Forum:FandomDesktop skin now opt-in

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Per this staff blog, the new FandomDesktop skin is now opt-in. I've only had a few minutes to look at it, but I wanted to start a thread for reporting bugs that we can get to User:Lady Lostris. I propose we add them here under new headers for each so that they can be individually tracked and addressed. Please continue to adhere to forum rules as established. —Scott (talk) 11:28, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Table cell borders

• Basic html ignored for styling borders.
• Example: Episode 0001.
• Reported by —Scott (talk) 11:28, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
• Wiki Rep response: This can be remedied by doing the following:
  1. add class="episodes" to that episode table
  2. add the following to to MediaWiki:Fandomdekstop.css

.episodes table, .episodes td {
border-collapse: separate;
border: 2px solid #000;
padding: .5em .5em;
}

I will already say that said coding isn't perfect, as it will only target the body and not the header yet for this table. I'd need to test with the class, which I obviously haven't done (yet). I am just already sharing this to show that this can be fixed without it having to be a strenuous undertaking. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 15:53, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm glad you found the "episode" table class I spent time working on yesterday. Yes, that's the current plan to fix some of these. —Scott (talk) 16:23, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I applied fixes to most of the "episode" style tables after a couple days of writing the code and testing. There's still some styling to fix with sortable tables, but I'll get to it eventually. —Scott (talk) 01:46, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

I didn't know you did that, but that's indeed the way to most efficiently fix this. Glad that worked out. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 13:19, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Gallery orientation

• Ignored: orientation=landscape orientation=square orientation=portrait
• Example: Aliens
• Reported by —Scott (talk) 11:28, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
• Wiki Rep response: Per my note below, the style of the custom Fandom galleries is no longer supported, unless they have the parameter navigation=true for the navigation galleries (which most on here are not, as you're using exposition galleries). As such, the solution is to either use the MediaWiki gallery mode parameters or style it with css. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 15:53, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Why was gallery orientation retired without any consultation? This is the first I'm hearing of it. —Scott (talk) 16:23, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Decisions had to be made on how to combine the Fandom and GamePedia styles, and not everything could've been advertised before. That said, we are collecting a lot of feedback about the galleries, so it remains to be seen if this will be the final version of how galleries will be, or if some of the styling will be brought back. Things like this are also part of why there is an opt-in, cause as you noted yourself plenty a times before, there is only so much feedback you can give based on blog posts and mockups as opposed to actually testing it out. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 13:19, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Infoboxes

• Almost every infobox template on the wiki is borked.
• Examples:
  • Template:episodesesame — Episode 0847
  • Template:episode — Episode 101: The Gink,
  • Template:Song — Anything You Can Do, The King of Eight
  • Template:Figure — Beauregard Action Figure
  • Template:Video — Computer Caper
  • Template:Album — Bert's Blockbusters
  • Template:Book — Christmas Eve on Sesame Street (book)
  • Template:DVD — Beginning Together
• Reported by —Scott (talk) 23:34, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
• Wiki Rep response: If "borked" is referring to the lack of padding on the sides, it is known that tables are losing their padding. There are multiple tickets about this, so this is still bound to change. In the meantime, this can be remedied by adding the following css to MediaWiki:Fandomdekstop.css:

table {
	border-collapse:inherit;
	border-spacing:revert;
}

Do note that this code will affect all tables, so if you only want to to effect a specific table, you can add

class="infobox"

to it and specify as you wish.

Over time, I would advise to just do away with table-styled infoboxes anyway and migrate to use the portable ones instead. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 15:53, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

regarding "I would advise to just do away with table-styled infoboxes" ... this has been the recommendation from past Wiki Helpers as well, but a clear understanding of why has never been expressed. Can you help us understand why this is the case? —Scott (talk) 16:23, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

In general, tables aren't a good practice to be used as layout elements, and as mentioned to you before on Discord (and I assume by the previous Wiki Representatives bringing this up before), the benefit of the portable infoboxes lies in how they are better adaptable to all mobile devices (read "anything that is not desktop"), so that they will continue to show up nicely and not collapse into themselves or something. Another benefit lies in how Google handles these infoboxes, as it has apparently understands how to clearly read the information given there and how to process it, as opposed to information being presented in tables, so this will result in better SEO results. However, for more technical reasons, I will refer you to the general help page on infoboxes I linked above and even FishTank himself as the expert on portability. Even without knowing every technical aspect behind it, if there are at least a couple of benefits to it and no downsides when compared to the current method (beyond making the one-time effort of converting the templates), then why not do it? It will also make styling them with css and adjusting them in the future so much easier than it is when working with tables. I have asked a Vanguard member to just give me a rough estimate for how much work this would entail to carry out. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 13:19, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for that explanation. It's a better description of why Portable code is better for infoboxes than MediaWiki. It does beg the question though, why does Fandom have so much trouble translating MediaWiki to mobile? Wouldn't the simpler answer be to adapt its own styling to the specifications of the root MediaWiki code? Wikipedia and other MediaWiki projects don't seem to have this problem. —Scott (talk) 13:32, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Other templates

