Difference between revisions of "User talk:MitchO/Main Page"

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I was able to remove the "Help" style links and put them on the "You want to help?" paragraph, which helps keep it clean.
 
I was able to remove the "Help" style links and put them on the "You want to help?" paragraph, which helps keep it clean.
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 +
: (written while Mitch was writing the above)
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: Comments on tone: I do like the jokiness. My one concern is that it's very JoCo-reference-laden, which appeals to me, but also may throw off some JoCo newbies. I don't know how much of a concern that should be -- maybe it's safe to assume that JoCopedia editors know their way around JoCo songs. Then again, the people who read the main page are probably going to be those who are new to JoCo and/or new to JoCopedia. Also, there are serious JoCo fans who haven't listened to the whole corpus and might not know what "monkey butler Brian Dennehy" refers to, for instance. I just want something where someone who had never heard of JoCo could look at the opening paragraph and know what's going on without feeling too left out.
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: Also, I feel '''strongly''' that "JoCopedia" is an [http://158.130.17.5/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/004978.html anarthrous] noun, which is to say the text should be "Welcome to JoCopedia" and ''not'' "Welcome to '''the''' JoCopedia."
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: The questions make it easier to think about what the links are leading to, but they make me think about what I'm trying to do, and that's exactly what I don't want to have to do! I process the word "Biography" much faster than I process the question, "Who is JoCo?" Maybe that's just me. And I know I complained earlier that the links weren't clear enough -- maybe I should've said the grouping wasn't obvious enough. When I thought about it, I understood that "JoCo Originals" referred to links to JoCo, his performances, and his shows; "JoCommunity Work" referred to things for fans to do, and "JoCopedia Links" referred to things for editors to do -- but it wasn't at all intuitive. I think the grouping made general sense, but it could've been implemented slightly better. I'll give it a whirl.
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: --[[User:Bry|Bry]] 15:33, 5 May 2008 (EDT)

Revision as of 15:33, 5 May 2008

A request for comment has been made for this page. Please add your thoughts!


Work in progress, boys. I think having the top title box mirror the main sight is a good one. I'm going nuts figuring out where I'm missing the open/close parenthesis, but I'd like the banks of links to be left, center, right boxes and then maybe I'll pretty up the titles of them. People who actually know what they're doing feel free to correct my crappy coding. --MitchO 22:33, 4 May 2008 (EDT)

Well, you could do what Wesley's just done on the front page (use HTML) -- or insert a {|- at the top, as follows:

JoCo Originals

style="width:15%; font-size:95%;"|

JoCommunity Work

JoCopedia Links

--Bry 02:16, 5 May 2008 (EDT)

Although you'll notice the headers don't line up quite properly (I think the cell contents are centered vertically within each cell). Let me see:
JoCo Originals JoCommunity Work JoCopedia Links

How's that? --Bry 02:22, 5 May 2008 (EDT)

I was just typing about how I had to change the table to HTML in order to get the cells to have the right style, but it turns out Bry's solution looks a lot better. (Using Wiki formatting makes it easier to read, I think.) The only thing I'd change is to add to Bry's code the bold part here: style="width:15%; font-size:95%; vertical-align: top;" (and get rid of the valign= part). That way, everything's in the style= part. Nice job, Bry, and good luck, MitchO! — Wesley | 02:27, 5 May 2008 (EDT)
On second thought, that's not true; using valign= actually makes it easier to read still. — Wesley | 02:29, 5 May 2008 (EDT)
Haha, I can't take credit - it's still all Mitch's code under the hood. (I mean like a car, not like a Klansman.) --Bry 03:47, 5 May 2008 (EDT)

Non-tabular comments

I think the visual connection to the main page is a great idea, and I wouldn't mind if it were tied to it even more closely (maybe a little more orange?). I think there may be too much text there, though -- something simpler, like "Welcome to JoCopedia, the Jonathan Coulton wiki!", might feel less cluttered.

Obviously you haven't added all the content yet, but I would like a brief blurb on who JoCo is and what he's done, as well as the "what to do" for newbies. And maybe the links need to be a little more clear (as to where they're leading). But those are all problems with the current main page, not with your design -- I'm just getting everything down as I think of it.

