors?). --JonTheMon 17:48, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I have stayed pretty much out of GW2W things, but I have to say I seriously dislike anything that removes the coding from the wiki and replaces it with images. As has been pointed out, the font is proprietary, cannot be embedded, and so for consistency, this would have to be done for all infoboxes across the wiki. Keep it simple. Doesn't have to be ugly, but doesn't have to be over the top using non-wiki based stuff either. Keep in mind this is a wiki, not a traditional website, and stuff that can easily be done on a traditional website doesn't always work very well on a wiki where you will have thousands of editors. -- Wyn talk 18:01, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

While I welcome any step in following ArenaNet's trend to a nicer overall website style, it will be very hard if not impossible to come even near the official website with a wiki. While the idea of that infobox looks nice, I have multiple issues with it:

• Font. The font is proprietary. It is not available for us and especially not available for publicially embedding it to a website (not to mention, that embedding fonts is something that doesn't work too well overall) - and don't even think of using Comic Sans! - So even if we had (indirect) access to the font, all we could do was displaying fixed images. These images would be created by ArenaNet, so every possible change we come up with would take days if not weeks to get through; which is not very wiki-like. And also this brings up another point:
• Accessibility. Having images as links or main information points is something that destroys all the accessibility a wiki system brings with itself.
• Information amount. When looking at that idea, it looks nice, but that's basically all about it. For an infobox, the amount of information you get is fairly small. Infoboxes should summarize the most important facts in a concise and easy accessible way.
• Rounded corners. To be honest, I really dislike rounded corners. There are situations in which they are really appropriate and look very nice. But such situations are really rare on the web. Reason for that is for example the inconsistent implementation of browsers; especially the overuse of aliasing makes those corners looks horrible - this also applies to your image. Another very common reason is that people tend to overdo it. Rounded corners can look good, but not if the corners get too big - this also applies to your image.
• Image. While displaying that image from the video looks nice, it has a big problem: We can't ever be sure if we get similar pictures (and videos, if you want that image to link to a video) for all the other skills. While we can always make images ourself, I am having difficulties to imagine that those will look equally good.
• Known information about game mechanics. Currently, we don't know much about the game mechanics and the skill system. This makes it quite hard to focus on a final layout for an infobox. So in general, while I don't have a problem with showing new ideas, I disagree with any try to implement such non-trivial things at the current point. When we know how everything will work and actually what content is important to be displayed in an infobox, then we can decide on how we can improve the layout while keeping all the content and accessibility intact. poke | talk 18:20, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Although beautyfication is nice, this is a wiki. Functionality and accessibility are the most important. There is nothing wrong with what we use on GWW, so why dont we trabsfer it to here.. -- Cyan 19:07, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I think first we should decide on what the infobox needs to have. The skills system is a little bit more convoluted in GW2.

• • Profession- a big DUH
  • Race-For Racial Skills, same place as profession.
  • Attunement-Only for the elementalist at the moment.
  • Type-I.E Banner, Conjur, shout ect.
  • location-Wep skill(main, off, two), utility, healing slot, elite, EW skill.
  • cost-energy or an as of yet unmentioned equivlent.
  • cast time
  • recharge
  • skill symbol

I think this covers just about everything. These are required pieces, and we need to find a way to present them in an easy to read fashion that is appealing to the eye. I'm not too sure about an image, to be honest.--Corsair@Yarrr 20:57, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

add chain skills and weapons to your list...
I like the skill icon near the name, but not the other elements (like colors in professions, images from the game and etc). -- Itay Alon • Talk 06:05, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and I like the radius in borders. -- Itay Alon • Talk 06:08, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Feedback

Here's what comes to mind for me. Overall, looks good. But I hate the colors, sorry. Also, I feel that the font not only makes changes more of a hassle, it actually detracts from the design. I would love to see icons in place of the text you have on there (one for profession, one for attunement, one or two for weapon, etc.) I think that would not only give more information at a glance, but it would look better. I love the preview image. That's a keeper. I don't care about the corners one way or another. --76.179.156.33 18:20, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I think we should wait for proper icons for different attunements and professions etc. if we're going to put them on the skill infoboxes, otherwise it looks, in my opinion, a bit messy. I like this infobox, I just think the text should be a bit more plan, Comic Sans maybe? --Odal talk 10:01, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

I already suggested Comic Sans a few lines above (make a search) but Poke doesn't want it. Chriskang 10:09, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

I can't work out why, it's nice and rounded, easy to read and not to.. fancy. --Odal talk 10:13, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh wait, this is the image. The last proposal is here (with real wikicode). And even that one is not final, I want to rework it before we start the discussion again. Chriskang 10:16, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

The only thing you need now, I think, its a place for the skill type. Then it should be perfect.--Corsair@Yarrr 18:26, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

If you look at the talk page, you'll see that we're still far from a consensus. But I appreciate your support Corsair :) Chriskang 16:56, 24 July 2010 (UTC)