User talk:Nicjansma/Archive2014

2014-12-13 MediaWiki Upgrade

Details here. Please list any issues you see below: Nicjansma (talk) 19:19, 13 December 2014 (PST)

• I noticed a couple things: 1) The table of contents box on any given page is stretched across the width of the page 2) The edit boxes (i.e. [edit] ) are adjacent to the headers, not over on the right as they were before. I don't know if it matters, but it's different. -BobTheZombie (talk) 20:50, 13 December 2014 (PST)

Yep the contents box is very stretched, please fix this Nic.--Doneve (talk) 08:14, 14 December 2014 (PST)

1) Should be fixed. Nicjansma (talk) 08:16, 14 December 2014 (PST)

2) Looks like this is new with MW v1.22. I'm OK with it, unless there is feedback from others. Nicjansma (talk) 08:16, 14 December 2014 (PST)

• Found another issue, the text in the image summary template on any files is floated to the left and is not in center.--Doneve (talk) 08:27, 14 December 2014 (PST)

Hm, I'm not seeing that. Can you share an example page, or screenshot? Nicjansma (talk) 12:40, 14 December 2014 (PST)

I think he means the text in the box under images on their image page (e.g. ) this one are formatted differently (the text is to the left and the {fairuse} is to the right). At least that's all I noticed that was different. -BobTheZombie (talk) 19:04, 14 December 2014 (PST)

Thanks Bob, you hit the nail.--Doneve (talk) 03:06, 15 December 2014 (PST)

So I see the rows Summary, Artist and Source being left-aligned, which I think is appropriate -- were they centered before? The License row has a {fairuse} template that takes 95% width (centered). I personally think it looks fine? Nicjansma (talk) 07:15, 17 December 2014 (PST)

• Nic - I'm liking some of the new aesthetics!

So in the past, when you started typing something into the search box on the left, potential results would begin popping up. I kinda liked that feature. Any chance we could get it back? ClanWolverine101 (talk) 07:12, 16 December 2014 (PST)

Yes, it seems as if the autocomplete is broken... again. It's something with a cache issue that Nic has to fix. This has happened a few times when the site has been updated in the past. -BobTheZombie (talk) 14:31, 16 December 2014 (PST)

The "left" search box (if you're on desktop and you get the left bar) should've been working. Let me know if not. The top search box (if you're on tablet or mobile) had a bug with auto-suggest, and should be fixed now. Nicjansma (talk) 07:12, 17 December 2014 (PST)

Yes, it seems to be working now. Sometimes it's a little slow, but the suggestions are an improvement for when you misspell things. I feel that it is kinda off in the suggestions sometimes, but it's an improvement. -BobTheZombie (talk) 11:42, 18 December 2014 (PST)

Working now. Great stuff!

• New question - when you click Recent Changes, it used to bold the edits the logged-in user had performed. Seems this isn't the case anymore? ClanWolverine101 (talk) 13:22, 18 December 2014 (PST)
• On the "Recent changes" special page, my Watched articles are no longer highlighted in bold, nor are changes to my talk page etc. (Win7, Mozilla Firefox 34.0.5). Frabby (talk) 08:48, 18 December 2014 (PST)

I noticed that too. I didn't know if others cared that it was changed. It might be helpful to continue the bolding... -BobTheZombie (talk) 11:42, 18 December 2014 (PST)

Fixed Nicjansma (talk) 17:07, 20 December 2014 (PST)

• I noticed that the "new user welcome message bot" has stopped adding welcome messages to new registered users (e.g. User:CarcerKango). I'm not sure if this is related to the update. -BobTheZombie (talk) 11:42, 18 December 2014 (PST)

I found that the 'New User Message' user was blocked (in 2003), and I think the new NewUserMessage extension verified the user wasn't blocked before posting. I unblocked the user, which should fix it now. Nicjansma (talk) 17:07, 20 December 2014 (PST)

Thanks! -BobTheZombie (talk) 11:42, 22 December 2014 (PST)