And I fixed this earlier today on the Main Page, but the reason This Day in JoCo has been a little ahead (should be okay now) is because the code used "CURRENTMONTHNAME" and "CURRENTDAY", which are based on UTC time, rather than "LOCALMONTHNAME" and "LOCALDAY", which are based on the local time set in the wiki (here, US Eastern time).

(This just came to me as I was typing these comments: What about a "song of the day," with a trivia tidbit about it, along the lines of the "did you know?" box on Wikipedia and elsewhere?)

--Bry 03:47, 5 May 2008 (EDT)

I've taken the colors from the jonathancoulton.com css file to create this orange box:

March 28 in JoCo

There is no information for today. Add some!

Or maybe it looks better in all white with orange borders:

March 28 in JoCo

There is no information for today. Add some!
(By the way, Mitch, your box on the MitchO/Main Page is missing the closing |}.) --Bry 07:11, 5 May 2008 (EDT)
It is at this point that I am really glad I changed the "this day" templates to how the are now. It allows stuff like this to happen so much more easily. That is all. --Lex (talk - contribs) 09:32, 5 May 2008 (EDT)

Progress

Just a general update, thanks to Wesley and Bry the links below the banner are now set up properly. I still may yet change it into boxes so the titles can be pretty-fied. I *think* as of this writing I've close all my parentheses properly, if anyone reading this wants to take a peek. I used Bry's first color choices on This Day in JoCo, though I do want to make sure that the page is primarily blue with only splash orange.

General content responses:

  • How's the JoCo splash paragraph look? At this point, I'm more interested in the reader than the editor, so I'm trying to get that ... tone ... across.
  • I like "Today's Song", and started to fiddle with making it a double box with This Day, but of course I epic fail'd. It may really be something we have to consider a future option, though ... we'd have to discuss a randomization and/or list creation for songs, and that's a big project for something that isn't fleshing out or information. Eventually, maybe the song with a "Did You Know" hand written note about it would be the eventual step one:

Song of the Day!

Today's song is I'm Your Moon. Did you know that Pluto and Charon were briefly considered a Double planet before they invented a reason?

OK I'm on a roll. (Well, I'm Jewish, so I'm on a bagel. God, I love that bad joke.) ANYway ... opinions on the links? I went ahead and came up with more "explicit" sentences for them, but I'm unsure how they'll read in one of my thoughts about formatting:

Who is JoCo? · Who has JoCo worked with? · Questions · What does JoCo sing? · What does JoCo sing about? · Where will JoCo play (or played)? · The JoCo Forums · Fan contributors to the JoCo world

Actually, that's not bad looking. What do you folks think, that one or what's there now?:

I was able to remove the "Help" style links and put them on the "You want to help?" paragraph, which helps keep it clean.

(written while Mitch was writing the above)
Comments on tone: I do like the jokiness. My one concern is that it's very JoCo-reference-laden, which appeals to me, but also may throw off some JoCo newbies. I don't know how much of a concern that should be -- maybe it's safe to assume that JoCopedia editors know their way around JoCo songs. Then again, the people who read the main page are probably going to be those who are new to JoCo and/or new to JoCopedia. Also, there are serious JoCo fans who haven't listened to the whole corpus and might not know what "monkey butler Brian Dennehy" refers to, for instance. I just want something where someone who had never heard of JoCo could look at the opening paragraph and know what's going on without feeling too left out.
Also, I feel strongly that "JoCopedia" is an anarthrous noun, which is to say the text should be "Welcome to JoCopedia" and not "Welcome to the JoCopedia."
The questions make it easier to think about what the links are leading to, but they make me think about what I'm trying to do, and that's exactly what I don't want to have to do! I process the word "Biography" much faster than I process the question, "Who is JoCo?" Maybe that's just me. And I know I complained earlier that the links weren't clear enough -- maybe I should've said the grouping wasn't obvious enough. When I thought about it, I understood that "JoCo Originals" referred to links to JoCo, his performances, and his shows; "JoCommunity Work" referred to things for fans to do, and "JoCopedia Links" referred to things for editors to do -- but it wasn't at all intuitive. I think the grouping made general sense, but it could've been implemented slightly better. I'll give it a whirl.
--Bry 15:33, 5 May 2008 (EDT)