Template talk:Resource palette

A nice addition however it could benefit from a little more "oomph" to make it stand out from the rest of the page (a border and/or background). Also it might be helpful to make it more like the "New" menu rather than the palette toolbar as this would allow you to include a textual link for those not yet familiar with the icons. I've mocked up an alternative on my user page.
--Sunjammer 18:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

you all dont deny you like this little gizmo rofl ^^ Eshme 21:20, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with making both versions into templates and then using them as appropriate. I think there's a strong niche for a "thumbnail" version like this current template, too - for example Cutscene has both the resource palette navbox and a cutscene-specific navbox tucked up in the corner, and it would start getting a little crowded with the full-blown one on your user page. I'll tinker around and maybe come up with a more consistent navigational template framework to use across the wiki. BryanDerksen 21:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Rrf. I was just tinkering with collapsible tables, but it looks like I won't be able to properly test the javascript for a few days on account of web developer resources being tied up in the ME2 launch. Would have been a possible best-of-all-worlds solution. BryanDerksen 22:32, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Having played around with "this little gizmo" I've concluded that while it may be pretty, it is a poor navigational aid.

Basing on the resource palette means it is severely limited: it omits Animation, Level, Material, Morph, VFX, Module, 2DA to name but a few. Moreover the latest addition of the "all" button linking to Designer Resources is incorrect: the "all" palette includes Model and models are Art Resources. Admittedly basing it on the "New" menu as I originally suggested would not be much of an improvement: it would still omit Module (which is vaguely important) and Model. In truth we probably want to start with Toolset!

Moreover even if we did address these short-comings and the size/duplication issues Bryan mentioned it would still be a poor navigational aid. Setting aside that the Model button doesn't even link to the Model article but to a Placement article, the "gizmo" doesn't link to anything people are likely to need to visit more than once. After you've read up about Area List will need to return to that page? I doubt it. This is because, with the exception of Script, the "gizmo" links to articles on the individual resource when in fact it should link to a portal for that particular resource type (file, sub-commmunity, etc.).

Using portals we can present the user with an organised list of all content for that resource, file, sub-community, etc. Portals are also a logical place to highlight new or updated content so that returning users can see at a glance what's change. Portals should also help the obsession people appear to have with throwing all related content onto a single page with a total disregard for whether or not it is appropriate to do so and, of late, without any concerns for accuracy or complexity.

For example, if there is only one article on the Item resource everything gets thrown into regardless of whether or not that information is appropriate to a novice, experienced or veteran builder. However if there was an Item portal the inappropriate additions could be extracted from that article and form the basis of new articles. Different articles could be created for different levels of experience and/or interest (novice vs. experienced vs. veteran; designer vs. scripter vs. modeller) and all of these collated via the portal which can be accessed from the front page and/or the navigational aid (and/or from appropriate "roles" portals).

Of course in order to make a useful navigation tool we would actually have to impose a much more logical and robust structure on the wiki. Provide a framework and, dare I say, some guidelines that contributors must adhere to. It would require contributors to stop and think what they are trying to achieve; suggested and discussed it their fellow editors rather than rampaging through the wiki like the proverbial bull leaving a trail of broken articles simply because they are oblivious to the damage they are doing.

--Sunjammer 01:09, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I thought the gizmo was a good tool to recognize the page. It is hardly navigational i must agree. But when you see it "Ah! here they tell about it" lol nothing more.

That it links to pages with raw information instead a portal is true. But it cant be avoided right now. Item is or was nothing more than a list of properties. And it doesnt looks better for any other page. Portals sounds good to me. Just anything to make it more attractive for noobies. Before the gizmo, the pages didnt look better you see.

Besides ,i thought that Cinematografy on the front page is a application of what you can do with one or many resources, and hardly is it everything. As such i wondered how one could integrate such realworld applications closer to the resource. And portals may really be good i dont know.

Talk about contributors, well really there are very few i see. So i would say it doesnt make sense to complain that contributors wont stop rampaging. Eshme 02:23, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

IMO the "big pile of everything on one page" pattern represents the earlier stages of a topic's development on the wiki, the "portal and focused sub-pages" pattern is what it should evolve into once the page becomes big enough to start splitting up and we actually know what sort of topics need to be covered. It looks like the 2DA page has just about hit that point in maturity right now, for example. The initial stages of the article's development are messy, but that's life on a wiki - you have to start somewhere.

As for the navigational system, I'd like to see a similar sort of hierarchy develop - a group of high-level "main" pages with quick links between them, and groups of "focused" pages with quick links within those groups. The main page nav template can go on the main pages and the more focused pages would get topic-specific navigation aids. The best existing example that comes to mind is cutscene - there's this template at the top, providing a quick high-level jump-to-other-resources navigation, and below that is a box containing a list of links to various cutscene-specific topics. Each individual navigation template should avoid getting too big and complicated since there'll be other more-focused navigation templates to fill the role.

One possibility that comes to mind is to have the highest-level navigational template mirror the structure of main page, since they fill similar roles. I guess the question there is whether the current division of topics on Main Page is a good one. BryanDerksen 16:59, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Collapsible table

There, I've added the javascript to handle collapsible tables to common.js and merged the two templates together. Hopefully this will make the template able to fill both roles well. :) It's no longer solely focused on the resource palette now, perhaps a name change is in order? I'll think of something later, in case there are further changes to be made first. BryanDerksen 19:07, 2 February 2010 (UTC)