Wikia "new look" skin and EQ2i

Forums: Index > Talk to the Admins > Wikia "new look" skin and EQ2i

It looks nice, but basically, it doesn't work with EQ2i.

Left sidebar custom menus are now listed along the top instead. Only space for four items (i.e. the Community menu is not showing). And worst of all, sub-menus are not working - only the top levels of each menu are shown .

Right sidebar is now shown on all articles! This drastically reduces the available horizontal space. Even right-aligned images are hundreds of pixels in from the right side of the browser.

When editing, the "Tips" left-hand sidebar messes up the alignment of the editing frame. I suspect the skin is designed for the WYSIWYG editor and doesn't really support our basic editor.

Now, let me follow all that complaining by saying, basically, the new skin really rocks if we can resolve these issues. It is way cleaner, with sharper fonts and less clutter, and looks about a decade more modern than the old skin. It would be really nice to make it work for us.

To me, the lack of sub-menus is the deal-breaker. With those broken, for example, one cannot easily find a link to these Forums. We really need a solution (from Wikia?) to getting our sub-menus to show up on the new skin. -- Sassinak 03:49, October 13, 2010 (UTC)

Even more, I get on the start page flash ads about WoW and skin care despite being logged on. I want to *use* the information contained here and not want to search on the site how I could get it because someone thinks a new fancy look every year is the coolest thing since sliced bread. Please do not delete Monobook :-) This works for me and it works great for years. -- Alinor 06:01, October 13, 2010 (UTC)

Hello, I just wanted to stop by and answer a few of your concerns here.

We moved the wiki navigation to the top, so visitors of your wiki can find your most important links quicker and easier. This number is limited, but there are ways to coding to have it auto populate with the most popular pages. You can learn more here .
The right sidebar does appear on article pages, and is designed to include an ad (if you have them turned on or are logged out), as well as content modules that display recent wiki activity, popular blog posts, recent photo uploads and others. We are taking feedback on other types of modules that the community may be interested in, so please let me know if you have any.
In the WYSIWYG there was a tips section on the right, but that is no longer there, and was never a part of editing in wikitext.
Monobook will remain as a personal choice.

As for EQ2 in the new look, a basic theme was added, but there is a lot more customization that can be done. Admins can use our new Theme Designer tool at Special:Themedesigner (also found in your My tools), to make changes. We know it can take some time to adjust to the new look, especially for those (including myself) who are used to Monaco. I personally found though that after a couple of days I adjusted to where everything was, and now feel a bit lost when I switch back to Monaco. Also please remember it is a work in progress, and we will be making tweaks as we learn from it being released sitewide. Let me know if there are further questions. Cheers, -- Sarah ( Help Forum ) ( blog ) 20:24, October 19, 2010 (UTC)

The new look is here but i when i go to Special:ThemeDesigner it's empty. I have admin rights so i would like to take a look into it, what am i (or we) missing? --

( Talk ) 14:23, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

Hello, it appears that you don't have the new look selected in your preferences. Once you select this, you will be able to access the theme designer. Let me know if you still runinto a problem. Cheers, -- Sarah

( Help Forum ) ( blog ) 17:02, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

Ah i see thanks, let's what i can break .. erm .. i mean change =) --

( Talk ) 17:31, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

The skin looks nice but defo nothing for me

Missing recent changes (easy accessable on front page), upload pic, the help needed widget, it's to small for larger sites and so on

Zones By Level for example is one of the articles that get's nearly unreadable with the new skin

--

( Talk ) 17:41, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

Anybody mind switching back to a working theme until the issues are solved? It looks horrible in the ingame browser and pushes peeps to zam :-).-- Alinor 17:53, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

you can still log in and choose monaco. thats what i did -- Vraeth 18:23, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

I know and I have. But not everybody has an account or wish to have one. Not everyone trusts wikia not selling his email address or want to create a spamproof address. Some people just want to click ingame on the quest helper to fire up eq2i and get the information they want and do not care about any layout. As of now it seems broken for me. It has worked before and now it doesn't. Why should I now create an account and set monobook or any of the old layouts somewhere hidden in the preferences, when all I want is just getting a spoiler? This is what my guildmates are asking me, and to be honest I cannot answer that question. As mentioned above, I am logged on and still use monobook, which I am used to and which is presenting the information I need where I expect it on the screen and without the trouble of unwanted ads, boxes, tickers, dropdown menus and whatever. But I think this should not be necessary.-- Alinor 07:38, October 22, 2010 (UTC)

I use a mailadress that could get spammed, but the surprise is that i only recieve a mail in relateion with wikia when certain changes are happening and i want the mail (as i set it in preferences). Also i only got those mails once i confirmed the mail adress and i got like 3 mails in the last 30 days and they where no spam mails. --

( Talk ) 10:42, October 22, 2010 (UTC)

Some notes I found from using the skin for a while:

"Wiki Activity" at top-right seems to be the new version of "recent changes".
History is now hidden at bottom-right in "My Tools", which is actually a pop-up menu (though there is no indication as such). I hate this change, it's so inconvenient to access now.
There is another shortcut to History below the title at the top - but only for non-Category pages. Since we use so many Category pages, this is a big issue for EQ2i.

- Sassinak 20:55, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

New look will drive me and many others people to zam, the new look basically completely braks the site ingame, total deal breaker. Plus I don't even want to log in anymore because now I have to connect to my facebook account? no intention of ever doing that, gaming world and real life are seperate things. Quite apart from that, the site is so broken ingame I can't find the login, to get it working ingame. Basically kills this site, please don't make us go to zam. - nologon user

You don't have to connect your wikia account with facebook, you can do it but you defo don't have to.

