[Wikia-l] v2 skin screenshots...

[John Q]

Hi everyone,

Wanted to give you an idea of what the latest designs look like... we 
spent *a lot* of time trying all sorts of variations to reduce the size 
of the header and take into account a lot of the other feedback we got.

To be honest, doing this was pretty hard. There's the stuff you guys 
needed us to do and the stuff we needed to do for future features and 
growth... and trying to get all of that to fit in, look ok, and function 
pretty well took a while of rev and rev and rev. At this point, the 
feedback I'm looking for is if we've missed anything major. I'm pretty 
sure I got everything... the header size is reduced, the wiki logo is in 
a more prominent position again, the article comes back up the page, 
we're over to the right and in the footer.

Probably the biggest change is to the dimensions of the wiki logo... I 
asked around among some admins whether whether dimensional changes there 
were even a viable option and everyone said they were open to it, so we 
went forward with that (more detail on this later). Below you'll find a 
summary of the various things...

Header
---------

Previously, the header size was constrained by two things... the Wikia 
logo and the 150px-high wiki logo itself.

  - Wikia logo now on the right.
  - Key wiki links moved into more prominent position. Four main links 
common to all wikis, four custom links, additional custom links can be 
in a sidebar box.
  - We still have top content links for visitors (click rates indicate 
they did find them useful)... but in a box that's dismissable for users.
  - Wiki logo reduced vertically but extended horizontally. The 
dimensional area is a bit larger than the typical 130x150 logo size. 
We'll start helping some wikis translate their logo into the new space 
but it's too much work for us to do everything, so I've also been in 
touch with a community member about spearheading a group to help with 
logos (either missing logos or translating them to this new dimension) 
and we're looking into programmatic solutions, too. I hope to be able to 
announce something there soon.

Article, ad, and footer
----------------------

  - The article controls come back around the article. There is no "This 
Article" box.
  - Recent changes, special pages, etc. are in the tools box. That box 
can be moved higher.
  - We have a 300x100 ad on there now for logged-in users and will still 
have the 300x250 for visitors. We still have some playing around to do 
to figure out if the 300x100's are viable. We might split it in two or 
it might go back to the 180x150... no answer yet until the testing is done.
  - Also, we spotted some really annoying ads on the site recently 
(audio or continuous distracting movement) and we shut off that ad 
provider until they fixed it. We do need ads to survive and grow (I can 
hear the collective sigh from here) but we're trying to be civil about it.
  - We have our footer and some link columns down at the bottom. We use 
these for a variety of purposes including link exchanges to get your 
wiki on other good sites to bring in traffic and users for you. We'll 
get a page in place so that you have links of your choosing in one of 
these columns.


Coming soon
-----------------

  - There will be one skin name and people will be able to choose 
between a "custom" color scheme and 12 preset color schemes (including 
slate/smoke). Choosing "custom" will just pull the CSS from 
"skinname.css" like normal. Choosing a preset color scheme is for those 
who want some color but don't want to learn CSS just yet. Admins will be 
able to set the default new skin color schemes (one of the 12 or custom) 
for their visitors. We also envision a page on http://inside.wikia.com 
where we can have galleries of user submitted choices ...similar to 
what's found on wikimedia sites and then admins or users can just   
cut-n-paste that code when they choose "custom".

As I said above, getting all the elements to fit comfortably wasn't 
easy... so at this point we're looking for major omissions in 
functionality from the previous version of this skin rather than small 
tweaks to fonts/colors/spacing/etc.

Looking forward to hearing what you think. :)

Thanks,
John Q.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: starwars_screenshot.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 486887 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20070726/ad9380fe/attachment.jpg 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: starwars_screenshot2.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 491087 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20070726/ad9380fe/attachment-0001.jpg