- From: Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org>
- Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 09:24:26 -0400
- To: Amelia Bellamy-Royds <amelia.bellamy.royds@gmail.com>
- CC: Jen Simmons <jen@jensimmons.com>, List WebPlatform public <public-webplatform@w3.org>
Hi, Amelia– Thanks for doing this! I hate to mention this, but should we perhaps simply make these pages manually, rather than use a Semantic MediaWiki query? That way we could control the output better (e.g., trim the page names). Regards- -Doug On 6/3/14 1:42 AM, Amelia Bellamy-Royds wrote: > I spent some time this evening exploring the options for this issue. > There's no easy solution, unfortunately. For now, we should make it a > little nicer with CSS. I haven't got myself set up to edit the CSS on > github yet; if someone else is able to do that please volunteer! > > The horrendous tables that currently exist come from > http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/Special:PrefixIndex > The content created by that page is then just plunked into the referring > page as-is. > > That's a problem because the formatting of results from special search > pages are not controlled by any templates we can edit, it is part of the > Mediawiki core functionality. It is apparently possible to create a > custom "special page" by writing the actual PHP code [1]. I might try > that out eventually, but it's not something I'll have time to do any > time soon. If any PHP experts want to tackle it, you'd be welcome. > > The approach I hoped would work was to use Semantic Mediawiki's search > function [2], which allows various result formats including custom > templates. The problem with that is that you can only search by > Semantic Mediawiki properties or categories, not by page names/prefixes. > This issue has been recognized in previous WebPlatform Docs attempts > to create category listing templates [3], and most of the page templates > now explicitly set "Page Name" and "Path" properties for each page so > that the values can be used in a query. However, not all pages have > these properties set; if they don't, they won't show up in the search > results. That excludes a lot of imported pages (including tutorials > from MDN and reference docs from MSDN) as well as many custom concept or > category pages that don't use page templates. > > Eventually, all pages should have these properties set and inline > queries might work, but not now. Even then, it won't allow fancier > layouts like nested hierarchies unless we explicitly set categories or > semantic properties for each level in the hierarchy. > > The final option: use what we've got, but make it less ugly. The > following CSS would turn the search result tables into a bulleted list: > > table#mw-prefixindex-list-table{ > > 1. display: block; > > } > table#mw-prefixindex-list-table td { > > 1. display: list-item; > 2. list-style-position: inside; > 3. background: transparent; > 4. color: inherit; > 5. border: none; > > } > table#mw-prefixindex-list-table tr { > > 1. display: inline; > > } > > Output: > > > Index of all SVG topics > > svg/attributes <http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/svg/attributes> > svg/attributes/alignment-baseline > <http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/svg/attributes/alignment-baseline> > svg/attributes/baseline-shift > <http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/svg/attributes/baseline-shift> > svg/attributes/clip-rule > <http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/svg/attributes/clip-rule> > svg/attributes/color-interpolation-filters > <http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/svg/attributes/color-interpolation-filters> > svg/attributes/dominant-baseline > <http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/svg/attributes/dominant-baseline> > svg/attributes/enable-background > <http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/svg/attributes/enable-background> > svg/attributes/fill > <http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/svg/attributes/fill> (etc.) > > > I'm sure a CSS expert could even wrap the list into columns in browsers > and screen sizes that support it, but either way it's an improvement > over the current look. > > Amelia > > P.S. to renoirb: Don't blame me for the id-based CSS selectors; that's > the only unique identifier on the content spewed out by MediaWiki! > > [1]: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Special_pages > [2]: http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Inline_queries > [3]: > http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:Implementation_Patterns/Templates#Summaries.2C_Page_Title.2C_and_API_Name > > > > > > > > On 12 May 2014 10:33, Amelia Bellamy-Royds > <amelia.bellamy.royds@gmail.com <mailto:amelia.bellamy.royds@gmail.com>> > wrote: > > And think about what's possible given the constraints of > Mediawiki?? > > > One possibility, as opposed to trying to fix everything with CSS, is > to replace the default mediawiki index with a templated inline query > [1]. > > With a query we should be able to create a list with just the > individual page title (instead of the path). You can also select an > output format: bulleted list, multi-column list with alphabetical > groupings like the MDN example above, or a table of page names + > other information (e.g., summaries). > > It might even be possible to create nested lists to represent > sub-categories so that the information from the path structure isn't > lost, or to filter out sub-categories altogether. > > However, it won't be trivial to come up with a good template for the > query that can then be popped into every index page with pleasing > results. We'd probably want the template to switch between two or > three different index styles, depending on how many entries there > are in the index and whether there are sub-hierarchies. > > If people have a chance, look at the inline query documentation to > get an idea of what's possible, then we can discuss what we want to > achieve. > > [1]: http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Inline_queries > > Amelia > > > > > On 12 May 2014 10:00, Jen Simmons <jen@jensimmons.com > <mailto:jen@jensimmons.com>> wrote: > > Yes, this has been driving me insane, too. The CSS styling of > the tables makes it worse, and I think we can reskin the tables > to make all tables easy to understand. Having the first column > of this table be dark brown while the rest is a light color > seems to convey that the first column is something special — but > it's not. > > In fact, I'm not sure why this is a table at all. It's not a > data set. It's a long list of links. The HTML should be a list, > not table. Will mediawiki let us make it a list? > > And visually, it would be much better as simple columns of > links. Like at MDN: > https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference > > Inline image 1 > > I honestly think that designing better doc list landing pages is > key to making a successful project. If someone clicks on "CSS" > or "SVG" or "APIs", they should get to a useable landing page. > When instead, people see things like what Rob pointed to, it > erodes their confidence in the content on the site. > > Can we talk about this in a meeting? And think about what's > possible given the constrains of Mediawiki?? > > Jen > > Jen Simmons > designer, consultant and speaker > host of The Web Ahead > jensimmons.com <http://jensimmons.com> > 5by5.tv/webahead <http://5by5.tv/webahead> > twitter: jensimmons <http://twitter.com/jensimmons> > > > > On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 12:15 AM, Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org > <mailto:schepers@w3.org>> wrote: > > Hi, Rob– > > Thanks for chiming in. > > This is a reasonable request, and creating at issue at > project.* would be great. > > Sadly, Semantic MediaWiki is not very powerful in these > sorts of things, so I wonder what we can do to fix it > (unless we do it manually). This might have to wait until we > move to a new CMS in the hopefully-not-too-distant future. > > Regards- > -Doug > > > On 5/8/14 11:59 PM, Rob^_^ wrote: > > Hi, > ref: http://docs.webplatform.org/__wiki/svg > <http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/svg> > attached please find a screenshot of the above page > showing the table of > Index of all SVG topics.... which overflows the text > content in all > browsers.... > Can I raise a change request to have this corrected... > (the text > overflow in the table?)... > I tried using the Developer tools to apply a style rule, > but it seems to > me that the only solution is to abbreviate the text > content... eg... use > attributes i/o svg/attributes.... > I am unfamiliar with mediawiki, so please forgive me if > this is not the > appropriate avenue to make a change requests. > Would http://project.webplatform.__org/ > <http://project.webplatform.org/> be the appropriate > place to post? > Regards. >
Received on Tuesday, 3 June 2014 13:24:37 UTC