• Yet another thing, all of the "thumb"-sized images are huge compared to what they were previously. This is especially noticeable on the Jump Infantry page. -BobTheZombie (talk) 15:21, 19 December 2014 (PST)

Are you sure the infantry image is supposed to be much smaller, or do you remember what size it was before? I didn't change anything specific here, but maybe MW changed the defaults at some point for thumbnail sizes? Nicjansma (talk) 17:07, 20 December 2014 (PST)

I remember having to resize that in the past, but it is also noticeable in every page with a |thumb| sized image, e.g. Conrad Toyama. Whether or not you manually did it, something has changed, and it has resulted in occasionally huge images. Either the images are bigger or the text is smaller, which I think also might have changed... -BobTheZombie (talk) 18:33, 20 December 2014 (PST)

The text size hasn't changed at all. Honestly, while they may be larger than before, I don't think they look bar or disproportionate. What size do you think the images in the above articles should be? Nicjansma (talk) 07:41, 21 December 2014 (PST)

I don't know, I think that sometimes it looks a little odd in comparison to the text size; you could look at any archive.org page of the wiki to see what it used to look like. For the infantry page, see what the old infantry page looked like. -BobTheZombie (talk) 11:42, 22 December 2014 (PST)

Looks like the change was intentional from MediaWiki based on a user survey on preferred image sizes see here and here. Now MediaWiki has a default max dimension of 300px instead of 180px. I'm inclined to keep it at the new 300px, as I think in general larger images can be nicer. If there's any other feedback from others that they'd prefer 180px, please let us know. Nicjansma (talk) 19:10, 22 December 2014 (PST)

• Another thing; this page seems to be down. I use it a lot, and it'd be nice to be able to access it again. -BobTheZombie (talk)

Looks like it was removed from core and moved to Extension:Disambiguator. Installed, but it doesn't appear to be working? Special:DisambiguationPageLinks. Nicjansma (talk) 20:28, 20 December 2014 (PST)

Nope, when I go to that page it still doesn't have anything listed. I know there are still disambigs left as DerangedShadow is presently working on them. -BobTheZombie (talk) 11:42, 22 December 2014 (PST)

Fixed it, needed to include __DISAMBIG__ in Template:Disambig. Also see Special:DisambiguationPages. Nicjansma (talk) 19:26, 22 December 2014 (PST)

Thank you very much! That will make work much easier. -BobTheZombie (talk) 21:51, 23 December 2014 (PST)

• New problem. There's a minor formatting glitch that only appears on my smartphone but not on a computer. Text formatted with a bullet (asterisk in wikicode) like this one or the Wunderwelten article is displayed with a double space between lines on a smartphone. This does not happen with regular article text, and doesn't happen at all on my laptop computer. Frabby (talk) 02:47, 21 December 2014 (PST)

I actually made this change intentionally last night. I was going through the site on a smartphone (iPhone) and noting when things looked off, or were hard to interact with. For the bulleted articles, I intentionally increased the line-height from 1.5em to 2.0em (so 33% more) for smartphones so clicks are easier. For example, on the home page, there's often lists of links. Before, it was easy to click on the wrong one. Now, there's additional space between the lists so it's easier to click on the correct link without zooming. Is there any place you think this gets in the way or looks bad? Nicjansma (talk) 07:41, 21 December 2014 (PST)

Ah ok. The idea is a good one, but as it stands it's only partly implemented. Namely, the line-height was only increased for the first level of formatting, not the zeroeth or any after the first. Which makes it look like broken formatting: Article starts with l-h 1.5, then something is formatted with say a bullet/asterisk (*) and suddenly that text block has l-h 2.0. In the same article, l-h remains at 1.5 for not only standard text but also for everything after a second asterisk (**), for example.

