We have a new wiki main page :)

[Fzero]

Neat


I'm all for using slightly different favicons on our various sites

I'd also recommend using them for the Apple device homescreen shortcut icons too.

I think they'd look particularly nice there

I'm under the impression we've not a massive idevice user-base here, but those that do would then get nice icons when they create shortcut to the pages on their devices.

Just need to add the following line, with correct image ref of course, to each of the pages [boards/repo/wiki]:

<link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="iconsdirectory/apple_device_icon.png">

To look something like this:

Higher res ones probably would be done too, for those retina screens

 

[EvilDragon]

Okay, I took a look at the current Wiki Main page, and it's really improving, nice.

The icons really are neat

Some things I noticed though:

* The colored text with the black background looks terrible. Maybe something like this would be better?

Quickstart

User manual, Team [Expand]

* The links are a bit confusing, especially when you expand them. Some are really close together and you can't see on first look if it's one link with multiple words or if each word is one link.

We need to find some way to show them in a nicer and cleaner way.

* The page is only using the left part of the screen. Seriously, why? We now have a mobile plugin, which Qupzilla on the Pandora automatically uses.

So the main page should use the full layout, but even on smaller screens (like 1280x800), there's lot of white on the right side, which is not really needed.

 

[comradekingu]

Collapsible elements do not work on the mobile version, thats why opportunities of making something work in mobile view was explored.

I think it looks better with colours, but it crashes against the icon colour.

I removed cellspacing and inserted whitespace coded fields manually to see if some space could be spared. Your solution works nice for visual aspects, but it eats horizontal space at twice the rate. Maybe thats lost anyway with the icons.

Another idea i had was the current page with the positioning that sswam used. Doing it with tables, like way back, mangled up the code too much.

I think the jumpiness can be solved by not assigning them all left, and instead going with left right center, lineshift, then the same again.

 

[sswam]

Ok, gunning for clean then.

Things todo.

1. Use the 4 columns style from mockup. No reason not to, there is space for it. Can browse 4 things then, and more logical sectioning. Stop jumpiness of categories and icons that detach from the categories. Hide the expanders?
2. Add button images for top menu options, also need other shop and donation links.   Left:Navigation            Middle:social               Right:buying.  Use favicons, logos?
3. Add sidesections ala OP mainpage, (where the righthand panda is now,) copy over corresponding pages/images. In similar fashion to the other category columns, aligned right (could be on both sides too)
4. Bonus: Append a floating video or slideshow into the pandora image thats on there now. (or a square one) If that doesnt work the whole image can be made into an apng. Worst case, the screen could have a static image of something useful and say "click for video", leading to a video page.

I think 3 columns will be better.  4 columns looks okay on desktop PC, but is too cramped at 800x480 on the Pandora - too many links will be split across two lines.

I don't know what you mean about "jumpiness".

I don't want a slideshow or animation on the main page of wiki, that would just be distracting.  A wiki is more about information, not sparkle.  We have one sparkly dynamic page already being the "new homepage".  I do like that design, but not for the wiki.

It seems on the whole people like the 3 column layout for main page better than what we have now, so I will install that on the main page and we can work from there.  I will copy the current main page to Main_Page_expanders.  And the history is there, anyhow.

I would like to be responsible for the layout of the main page (not the content), until someone else will volunteer for that.

 

[sswam]

I installed my preferred layout of wiki main page to the main page.

http://pandorawiki.org/

The main page seems to be broken in mobile mode, after experimenting with it I still do not know why.

 

I think the main page would be better if it had fewer links on it.

We could trim the lists down to just the most important pages, and copy the full list of links (including those most important ones) to other pages, one for each section, like "hardware" links on the "Hardware" page or whatever.

I suppose that's like what we had with the "old main page".

It's a wiki, so go ahead and change it how you like, return to old versions or whatever.  Or, make suggestions and I'll try to do it.

 

[levi]

It's sort of what the old front page was, but the wiki as was had a lot of orphaned pages.  It also didn't work well on the Pandora screen.  As long as we avoid those two pitfalls we should be doing okay.

 

[comradekingu]

Making columns of the coloured collapsed stuff will only make it just as non-collapsed in mobile view, which is contrary to its purpose. And mobile mode is the only skin without sidebar that can actually work. Winning some to use it for wall of text is just not decisive. Its half broken.

Also that would mean the code gets to be unmaintainable to newcomers, and it was ugly enough to begin with...

Instead: http://pandorawiki.org/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page_sswam&mobileaction=toggle_view_mobile

Apart from some of the icons hovering, how do you like this?

Its the only effort i can think of that looks good in mobile mode, and passable in desktop. Arguably it also adds something in the latter by way of being

expanded. Which can be defended by virtue of being "desktop" and mobile being the default.

