Talk:Main Page/Sandbox3

Introduction

I set up this sandbox to work on improving the layout of the main page:

• Two widths are provided via the size icons in the upper left of the page navigation bar, to allow our readers to adjust the site layout for the display size they are using. In the Small version the width is fixed to a narrower dimension, while in the larger version, an additional side bar is added, plus the lead and "More news" sections are allowed to dynamically resize themselves. We could expand upon this idea by adding a third icon for a "jumbo" size, for our readers in the technical and creative fields who tend to have 1600x1200 display settings.
• Section headers appear at the top, to make it easier to navigate to other areas of the site. The "More news" and "Developing news" links takes the reader to an embedded anchor where news from each category is summarized (lower on the main page).
• The "lead" story is right up top, as it is on all other major news outlets. One important departure from Wikipedia is the use of a large photograph from the lead story. This is important to grab the reader's attention and helps the main page to visually communicate that Wikinews is a news site. One issue that different editors have already disagreed on is whether the lead headline goes above or below the photo. There is no firm precedent for us to follow in the established media, as I could show you examples of both styles - some sites even have the lead headline to the right of the lead photo - so we will have to subjectively choose. However almost all newspapers always have the lead headline at the very top, as do the majority of the news sites that I visit.
• The "intro/welcome" text is placed in a box in a sidebar, so it is still highly visible, but doesn't push important content down on the page.
• Other small changes are made to improve the overall fit and finish.
• Special note to Admins - there is a new version of the site-wide banner that saves a few lines of space above the main page. Please consider using that change immediately, as the current version pushes the news down by a noticeable amount.

Please let me know what you think. We can try out more designs, but there is some urgency to do something about the main page site design, as it is not at all inviting to the casual readership which we need to build for Wikinews.

There is more discussion on the talk page for the large version. — DV 14:20, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Delighted (Shanforest)

DV I really like the result of all your hard work. The addition of a new tagline above the pic is a nice touch. I think it would be good to have the large headline up there at the top as well though and some intro text on the story e.g. "With more than 150,000 deaths confirmed, the massive earthquake off Indonesia has become a global disaster with victims from dozens of nations." Otherwise the wait for the pic to arrive on narrowband leaves the reader with a largely blank screen for content.

The new side menu is a big plus and gives access to solid content. But I'm afraid I need to ask for it to boringly go back where it came from on the right! because having two thin column menus side by side on the left is confusing to the naive eye ie one who has not been here long enough to be so used to the oldest menu down the left side it fades back out of priority focus.

Is it possible to use some more of the space on that oldest left menu? It seems you are working so hard to fit priority access links in the new second menu column while a lot of space is left blankly unused on the left. I'd vote for Search to go upwards - it's become an intuitive standard to look for Search upwards centre or upward right. Could it fit on the same line as Site News at the top?

Whether Search goes centre top/ right top or stays left side but top level, you could put the current 3 content boxes in the oldest left menu (it has a nice style) and put the Welcome plus all the bits about editing (Article workspace/ Upload media/Recent/Help, on the right. I find mixing the editing links and content unnerving. I really want them split.

I truly wish we could use the empty space in the site-wide navigation bar, but I'm afraid that the default design for that user interface is not defined on the main page, nor on any page we editors have access to.

There are "CSS pages" for the site "skin" that allow the type of flexibility that would be required to implement your suggestions. However, the default site-wide skins are under the control of the site Administrators, and there would be consistency issues with the other Wiki sites which use those skins as well. Finally, even if we could convince the powers-that-be to edit the skins, there is no way to embed a template that points to content we could edit, so they would be rather fixed in stone and hard to improve.

(However, there is a way to place a custom CSS page, just for you, in a subpage of your user page, which can override the site-wide page. I have another project coming up to control the size of various elements, such as photographs, using such a page. However, it would only be useful to those who found an announcement about it and bothered to install it.)

As for your other suggestions, I am open to making a version of the narrow sandbox3 that has the page navigation bar on the right side instead of the left.

And it's kinda funny that you are asking for the lead headline to go above the picture - Ilya just asked for me to move it below! :)

What did you think of the monitor icons in the upper-left of the page navigation bar that allows the viewer to switch between large and small versions of the page? Ilya runs at 1600x1200, as do a lot of creative and technical folks, so perhaps we also need a third icon to allow the viewer to switch to a "jumbo" size with a four column layout?

Thanks for your feedback. I hope we can reach a consensus soon to improve our main page. If folks aren't too eager to hurry up and vote on the choices we already have, I will set up more numbered sandboxes to show some more ideas to improve the layout. However, there is some urgency, as I think Wikinews will be more accessible to the casual reader once we address the navigation and readability issues inherent in the design of the current main page layout.

Regards,

— DV 13:52, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Allright, I have my suggestion now. I say to take the "More News" section and put it in all of the white space on the right side. It could stand to be mushed a little bit, and so could the main story--especially that huge picture (perhaps we could put limits on picture size). Then the "Under Development" stuff could be pulled up beneath the main story.

All in all, this has to be the best alternate to the main page I've seen yet. Cap'n Refsmmat 00:41, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oh yes, you can remove that silly weather thing on the left hand bar, because that's so tiny it's unusable. A big version would be nice. Cap'n Refsmmat 00:57, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The temps in the small weather map are not supposed to be readable - the image is supposed to be an iconic representation of a world map, that suggests clicking on the titles beneath. Perhaps if I made another version that is more clearly not a reduced image but a pure topo map with no labels, the iconography would be clearer, and it would be more obvious that one is to click on the links? — DV 05:58, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps... that would work, although they might click on the picture and then just get a full-size version instead of the weather (which mediawiki does automatically I think). Cap'n Refsmmat 01:17, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia inspiration

What do you think if we have a page more like the one in Wikipedia?

 Browse: Politics and conflicts |  Disasters and accidents | Crime and law | Obituaries 
         | Culture and entertainment | Health | Sports | Economy and business | Science and technology
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Special Reports               ||   More News 
                               || 
 Latest News                   ||      
                               ||
 -------------                 || 
 |           |                 ||
 |           |                 ||   Developing stories
 |  Picture  |                 ||
 |           |                 ||
 -------------                 ||
                               ||
                               ||   Ongoing disputes
 Ongoing Reports               ||
                               ||
                               ||   Abandoned articles
 Digest for 1-10 January 2005  ||
                               || 
 Older news                    ||
                               ||
                               ||
----------------------------------------------------------------
|
|   W E A T H E R
| 
----------------------------------------------------------------

I think that this model is better, especially with my suggestions above. Cap'n Refsmmat 21:58, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I will make another numbered sandbox to try this out.

— DV 06:04, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Nice

Very impressive page with prominant pic which i hope will use template:click. Downside is that there is no right hand column. TownCrier 05:46, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't use template:click as It was made way before I brought that template over here, but it could be made to use it if someone actually started using this page quite easily. I personally like this version, but I think the rest of the site would need to match it in design for it to look good. Bawolff ☺☻ 05:51, 7 January 2007 (UTC)