Wiki :(

[jondrush]

All the designs are too long and dense. K.I.S.S.

[JAMBRAM]

I've only quickly read over this post last night and toinght, after not finding what i needed in the new wiki. i found the link to the old wiki, eventually, and got my questions answered. Could you put a link to the old contents page a the top of the new main page? You could call it "Link to old contents page for old farts". I will admit i know nothing of how the wiki works.

[waynemcdougall]

I've only quickly read over this post last night and toinght, after not finding what i needed in the new wiki. i found the link to the old wiki, eventually, and got my questions answered. Could you put a link to the old contents page a the top of the new main page? You could call it "Link to old contents page for old farts". I will admit i know nothing of how the wiki works.

So can you tell us what you were looking for first?

Coz, y'know. Nothing has gone. Except Map Editing is now on its own Map Editing page.

[waynemcdougall]

Three things

1. Idea #6. Most Waze users don't edit maps - ever. And that proportion (but not absolute number) is only going to increase. Just something to think about before making the Main Page cartouche's home away from home.

2.

Reason is that I started working on something, which I think we may all like (or not, I really have no idea lol), but it gives me the opportunity to show you and explain a bit better what I would like to see (and I think more people can relate with it).

Look forward to it. No rush on my account. Babies come first. And Surfs Up dude!

As for all may like...good luck. People have demanded contradictory requirements in this thread alone. But ideas are all good.

3. Svache - I'm really interested in your thoughts (and others of course) on the two column layout in the context of this skin, which takes away the fixed width format. Can you please have a look and make your comments. Interested in any one elses views too of course, but svache raised the issue of fixed width having an impact.

http://www.waze.com/wiki/index.php?titl ... kin=modern

[svache]

@Wayne, You'll see my thought on the full page thingie in a bit, I'm almost done =)

One thing I just realized, when reading some of the text on the mainpage, is the part with the known issues.. it states the following:

"But they are listed here as a warning, and so you know they are being worked on. "

The word 'warning' could put people off, as it sounds a bit scary (lol, dunno how else to describe it). I think the following would be better:

"But they are announced here, so you know they're being worked on."

Anyways, will put the thingie up in a bit =)

[svache]

Ok, lol, here's the thingie:

wazepedia.png (226.22 KiB) Viewed 1019 times

View or download the full image here

I hope you see what I have tried to do. Personally I liked the German version of the original Wikipedia the best so far, which is why I took that one as an example for the 'Wazepedia'.

The layout is, in my opinion, very clean and it shows everything in a two column width (also because of the variable width). The columns are the same width, not too big, do not have too much information in them, and share the same colors (it is always best to not go too wild with colors if you want to maintain some professionalism in the layouts, 2-4 main colors with some shading colors is usually the best).

I've used the sidebar to put all the 'main categories' in there. As you can also see on the German version, they use a drop-down-like menu (the arrows). This way you can have all the main cats, and sub categories on every page a visitor goes. If one is somewhere really deep into the articles, and has to go back and forth between the mainpage, this could cost time but is also an annoyance to the users. While the drop-down menu contains everything, it doesn't have to look cluttered.

The drop-down menu also fixed the language issue. I've let it stay the same way as it is on the German Wikipedia page, which is probably one of the best ways to do it, especially when you get more countries. Flags are nice, but only when it is not used too much (as you can also see on the current page, it kind of don't look right), and I think you can imagine what happens by the time Waze is translated into 25 languages lol

Currently there is also irrelevant information in the layout that I just made, however, I just did this to show that we don't really have to stick with the current information. It might be an idea to be a bit more playful and show some other information as well (which is also a form of advertisement at the same time, of course).

Also, when it comes down to the content, I just copied most of the current content. I may have changes a thing or two here and there, but nothing major. One thing I would like to propose, however, is not to use very long columns, but preferably more in the way as I did with "How you can help make Waze even better", just show the first paragraph and a link saying 'more', that way the user doesn't get too much information at once. The mainpage should be more of an intro page in my opinion, a place where users can find their way around more easier. The 'real' information comes in their respective articles which are at least a level deeper.

