Oolite Bulletins

Once you remove the fixed width, font, font size and so forth, an OXP author writing a summary will have no idea whether his summary fits on one line for the majority of users or not.

So if an OXP author writes a summary that happily fits for him on one line at HD 1980, the poor netbook user at 1024, will pay the price. If he decides on two lines, well I wouldn't want to be viewing that on a netbook.

There is one more option - you can turn on scrolling within a cell, so all columns could be visible, but longer descriptions on smaller monitors will require scrolling within the cell. It still suffers from the problem above though.

I still can't see any obstacle to the table ending up like the alphabetic ones with unlimited length summaries. I'm not going to "police" the table. Once it's out, it's out and if it gets messed up like the alphabetic tables, then that won't be my problem.

mcarans wrote:

I still can't see any obstacle to the table ending up like the alphabetic ones with unlimited length summaries. I'm not going to "police" the table. Once it's out, it's out and if it gets messed up like the alphabetic tables, then that won't be my problem.

That's only natural on a Wiki. Nobody expects you to maintain the table in the long run. In fact, given our history, it is not too unlikely that in a year or so we will have this debate all over again, and somebody (perhaps a newcomer) will replace the whole table with something yet completely different.

We are not working for the eternity, and all solutions are (1) only approximations, and (2) only temporary.

All I'm saying is that the mistake already happened once with the ever expanding alphabetic table that got split and split again, so why not put in place measures to safeguard against this at the start? Why repeat the mistake and necessitate another new table in a year's time?

Because we may get a new table any time anybody feels they should give us one. Neither I nor you can do anything about it.

Granted, it's not terribly likely, as generally stuff that exists tends to continue to exist. But it may happen.

I also think you are mistaken. The need to split the table was not caused by the single entries taking too many lines (actually before Smivs' screenshot comparison a couple of posts above I have never heard that stated as a problem at all). It had much more to do with maintaining the alternating colour scheme, which becomes more tedious with more entries, regardless of how many lines each single entry needs. So it was all about the total number of entries in the table, which of course isn't reduced in the new table.

My whole point is that not-fitting-horizontally-on-the-screen would be a serious birth defect of a new table, which I would rather like to avoid.

Just to be clear, I was suggesting we make that one column variable width to cope with different displays only - NOT to give more room for longer "summaries" - because then it's not a summary any more.

Someone's just mentioned "less than 1440 pixels" - plenty of the Web still assumes 960 pixels (netbooks are often this sort of usable width) so we should at least cater for that...

I'll have a go at it then - but after I'd posted I had a think about IE 6 and 7 and remembered all sorts of fun bugs I fell over last time I tried something like this with tables. (It generally works if you do it with DIVs but I don't know if that will fly in a Wiki. Have to look into it.)

I think that comparison screenshot says it all, good one!

mcarans wrote:

All I'm saying is that the mistake already happened once with the ever expanding alphabetic table that got split and split again, so why not put in place measures to safeguard against this at the start? Why repeat the mistake and necessitate another new table in a year's time?

Why not, if it's better?

We need a balance between flexibility and rigidity. If you go too far on flexibility then the table will go out of proportions relatively quickly. If you go too far on rigidity, users do feel policed. A reminder above the table that the OXP summary should fit on one line in a window that is e.g. 1440px wide should be enough. If someone doesn't find the required brevity there will always be the kind soul whose aesthetics are offended enough to help

Above, Mcarans has nicely summarised my fears concerning leaving the door open to excess if we allow the summary column to wrap. If we do this, the table is doomed as a compact and functional entity.
However I also fully accept McLane's argument about horizontal scrolling...it's an abomination and I can't think of a bigger pain in the Aft laser mounts!
So what do we do?
Now I'm pretty good with HTML,CSS etc, but am new to media wiki code. Is there a way to set a maximum number of Characters per column? In other words could we set the table width to 100% to remove the need for horizontal scrolling whilst specifying a reasonable Max Characters figure for the Summary column. If this can be done, this will allow the full-width table to fit on smaller monitors with the longest summaries over two lines, and larger monitors will only ever display one-line-per-OXP.

zevans wrote:

I had a think about IE 6 and 7 and remembered all sorts of fun bugs I fell over last time I tried something like this with tables.

Forget IE6.

zevans wrote:

I had a think about IE 6 and 7 and remembered all sorts of fun bugs I fell over last time I tried something like this with tables. (It generally works if you do it with DIVs but I don't know if that will fly in a Wiki. Have to look into it.)

Getting a consistent appearance across browsers and OSs is very hard as we found out. Browsers still seem to default to different things, behave in different ways and various other problems.

If you reduce the table width to suit Cdr. McLane's wish that all columns fit fully @ 1024 or even 960, and change in the OXPSortableTableRow all the overflow=hidden to overflow=scroll, then the summaries will scroll and can be as long as you like. All columns in the table will be visible at the lowest resolution, although at larger resolutions, I don't think it will look too good. This is better than the alternative of removing the fixed width of the table, because once that happens, OXP authors will have no idea what their entries will look like to users using different resolutions.

maik wrote:

Forget IE6.

Wouldn't we like to
However recent figures (August 2010 W3C) suggest that over 6% of browsers used are still IE6, more than Safari and Opera!
When I tested the table I used IE6, partly because it's crap and would show-up any problems, but also because it is still quite popular.

Smivs wrote:

maik wrote:

Forget IE6.

Wouldn't we like to
However recent figures (August 2010 W3C) suggest that over 6% of browsers used are still IE6, more than Safari and Opera!
When I tested the table I used IE6, partly because it's crap and would show-up any problems, but also because it is still quite popular.

I guess IE6 users are used to seeing web sites look crappy. No need to waste time feeding a dinosaur IMO.

maik wrote:

Smivs wrote:

maik wrote:

Forget IE6.

Wouldn't we like to
However recent figures (August 2010 W3C) suggest that over 6% of browsers used are still IE6, more than Safari and Opera!
When I tested the table I used IE6, partly because it's crap and would show-up any problems, but also because it is still quite popular.

I guess IE6 users are used to seeing web sites look crappy. No need to waste time feeding a dinosaur IMO.

If you are going to start excluding users, why bother catering for resolutions < 1280?

Smivs wrote:

maik wrote:

Forget IE6.

Wouldn't we like to
However recent figures (August 2010 W3C) suggest that over 6% of browsers used are still IE6, more than Safari and Opera!

True, my old laptop has still Mac OS 9 installed. The newest Browser that runs on that laptop is IE5.1. All newer browser versions require OSX. So I still use IE5.1 when forced to use internet from that laptop.

Thats on the mac but I assume for windows similar thing can happen. But I assume that those that want to edit have better equipment at hand.

Eric Walch wrote:

So I still use IE5.1 when forced to use internet from that laptop.

Out of curiosity, how does the table look in IE5.1?

BTW, I scooped an escape capsule with your namesake inside last night. Eric Walch gave me 150 credits for my efforts to get him passed customs