User talk:JoeyDay/Main Page Mock-up

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Contents 1 Table of contents suggestion 2 Categories 3 What's new 4 Are we ever going to do this?

Table of contents suggestion

I like the new look, however from a usability point of view, you'd want to make sure people can still find all the information easily, so maybe there could be a new "Contents" page to make up for losing the table of contents on the main page? -- thejesterx 06:00, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Categories

Great looking page Joey. I would like to see the categories added as a major means of navigation. See my user page for a sample layout of all the top level categories. - Dr Haggis - Talk 06:10, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I just tried a version with the cats. I'm not really sure how we'd get it all on there with out it being too cluttered. Can you take a stab at it Drhaggis, so we can see what you mean? -- Tom 14:01, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I think Tom has a point with categories getting out of hand on the main page. I was thinking we could have a separate page for major categorizing schemes, similar to the way Wikipedia does Browse by overview. I also built an alphabetical index for use on the front page.

My only concern about using, for instance, the Toons category instead of the Toons page, is what will happen to the toons page? Should we even have a toons page? (What about a more important page like Strong Bad Emails?) I like the idea of having the actual Toons page linked to from the front page, and then have alternate categorizing schemes on a separate "Browse" page. I'm willing to reconsider, but it would be a radical departure from tradition and I'm trying to be conscious about how the community might react. — Joey (talk·edits) 17:06, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Addendum: With the exception (imo) of the Strong Bad Emails page, most of the current "Lists" pages are absolute eyesores. Switching to categories for main navigation would probably be more elegant. — Joey (talk·edits) 17:09, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Categories are great when people want to find something alphabetically, but obviously some things can be easier to find chronologically, etc, such as Strong Bad Emails. One possible way to make categories do a chronological listing, for example with Strong Bad Emails, is to make redirect pagess to all of the emails, titled like "129 garage sale", and put them in a category called something like "Emails Chronologically". I also think that more information could be put in Category pages than just "This is a category of ...", without cluttering the page. Anyway. Just some thoughts. -- thejesterx 17:44, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I commented on the talk page for the quick index about this already, but I don't know if there are enough articles to make it work. Also, case is a factor, as articles that start with "A" and articles that start with "a" are no where near each other in that schema.

Additionally, I wouldn't be too quick to get rid of pages like Toons. While it may not be as pretty as other pages, it provides a functionality for describing the Toons menu content and structure. -- Tom 01:16, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

What's new

Okay, here's how I propose we do the "what's new" section. We split Template:updates into two templates, creating a new Template:recent-updates. The recent-updates template would appear both on the Main Page and at the top of the updates page. The problem is that it becomes more of a chore to move updates off the recent-updates template into the other updates template. Keeping them separate is a violation of once and only once, but it might be more convenient. I dunno. Ideas? — Joey (talk·edits) 17:28, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

You could do it just using the Template:updates template, and put it in a size restricted <div>. For example:

<div style="width: 300px; height: 100px; border: thin black solid; overflow: hidden;">
{{updates}}
</div>

Which looks like:

But thats a bit of a hack. -- thejesterx 18:01, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's a hack, but we have to start somewhere. If we can come up with a more elegant solution like that, it would solve the problem. Thanks for stepping out on a limb. — Joey (talk·edits) 18:47, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

That would be horrible for people using Lynx or other non CSS browsers and expecially horrible for blind people using JAWS. Remember to keep in mind Section 508 standards. I think we have enough active users that two seperate templates would be fine. -- Tom 01:12, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Are we ever going to do this?

This has been kind of sitting here for a while, and I'd really like to see it happen. Are we ever going to go through with this? →FireBird|_(Talk)

No offense or anything, but I don't like this. It may work for the Wikipedia, but it don't think it works for this place. Besides, I like the big list for easy access to the main pages much better than the small list on this idea. There, that's my opinion. Don't hurt me. -- Joshua 14:46, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

If it does start, does it need to say "in this English version"? EDSMILDE 12:57, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Considering we aren't gonna do other languages, no.

Anyway, the biggest thing I don't like about it is the article of the month. I mean, it's huge. Who wants to waste all that space on a single stupid article for a whole month? It might be interesting for a few days, when you read and check it out, but then for the rest of month, it's just gonna be a huge waste of space. -- Joshua 14:00, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Maybe "This Week's Featured Article" would do. Or maybe it could change whenever there's a h*r.com update.EDSMILDE

Perhaps we should keep the general format, with just the title of the article of the week on the top? And the newest couple of updates? I feel a merge of the two webpages might work best... ⇔Thunderbird⇔ 21:26, 21 May 2005 (UTC)