Talk:Main Page

Disambig Template

Do you already have a disambiguation template loaded? If not, might it be time for one? I'm specifically thinking of search terms like "Khai Tam," "Reddick," "McNulty," etc. Thoughts? --Tai 10:36, 24 September 2007 (CDT)

These may be useful: here and here. --Jon 12:30, 24 September 2007 (CDT)

Indeed. But I have no idea how to load or use templates. I was guessing you had to load them as the official Keeper of the Wiki. I suppose I should read up on Wikipedia about how to use them, eh? Where do you get your Wiki know-how? --Tai 13:56, 24 September 2007 (CDT)

Heh. I get my wiki know-how by going to Google and typing "mediawiki thing-I-don't-understand" and looking for the hits at the official mediawiki.org homesite. We're only using templates right now as static variables, but they can also accept variables before spitting out their content. If you are editing a page and scroll to the bottom of the edit page, you'll see what templates are in use and how to edit them. You can create them in the same way. Like for "bluebox" I just typed "Template:bluebox" into the search window. It didn't exist, so it let me create it. Now I just insert {{bluebox}} where I need it and the bluebox style will get plugged in. --Jon 16:07, 24 September 2007 (CDT)

More formatting & Lists

I noticed something today on Wikipedia: military ships are formatted as "USS" in plain type and "Shipname" in italics, as is grammatical, and I think I have been following that. The part I think I blew it on is that when they link ships, the includ the "USS" in the link, and I think I have just been linking the "Shipname" portion. Can you do global search/replace on the Wiki? Do you care about this particular formatting?

Also, how do you want to handle lists? For example, the Clan McNulty page is getting pretty rife with them and making for a long page. I could do some of them (like the family members, pets) in a table with columns to shorten the page and fill up some of the space to the right of the list, or I could make separate articles of the lists like Wikipedia does in some cases and just link to them. Do you think either is necessary/desirable, and if so which? -Tai

Can't necessarily do a global search/replace, but it should be pretty easy to search where it appears & fix them. I'll get to it if I get enough downtime.

As for lists, I don't think a table is necessary, but spanning into columns is, IMHO, a pretty nice cosmetic solution. See my bio in the affiliations section and snarf that DIV code if you like. --Jon 09:59, 25 September 2007 (CDT)

Apparently, whatever code you used doesn't work in IE (I'm at work) because there is nothing in columns. There is only a list of four bullet items. ??? Also, I really like the wrap-around TOC code, but is there anyway to give the text a wider birth around the context block? --Tai 10:48, 25 September 2007 (CDT)

I'm sure that lives in the CSS somewhere. I'll put that on my to-do list to investigate. Also, I tweaked with the sizes for h2 & h3 stuff. Any better? --Jon 08:02, 26 September 2007 (CDT)

Yes, it does look better, thanks. --Tai 09:56, 26 September 2007 (CDT)

Centering

When you centered everything on the main page, something funky happened to the middle block "Featured Article" because it is not the same height as the others. It looked great before the centering (whole page did ). --Tai 10:44, 12 October 2007 (CDT)

Oh, the disdain I have for IE... I'll tweak it; thanks. --Jon 11:41, 12 October 2007 (CDT)

What browser are you on? --Jon 11:52, 12 October 2007 (CDT)

Okay, I did some more (read: unnecessarily superfluous) centering/uncentering commands to my code to appease IE. Seems to look fine in IE7, you seeing it alright now? --Jon 10:14, 23 October 2007 (CDT)

Looks great now. It wasn't my choice to use Internet Explorer - this is my work machine. --Tai 09:18, 24 October 2007 (CDT)

(smile) I wasn't knocking your choice, just knocking IE's poor support for web standards. They got pretty comfortable being the 500 lb. gorilla in the early 90's and then got complacent, feeling they didn't need to adopt evolving web standards. So when other more aggressively-updated browsers did update, they were perceived as being "broken" when it was IE that just wasn't compliant. --Jon 10:27, 24 October 2007 (CDT)