I have facebook account myself and the wikia and facebook accounts are not linked and i ain't plan to do it in the future. --

( Talk ) 10:42, October 22, 2010 (UTC)

This is unusable with the in-game EQ2 browser. And since I run in full screen, it means I'm going to have to transition to ZAM instead of here, which I'd rather not do. The decision to allow video ads that I can't mute was bad enough, but this is just ridiculous. Nibaazi 21:55, October 21, 2010 (UTC)Nibaazi

I will see if i can find someone who can change the default skin to Monaco (Our old skin), atm i can't change it and i don't know why :/ --

( Talk ) 23:33, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

i think it is intended, but i hope i'll be proved wrong -- Vraeth 06:03, October 22, 2010 (UTC)

Vote Edit

If you like or don't like the new skin, please vote at Forum:Complaining about new look . -- ( Talk ) 10:55, October 22, 2010 (UTC)

Information about the New wikia Look .. from wikia Edit

I looked a little more around to see what's up with the new skin, the following Information explains more.

Fact1: The only 2 skins that are supported in the future are "new wikia skin" and "monobook" see Why are you allowing us to use Monobook and not Monaco?
Fact2: Monaco skin get's removed at November 3, 2010 User blog:Sannse/Important Updates on Wikia’s New Look
Fact3: Why wikia does it. read the point here There have been so many negative comments on the blogs, so why are you still moving ahead with this plan?

-- ( Talk ) 14:50, October 22, 2010 (UTC)

Seems to me that... eventually ... we will have to accept the new skin, like it or not. I don't have the time to rifle through ALL the information wikia has provided right this moment, but I will say that I desperately hope that despite (IMHO) forcing everyone to use their new layout they will still leave room and leeway for tweaking, as I agree with previous posts to THIS page -- we have layout elements that work well and directly and simply for this site, which the new skin lacks. A fact which will shunt users away from us and straight to ZAM with its oh-so-corporate and bland and myspace-y/facebook-y layout -- especially in-game browser users, and non-registered users.

Chief among my worries, is the hope that Wikia will adopt a scaling page layout. 22" widescreen monitor running 1680x1050 + ~800px max-width layout = /eye-twitch for me.

But for now, for another few weeks, at least we still have monaco. /sigh

-- Mysterious drake 08:03, October 23, 2010 (UTC)

Monaco Skin got removed today as .. "promissed" .. i changed my skin to monobook, not as perfect as Monaco but better as the new wikia ... erm skin --

( Talk ) 16:46, November 3, 2010 (UTC)

i guess i'll do the same.../sigh -- Vraeth 17:10, November 3, 2010 (UTC)

Yep... Monobook feels so weird after being used to Monoco, but at least it's not that travesty of a "new look" (fixed width centered pages are so 1999). -- lordebon 03:33, November 4, 2010 (UTC)

Looks really bad in EQ2 browser window Edit

Wow, I had my first look at the new skin in the EQ2 in-game browser window. It is even worse than in IE6.

The orange background bleeds through the whole page.
The top pulldown menu is broken.
The menu's contents spill down the page, causing the actual article content to be pushed several screens down.

Basically EQ2i really is unusable in-game. This is a big problem. I don't know what the solution is.

Changing the orange to white would be a good start.
Suppressing the pulldown menus entirely might be extreme, but might help.
But ultimately, Wikia needs to fix their skin so it works with old versions of IE. Or they will lose customers, period.

-- Sassinak 18:36, October 25, 2010 (UTC)

I asked the support how i can change the default background, waiting on answer for that.

Do you mean the top level (wikia) ones or our pulldown menus? We can't change the wikia ones, but we could change ours.

--

( Talk ) 11:00, October 29, 2010 (UTC)

Printer Friendly? Edit

Would it be possible to have a printer-friendly link we could use to...
(a) Allow easy printing of quests without ads and junk (eats ink)
(b) Lots of white space and horrible formatting when users go to print.
(c) For some reason the screen jumps back to top when trying to scroll down.

A perfect example of what a page SHOULDN'T do is illustrated here...

   http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Race/Class_Comparison

-- Seanguy 17:20, October 28, 2010 (UTC)

please post that at Community Central Forum . it's something wikia needs to change, since we can't. --

( Talk ) 07:47, October 29, 2010 (UTC)

Regarding that particular page: The table in that image is too big regardless of the skin: even in Monobook it breaks the page layout at 1280x800, and 1024x768 is still the minimum most-commonly used resolution. It could easily be corrected by removing the description column (eg "high damage light tank") as those descriptions never hold anyway. Also, although it's pretty it really should be done in a wikitable. It's a good candidate for a re-do if someone wants to go for it, especially since many more classes were made neutral.

More in general, making something printer-friendly isn't as easy as it sounds just because of how pages are stored and generated in the wiki. But I can try to respond to some of those points though. For (a), being logged in should prevent ads from showing for you on article pages. If it doesn't, then I suggest using Firefox with Adblock. For (b), we generally try to minimize whitespace but if there is something particularly bad please point it out and we'll take a look. However, since presentation on the web is our first priority, we might not be able to make changes to reduce whitespace if it seriously compromises readability on the web. And as for (c) I have no idea what is causing that, that does not happen for me. -- lordebon 19:07, November 8, 2010 (UTC)