Info box templates.

[Merri]

So, I had been talking with a friend a long time ago about the info boxes. Mainly their colour.

 

They mentioned there being several templates out there, and I figured I'd poke my nose in and see if there was any truth to it.

 

Would it be possible to find and/or create and upload a template that has a black background, with white text? So those of us that might have a darker layout have the option of not having a template that's blinding. The bright white info box looming in the corner just seems to be a distraction when viewing all of my three character's wiki pages.

 

For example.

 

An all black Info box with white text would just make the overall layout so much easier on the eyes, and much smoother.

 

It even goes so far as to make one of my character's pictures difficult to really focus on it. At least for me and my monitor.

 

Not that it's something I can't tolerate, because I can and do. But, it would be nice to have options if at all possible.

[FreelanceWizard]

Just now noticed this (been a busy few weeks), and then I had to load up IE to log in. *grumble* Also, this new editor box really annoys IE when the text gets long.

 

Obviously, I don't make any administrative decisions with regards to the wiki, as the RPC currently just offers it as a site where administration is limited to dealing with vandalism. What I will say is that I feel the wiki works best when you don't do what you've done on your pages -- that is to say, when people don't use it like a web site space and use inline styles on divs to redesign the pages, but instead stick to the CSS that's already there (cf. Wikipedia, where inline styles are heavily frowned upon, or Virtueverse, where they'll generally get removed by RC patrol). Why? Because the wiki derives its power from a consistent user experience. When people put in their own page designs, that's lost. Personally, I feel that you really want to take that further and use a consistent set of sections, which is what the page template on Final Fantasy XIV Lore:Character page tutorial tries to do.

 

Again, though, I don't have any authority to make any official statements as to what's permissible on the wiki in terms of content. However, I also won't create templates that support something I don't like. If you want to do what you're suggesting, I would recommend forking Template:Infobox-character and adding parameters for foreground and background color that are referenced in the table style at the top of the template. I would recommend doing this in #if blocks so you can make sure the template works even if that parameter isn't specified. You can then fork Template:Infobox-character and have it pass through those parameters. The Infoboxes essentially work as an inheritance hierarchy, with the more specific Infoboxes inheriting from less specific ones and adding additional logic (such as the auto-tagging functionality of Infobox-character). I recommend a fork instead of editing the base templates because these are heavily used templates, and a breaking change would break a lot of pages.

 

There's no magic to the Infoboxes; they're just templated tables. I wrote them rather than downloading them. Again, though, because of my personal opinions on the way wikis (and especially character wikis) should be edited, I'm not particularly interested in making these changes.