Edit: sidenote. It can be made less long, and the ones on the chopping block all reside in software and emulator categories, which is handy. A nice way to re-implement the horizontal grouping that the coloured section page had (a concept that isnt self explanatory and is uglier to maintain) we can do colour coding of the sequential items that have a resemblance.

Other listing

Audio System

Midi

Microphone

Keyboard

Nubs

Controllers

Other listing

Im going to use it myself for a while and see if i prefer it. Even though i made the structure on the old one, it wasnt fast enough in horizontal and vertical screening, and familiarity didn't set it to ever help it become fluent, not even when it was accompanied with a seperate pictogram for each.

 

[EvilDragon]

You are aware you can create a completely different main page for mobile view?
So we can use collapsed elements with good layout on the desktop main page and make a completely customized one for mobile.

 

[EvilDragon]

I installed my preferred layout of wiki main page to the main page.

http://pandorawiki.org/

The main page seems to be broken in mobile mode, after experimenting with it I still do not know why.

 

I think the main page would be better if it had fewer links on it.

That actually looks pretty nice.

Is it possible to collapse the submenu items here as well?

 

[Fzero]

Having seen sswam's latest, I like it and though about the concern with the amount of white space over to the right hand side...

So thought perhaps something like this:

Where the space to the right is filled with a large image of the Pandora, on full desktop screens...

,,,On smaller screens though, the image would wrap over to on top of the text [as it is currently]

-----------------------

Looking at Kingu's new layout there, I like that one too, one thing I noticed though is the little arrows next to the headings - They look like they belong to the wrong heading... example the 'Introduction' arrow is closer to the 'Hardware' heading, so looks like it is for that.

 

[comradekingu]

Well, i dont know how to do anything about the expanders. Mobile view has featurebugs galore. To answer EDs question, it would be possible to collapse, if anything actually showed up in mobile view... It only happens on the main page, so sswarms one is moved there for testing for the time being.

Also mobile view changes the licensing info on the bottom of the page to CC-BY-SA...

Dont really want to maintain two pages, i like the maintainability and clean code on the new methodology. Less is more.

Coloured text and bold text is a good idea.

 

[comradekingu]

New mainpage again, this time a take on sswams page, and also featuring suggestions from new main page for pandora.org discussion. Icons by FZERO.

4 column layout which works on a pandora, to make use of the space, and emulators and gui now are under their respective categories instead of on their own.

It doesnt work in mobile mode, and i tracked down the bug
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30405

Its supposed to look like this in mobile view http://pandorawiki.org/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page_sswam&mobileaction=toggle_view_mobile

For the time being mobile view is a short intro and you can search for things, everything beyond that is broken.

 

[pmprog]

I don't like the Developer icon TBH, maybe find something a bit more like these:

https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/36269/code_page_white_icon#size=32

https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/95107/code_icon#size=45

Also, left of the Pandora graphic, it says "Code", then "Games" and "Scores"; neither really reflect "Code", maybe that should be changed to "Software"?

I dislike the random assortment of Pandora icons at the top too. Whilst a nice idea, I find them particularly difficult to understand, especially when there's zero text associated with them, and I have to look at the status bar to see where the link goes.

I also dislike the "tag line" on the right of the Pandora (the text, not the placement). I don't have anything better, except to say remove it.

Otherwise, I think it's much clearer

 

[Fzero]

I like it, apart from the grouping of the icons up top, it doesn't really indicate what they are other than the ALT tags...

I would do something like this:

Or this:

perhaps?

I can do another Developer icon like pmprog suggested if you like, I'll do one in a moment....

 

[Fzero]

Here's an alternative Development icon, based on pmprog's suggestion

 

[pmprog]

I like this horizontal layout, and text descriptions.

 

[comradekingu]

Love the development icon, was going to suggest someting, but didnt know what.

Last mockup made the most sense, no need for "official" on things though. Ordering: Boards (most important), members (has to do with board), repo (second most important), wiki (there really is a link for this already), official site (dont want anyone to see this).

Will implement that later on if nobody beats me to it.

I cleaned up the side-sections and shifted things around a bit

Edit: could go "Bicon"oards , "Micon"embers and so on. Not good for blind people though, which is why image text fails. Can do something with colours, size and maybe font though for that other idea.

 

[pmprog]

Whomever made those icons, could you try it the other way around, by whiting out the non-letter areas, and keeping the blue on the letters?

Might look a bit better

 

[levi]

The main page as is currently stands seems a bit large for the Pandora screen (it's even on the large side on my netbook). I don't think we have enough space for a five-column wide front page personally, and I liked the content being nearer the top.


I far preferred Sswam's page of five days ago, but if this is still a work in progress I'll give you the chance to make it fit a bit better first.

 

[Fzero]

Whomever made those icons, could you try it the other way around, by whiting out the non-letter areas, and keeping the blue on the letters?


Might look a bit better

Like this?