Re: Table formatting at http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/svg

>
>  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> 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
>
> [image: 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
> 5by5.tv/webahead
> twitter: jensimmons <http://twitter.com/jensimmons>
>
>
>
> On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 12:15 AM, Doug Schepers <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
>>> 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/ be the appropriate place to post?
>>> Regards.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>