• Check all other templates.
• Examples:
  • Template:Sketchrelease — Super Grover
• Reported by —Scott (talk) 23:34, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
• Wiki Rep response: This has a similar fix as the one for the episode tables. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 15:53, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. Thanks for taking a look. —Scott (talk) 16:23, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Theme Designer

• Header doesn't display.
• Changes take a day to show up. Checked on multiple wikis in multiple browsers.
• Reported by —Scott (talk) 23:35, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
• Wiki Rep response: There have been reports from some users experiencing extreme sluggishness with Theme Designer changes to show up. This is not a universal problem, but a ticket for this has been created. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 15:53, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for filing a ticket on this. —Scott (talk) 16:23, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

HTML5 compliance

• It would seem that <table>-specific code no longer supported in HTML5 is not being respected in the new skin (that's why all our tables are screwed up so badly).
• However, not all old HTML is broken, such as <font>, <s>, and some others. It's unclear why only TABLE switches are being targeted.
• Reported by —Scott (talk) 12:34, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
• Wiki Rep response: When you say "tables are screwed up", are you referring to the aforementioned issues with padding and cell-styling? Cause as mentioned there, there are css fixes for that. While perhaps not your ideal fix, it are fixes that will restore the wikis layout while we adjust the tables, so you don't have to worry about any of it looking bad to readers. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 15:53, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

As per my report, I'm referring to html like <font>, <s> still being supported, but cellspacing and border not being supported. —Scott (talk) 16:23, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

FandomDesktop is in general more strict when it comes to using styling codes, and as mentioned, there are some bugs relating to the styling not working. I can't give you an in depth technical explanation as to why font tags are still working and others aren't. I can ask around if necessary, but since we all know that they're being deprecated, I would just say that it seems best to just start to process of replacing them whenever we encounter them, possibly even with bots if that's possible. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 13:19, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Table elements not supported

• valign=top
• cellpadding
• cellspacing
• border
• Are we going to have to convert all these to css, or will any of these be supported?
• Reported by —Scott (talk) 00:45, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
• Wiki Rep response: Considering these tags have been deprecated in general, switching them out is in general good practice. This is a task a bot can help you with. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 15:53, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Again, see above. —Scott (talk) 16:23, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

I think I've taken care of most of these except for valign=top. —Scott (talk) 01:46, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Also per my above note. As for valign, that's another deprecated tag that's best to be replaced with vertical-align. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 13:19, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Hence my request for a list of what's deprectated and what is not. The guide is incomplete, and the deprecation doesn't seem to align with HTML5 since, as I said, some elements are honored and others aren't. Fandom seems to be picking and choosing what they want to support in terms of web development, and I think it would be prudent to supply its creators with a list of what is and is not supported. Also a reason why some things are and aren't supported would be nice as these kinds of mysteries can be frustrating. —Scott (talk) 13:32, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Search issues (answered)

• The pagenumbers for more results at the bottom of search results are misaligned and overlap the dots that should appear between them
• Go-search is disabled
• Reported by -- Wendy (talk) 04:27, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
• Wiki Rep response: This bug has been ticketed before, so this is not a deliberate design choice. Can you give an example of a page where go search didn't work for you, as it worked for me when I randomly tried out Elmo and Bert. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 15:53, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
  • In terms of the alignment on the result numbers, I didn't think it was a deliberate design choice, but I do not see the issue in the oasis skin, so it was new to me. The go-search example I couldn't get to work was "Kermit". It appears to be working now - sometimes the pop-up suggestions are exteremely slow for me and perhaps I was not being patient enough yesterday. -- Wendy (talk) 16:57, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Table content

• Different from other table issues in that these are content stylings that we've placed in tables.
  • template: landscapetable
  • gallery type="slideshow"
  • video embeds (how am I going to find these?)
• Reported by —Scott (talk) 13:38, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
• Wiki Rep response: With the update from MediaWiki 1.19 to 1.33, Fandom is now able to use the standard MediaWiki galleries. All the custom parameters--such as those gallery positions--of the Fandom galleries are not working on UCX, and for regular galleries, these mode parameters are what we have to use. That said, for the galleries that use the navigation=true parameter, a fix is in the works, as those galleries depended on the style and have a different output on mobile. Most styling issues can and should currently be fixed using css. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 14:09, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
• Additional notes: Fandom involvement probably not needed. It's clear that there is never going to be support for any consistency with the way these work within a table, so it's up to the community to decide what to do with these. We'll bring this up in a separate forum thread eventually.

That is up to the community to decide, but I am here to lend a hand with this if desired. As I told you before, there are several ticket relating to tables still in the works, so their layout is still bound to change for the better. As such, css fixes are the easiest fix for now as they will remedy the current layout and it can easily be removed again when the tables get fixes on the platform itself. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 14:34, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

I understand, and appreciate your input. But we've been at this a lot longer and have seen these parameters change many times. In fact, this particular problem is still left unfixed from the UCP move last October. So, we're two layers into a broken feature in this case, with an 8 month gap in between. The best course of action with slideshows within tables may be to come up with an alternate solution for presenting this content so that we're not scrambling to try and fix it again every time Fandom breaks it. Don't worry about it, this will be something we figure out as a community at a later time; probably after I've caught up with all the other fixes that are more pressing at the moment. —Scott (talk) 14:39, 3 June 2021 (UTC)