One other thing I noticed is a very inconsistent usage of capitals. I might have accidentally copied some in the lay-out but I tried to keep it at a minimum. The thing is, it looks childish and unprofessional. 12-14 year old girls Type Like ThiS, but a company such as Waze doesn't, of course

The biggest downside of this layout is, however, that Waze will have to change some of their CSS styles. It shouldn't be too hard as it is only for a few items (font/size/colors and such), and of course the width needs to be 100% in order to create something such as this. It is of course not really a downside, but I really have no idea if Waze is willing to make those changes.


@Wayne: I hope this also explained my views a bit on the layout you created, or at least gives an idea of what I had in mind? =)

[robin1979]

I like

[waynemcdougall]

1. Lots of interesting stuff. I'll just leap straight into the negatives, as you'll get the heaps or praise elsewhere and I don't want you getting topheavy on your surfboard

2. I think we need to get this clear up realy early on so everyone is on the same page. So to speak. The alternative pages are not by Language. They need to be by Country. Yes some countries have the same language, but the Waze specifics are wrong, and the language, especially technical modern language is different. Any common overlap can be handled with shared templates. But there isn't going to be a French page. There will be a France Page and a Belgium Page and a Vanuatu Page and a Swiss page and they'll have have French pages (and German and English). Same deal with Spanish. Same deal with English. I'm sure you thought about this, but the driver has to be countries. And countries can have more than one language. And more than two. So I think the flags is a good idea, because it's country based, but each country will need to be able to link to more than one language.

3. I think we need to wait to hear from Dror as to whether he'll free up the width or make another skin available as the default. Because if he doesn't/can't/won't then I think the consensus is to go to 1 column.

I doubt you can expect much in the way of CSS changes. The skins come from Mediawiki. Waze isn't going to want to maintain their own fork. We shall see.

4. Your floating boxes - I did the best I could with tables because that support is built into the Wiki so the formatting commands are basic. Otherwise I would have used the floating box divs. And boy would people have howled at me then. Coz the source is ugly. And hard to maintain. All I can say is with judicious use of templates it shouldn't need maintaining. Or at least trusted people can do it. Ordinary people should never have to go into the main page to change the content. That's the pattern behind the structure.

But that's one question that needs to be asked (and contingent on hearing back on 3.):

Are we happy to have a source full of stylesheets and divs and float lefts and float rights? Cos if not, it's table format, or single column. So what's the view?

4. Inconsistent use of capitals. I have Never Done ThiS. But sometimes I will talk about Map Editing when it is a link and I thought it needed highlighting. I still think that has its place.

5. At the risk of offending you, it's a classic case of Photoshop designing for the web. The biggest problem is the unrealistic screen size. Easy to make it lopok good on an oversized monitor. I look at the Wiki on my iphone and at 1280x800 on a desktop. Designing to 1680x1024 is, well the kindest word, cheating.

6. I like the About Waze section. Great content. I tried to at least put a couple of lines at top, which you've kept, but didn't dare squeeze more in. It would be nice to have something like this in the final design.

7. Overall, this is very close to what I wanted to achieve but was told (as I expected) that I had to stick to standard Mediawiki markup. Otherwise I don't see much different from the Main page now. Since I couldn't make the bold area separations with space and floating, I made do with colour.

8. So the same ideas (and actually implemented, rather than photoshopped), except making better use of the sidebar. That is a brilliant idea that had not occurred to me at all. I really hope Dror will approve that.

So in summary, need to hear from Dror as to how flexible Waze is prepared to be. And need to agree that we can stick a whole bunch of HTML code through the wiki source. I'm willing - I don't think maintenance is an issue as I've said above. Moreover, maybe we cant to scare people off changing the main page layout - let them change the template content - scare them off with floating divs.