I tested two- and three-level lists and it seemed to apply the same line-height: 2.0em to them OK. I decided to keep the main article text at 1.5em on mobile because otherwise it felt like all of the page's texts had too much padding. There can obviously be links in regular text, but lists-of-links seemed to be a tough part to pick the correct link as all of the links are stacked on top of each other. Nicjansma (talk) 10:11, 24 December 2014 (PST)

• Oh, and while I'm pointing out formatting issues, there's another one that has been bugging me for ages, even before the recent changes: Asterisk-bullets don't work in Infoboxes. The first one in a given text field will always display as an asterisk instead of a bullet, while subsequent asterisks display as a bullet with appropriate formatting. (This frequently pops up in weapons/armament listings for example.) Frabby (talk) 13:26, 23 December 2014 (PST)

Can you give me an example Infobox that would have a bulleted list? Nicjansma (talk) 10:11, 24 December 2014 (PST)

Go to the Hanse Davion article and edit it. You'll see that the "Children" field in the infobox starts with ''and a carriage return before going down the asterisk-bulletet list. Remove the '' and begin with an asterisk, and you'll see that the first formatting command is always ignored - in this case, Victor's name is seen as "*Victor Ian Steiner-Davion". That's why I put the '' there in the first place. Frabby (talk) 03:14, 30 December 2014 (PST)

I researched it a bit but couldn't find a way to fix it. I think it's just a limitation of MW's text-parser. Nicjansma (talk) 08:20, 3 January 2015 (PST)

• Nic, i use the Marik skin, i tested the other skins in the preferences, but the skin's don't work after your css changes, can you take a look, thanks.--Doneve (talk) 01:23, 21 December 2014 (PST)

Fixed Nicjansma (talk) 07:41, 21 December 2014 (PST)

• Images in infoboxes: for some reason, images inside infobox templates like the Template:InfoBoxManufacturer are all displaying on the left of their cell within the infobox, even when the code in the template says otherwise. If this is a default setting, is it possible to change it to displaying them centered. This appears to be common to infoboxes whether alignment of the images is specified or not. BrokenMnemonic (talk) 10:55, 21 December 2014 (PST)

Sure, can you give me an example page that uses it with an image? All of the pages I checked out had an image that stretched to all of the width. Nicjansma (talk) 16:37, 21 December 2014 (PST)

But its not in center.--Doneve (talk) 16:51, 21 December 2014 (PST)

The Nashan Diversified page was the one I first noticed it on. The image there is now displaying centered, although the caption below it isn't, which is odd. BrokenMnemonic (talk) 01:12, 22 December 2014 (PST)

On every Manufacturing Center page the headers of the wiki table are not in center, and on any unit articles with images in the infobox there are not in center, please fix this Nic.--Doneve (talk) 02:38, 22 December 2014 (PST)

Fixed both of these. Nicjansma (talk) 19:36, 22 December 2014 (PST)

• On the [Update Needed Template] the main source text is not in center.--Doneve (talk) 13:22, 21 December 2014 (PST)

Fixed. Nicjansma (talk) 16:37, 21 December 2014 (PST)

• Don't know if it is related to the upgrade, but the "citation needed" template appears to break the page formatting on the rest of the line following it. Just like this. Or is that how it is supposed to work? If it is that is odd because the text continues on beyond the page border instead of "wrapping." Also, yes, I am intentionally babbling to attempt to illustrate part of the problem for those who have a very wide or high resolution screen.

--Cache (talk) 20:20, 29 December 2014 (PST)

That is an issue that I noticed quite a while ago. I hope it can be fixed, as most Mech pages have messed up formatting because of this. -BobTheZombie (talk) 20:30, 29 December 2014 (PST)

Fixed the tag (it caused built-in newlines). Pages with it may have display cached until re-edited. Nicjansma (talk) 08:20, 3 January 2015 (PST)

2014-12-13

Note, I've disabled the use of MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css. These pages allowed editors to change the site's JS and CSS on the fly by editing a Wiki page. I'd prefer to own all of these changes, as they will affect all visitors. Otherwise, these files could break the site, or worse, expose security vulnerabilities. If you need anything specific in one of these files, please let me know. Nicjansma (talk) 20:28, 20 December 2014 (PST)