Layout
Objectives of the design change
Hm I´m not sure if the latest changes do realy improve the usability. What was wrong about the old layout without a table. Sorry, but now it looks a little bit confused. morlano
The first two things you see are how to get started with Waze, hitting all the problem areas at once, and that Waze supports different languages. So you can immediately jump your your country/language, without being put off by a swathe of English.
Then how to help develop Waze as a next logical step, side by side with current problems.
Finally at the end, giving people encouragement that Waze is at work with various projects and developments. Why your pet project hasn't been implemented because there are bigger, more urgent developments being worked on. And then more technical stuff.
So you can get to everything from the front page. Working down from beginner to ultra advanced.
Yes we could lose the table, but I want to be able to see Getting Started, and my country at first glance. And there's plenty of space that can be used. --Waynemcdougall 09:01, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
The use of tables
Some suggestions from the w3c on the use of tables for markup languages (here HTML).
And some guidance from mediawiki concerning tables. -- morlano 14:03, 18 September 2010 (CET)
In summary there are those who argue that table should only be used for tabular data, and others who use tables for layout because (before CSS) that was the only way to do it. That is a slightly separate issue from how the layout should appear because you can create the same effect without tables.
I am a purist. I agree tables should be for tabular data. I think there is a small argument that the objectives proposed are in fact tabular.
But I used tables because
- table tools are built into the Wiki
- Wikipedia does it that way :-)
- it will be easier for other people to maintain and change it, using built in Wiki formatting commands
- cluttering the source code with div style='float:right;width:50%' etc was just going to put people off editing, and get broken by people who didn't know CSS
So given the same effect can be done using the purist CSS, and given the good reasons that tables were used for the same effect, I think the real debate should be on the resulting layout, rather than how it is made.
Remembering that it is just proposed for the Main Page
What other Wikis do
I do not agree with the layout changes.
We already learned how a wiki page is organized and how the layout works. There are a lot of wikis on the web and they all are, more or less, looking the same. So we get used to it. -- morlano 14:03, 18 September 2010 (CET)
And yet when you look at Wikipedia and German Wikipedia you find they use tables on their own front page. For the same reasons I do. I think the first, front page can be exceptional. --Waynemcdougall 20:01, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Colours on the Front Page
What sense do the colors make? Is there a code which I do not understand? morlano
The colours don't mean a lot. Green for getting going. Red for problems. Otherwise just making it more attractive. --Waynemcdougall 09:01, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Language Sections
On the main page the complete english information should be available (maybe within sections and subpages) and then there should be links to language pages where the specific or translated information could be found. So moving language specific links to a dedicated subpage would make it more easy to keep track of and you can see what already had been translated. -- morlano 14:03, 18 September 2010 (CET)
This is one of the changes I made --Waynemcdougall 20:01, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
English in the Language Sections
I agree with you concerning the contextual changes although in the language sections you are still confronted with a lot of english because the links are only copied over. -- morlano 14:03, 18 September 2010 (CET)
1. By creating a separate page for each language, that gives Wiki contributors the chance to tailor it to their language as much, or as little as they prefer. You will see that the Italy and Czech pages have already started that transition. 2. By putting the sections in templates, it allows language pages to choose whether they are all native language or a mixture of English and native language. We can expect in the early days of Waze that many people will have some fluency in English as a second tongue so this is tolerable. Particularly for rapidly changing information like bug reports, it would require a major commitment for someone to maintain this information in their own language. They have that option. But if it isn't taken, the option is at least available, with their own language headings, and additional information around the English language template insert. So it can be: here's the important stuff in our language, and if you can handle it, here's more related content but you'll haver to deal with it in English. And if you don't like it, you can translate it for us. --Waynemcdougall 20:01, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
Process for major Wiki changes
Maybe major changes to the wiki should be discussed first befor valuable work is invested.
EDIT: Please do not only roll back the version, as I still think structure and information is now much better and should only be organized another way.
-- morlano 14:03, 18 September 2010 (CET)
Or you can look at the old page and realise that it was rotting away without useful updates, direction and purpose, growing without reason or structure and completely unhelpful.
The work invested has been the content. Layout is trivial and easy to revert. Some times are for discussions and some times for action. There wasn't even a discussion page on the main page. There's no permanent harm and a push for improvement.
There's more effort being put into this discussion section. :-)
And I've gone and moved things around here to try and keep some order. Also without consultation. Hope you don't mind. Previous versions are available. --Waynemcdougall 20:01, 18 September 2010 (UTC)