And no one has yet responded. At least have a look at http://www.waze.com/wiki/index.php?titl ... kin=modern so you get a taste of a full width Wiki now. It won't be much different so if you have problems with 2 column layout (plus side bar), now is the time to have a look and complain.

[svache]

Let me reply on the numbers, it saves a few quotes lol =)

1. lol if only I could surf... I live here but never touched a surfboard lol (besides, only live here for 2 years now).

2. Regarding the languages and/or countries. It is just a matter of names. I'm sure that through a small hack, database edit or something similar, we can USA or English change into 'USA / English' and 'USA / Spanish' for example (The Belgium languages actually have their own name (Flemish and Walloon)). And we can do it that way for all countries, of course. Personally I don't mind the flags but I am trying to look ahead, and when we have like 30-40 countries (there are over 190 countries btw, and they all have their own languages.. can you see the flags yet?)

3. I agree with you on Dror's part, but I'm sure he cannot make that decision on his own either, so we'll probably have to wait a bit longer =)

As for the CSS changes, I don't know. As far as I've seen, they tried to keep the Wiki layout a lot like their own layout, so it might be that they already did some changes. Who knows, I kind of hope they'll agree on the layout but we have to wait for that lol.

4. I know, the boxes is actually the reason why I did it in Photoshop. I realized we couldn't do it in the current version, so I figured it would be a bit easier to do it the way I did it now.

As for the source full of stylesheets, I think it won't be all that bad. And if anything, we can also do it in tables, I don't really mind that. Tables are not meant for design but for content, and in a way that is content lol.

4. Hmm another #4? lol Nah, I never said you did it, but I noticed one link was using some capitals, and the next didn't. I don't know who did it, and it doesn't really matter either. Thing is, if you do it "Like This" with a link, then the next link needs to be done in a similar way, and not 'like this'

5. It's ok, you're not offending me lol. Actually it is a design fail when you design something at 1680x1050 (I took out the bar in the bottom, which made it to 1011px). All I did really was making a print screen, and work from there. I know when looking at the most used monitors I should've gone for a max width of 1280 instead (height doesn't matter so much, since you get scroll bars anyways), but call me lazy lol. The 1024 layout they use on this site is, imho, getting a bit too small for a Wiki with a fontsize they currently use (not for a normal website btw, that's acceptable at this size). But it is to get an idea. A picture says more than a thousand words they always say, so I figured it would be better to make this lol.

6. lol, thanks, but credit goes to Waze for this: http://www.waze.com/about/about_us/ .It's from their 'our product' text.

7. Yeah I realize that, but it is also to show what else we could do, and especially to show that we don't really need those colors. To be honest, that part of the current mainpage is one of the things I dislike most.

8. Thanks, I hope it too that they will do something with the sidebar. It is there, why not put it to good use

The floating divs should be just for the mainpage, the rest is different per article on the original Wiki also. It is just what suits the article best at that time. The mainpage should have a minimum of updates, and then it can also be just 'locked' for most users, just with a few 'trustees' or just Waze staff themselves who can edit it.

Yeah I took a look at your skin. It looks a lot better like that, but like said above also, the colors are something that I really dislike and I really hope we get rid of them lol. Of course I'd like to see a tiny bit smaller font and such, but I know that's impossible right now as that is CSS work also.

[unwallflower]

I really, really like svache's mockup. A lot. And I LOVE the use of the sidebar as a sort of collapsible table of contents.

I think that's the best of both worlds. The layout is easy on the eyes, and it keeps the important information for new users while the sidebar provides quick, easy to find links for seasoned users.

It's perfect.

As far as the HTML use deterring would-be wiki contributers... I don't think that would pose a terribly huge problem. Maybe that would just call for a very detailed article on how to edit the wiki. I think there are ways around that problem. And at any rate, I taught myself HTML when I was 10 or 11 years old... so it isn't awfully difficult to learn!