Forum:CT Archive/New ship and vehicle infobox templates

Consolidating efforts
Some significant movement has been made toward creating a new uniform template for infoboxes for starships and vehicles. The discussion has thus far occurred in multiple places across Wookieepedia, and I think it would be best to consolidate it here.

The primary users involved in this effort thus far include: RMF (talk), Shadowtrooper (talk), VT-16 (talk), and myself (talk). (I apologize if I've missed anyone.) Everyone on Wookieepedia is welcome to join in!

Discussions on this topic so far:
 * Community Portal: Infoboxes (2) -- First stirrings of a project, initiated by RMF.
 * Wookieepedia talk:WookieeProject Vehicles -- Various issues are discussed, including the use of one template for each ship.
 * Template talk:Ship -- Discussion about field names.
 * Talk:ARC-170 starfighter -- Some apprehension is evident.
 * Community Portal: Auto-hiding infobox rows -- Sikon does some wikiprogramming I can't comprehend but which looks nice.

Now let's put our heads together and hammer out the rest of the details! &mdash;Darth Culator  (talk)  13:56, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I must say, the latest infobox style is the most eye-pleasing yet. Looking back at the original bright pink, I realise what an eye-sore that was. The style that followed, and has been spread lately, it an improvement, but the light grey is almost indistinguishable from the rest of the page, and just doesn't seem effective. This last version, with "calmer" colors that don't stick out, is definitly the best. :) VT-16 14:05, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * To clarify: the wikiprogramming isn't mine, the autohiding hacks are plagiarized from Uncyclopedia, I only adopted them for infoboxes. I can explain the technical details, should someone desire. Provided that we convert all infoboxes to this format (by the way, I'm all for the latest design), I think the more fields there will be in the infobox, the better. - Sikon [ Talk ] 14:29, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Wherever the auto-hiding bit came from, it's very cool. But does it preserve the alternating field colors? Anyway, I've created a template for all the fields I can think of. &mdash;Darth Culator   (talk)  14:51, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

(temp template removed for further experimentation)
 * Is there anything I've left out? &mdash;Darth Culator   (talk)  14:51, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Please don't forget to check out the project page as well. RMF and I have been doing more stuff everyday, so if you're aware of what's going on there, you can better spot things that need to be fixed or tewaked. Thanks muchly for your help all! Shadowtrooper talk 15:33, 8 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, it doesn't preserve the alternating colors. - Sikon [ Talk ] 15:37, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Then could we maybe make all the fields one color and put faint lines between them? I just changed my sample to show what I mean. &mdash;Darth Culator   (talk)  16:04, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Why not? I just changed it so it does have alternating colors, though I might have accidentaly disabled the auto-hide functionality. Also, are the lines between fields necessary for it to work? If not, and we can maintain the alternating colors, I think it looks better without them. RMF 16:58, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * You didn't disable auto-hide, it isn't enabled on this version of the template, only on Template:Ship. - Sikon [ Talk ] 17:03, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * What I'm trying to say is, if the auto-hiding template doesn't automatically alternate the colors, we should make it all one color with faint borders rather than having some boxes appear to run together. &mdash;Darth Culator   (talk)  17:11, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see what you're saying. It would be cool if we got it to auto-alternate though, I'll look into it. RMF 18:24, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * No luck. Though I did find a way to auto-hide null fields using a CSS trick called "hiddenStructure." Look here for more details. I don't have time right now to play around with it, though I might later. RMF 21:10, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I too would like to keep the colors alternating, but if it won't work with autohide, perhaps faint lines will work. I don't much like the look of the lines, but I honestly can't think of anything better (other than the individual templates).  Thoughts? [[Image:Tbhelm.gif|30px]] Shadowtrooper talk 23:56, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I think you're right. I tried a number of different formats and experiments and couldn't manage to get the "hiddenStructure" command to work. It may be because I'm using an abnormal browser (Apple's Safari), but I've never had problems with CSS before. Anybody else want to try? The current implementation (using template substitution) seems solid except for the fact that we must include a list of all available fields on every article. Also, we lose alternating colors (they're not that important) and the wikicode is a mess. Still, I think at this point it's our best option. RMF 00:10, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Individual templates would look nice, but it would be incredibly hard to manage. Especially if we ever decide to change the format again. &mdash;Darth Culator   (talk)  00:21, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * The wikicode isn't supposed to be edited directly. If you need to change the template, replace the entire table with the text from the source section. - Sikon [ Talk ] 01:15, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

eras
What can we write into era in ship infobox??? is there any list??? if not than someone should make something like that - it would make life easier ;) SkywalkerPL 15:11, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * What I have been doing is "Old Sith Wars," "Pre-Clone Wars," "Clone Wars," "Galactic Civil War," and "Yuuzhan Vong War," though this list is by no means exhaustive. and  could probably be good guides, though don't use obscure, minor events. When in doubt, just use your best judgement; or simply leave it blank. RMF 22:03, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Expansion
Now that we have auto-hide capability, I think we should expand the planet infobox template. There was a discussion over at Consensus track/New planet infobox template about this but it kind of got stalled. Now that we can auto-hide, there's no reason we shouldn't expand it a bit. Also, MyNz brought up the point that we should create/update templates for moons, cities, space stations, etc. Thoughts? RMF 00:39, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with expanding the planet template, among others, but I don't know how far we want to go before everything is worked out (such as alternating colors). It would be a mess to have to change all the coding twice. --Xwing328 01:21, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but I don't think it's possible to have both auto-hide and alternating colors, unfortunately. You're right though, we should probably hold off on changes until we iron this out. Until then, we can still discuss additions&mdash;how about fields for a city template? RMF 01:39, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Anybody mind if I create a Template:TestA and Template:TestB to experiment with some ideas. I'm still kinda new here so I dont know if I can temporarily create random things like that. --Xwing328 01:44, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * One thing you can do (and I was doing earlier) is create test pages under your user name. Example: User:Xwing328/Template:TestA and User:Xwing328/Template:TestB. Good luck! RMF 01:48, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I created something that works. I don't know if it's worth it though. Check it out please—User:Xwing328/Template:TestB --Xwing328 03:01, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * This is more complicated than I expected. But it will be worth it. &mdash;Darth Culator   (talk)  03:15, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * It would be easier for smaller infoboxes like weapons, but I'll admit its kinda difficult for big boxes like ships and planets. --Xwing328 03:17, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

OK, I just finished my latest iteration. It's not as daunting as it looked, but I still can't get multi-line entries to work quite right. The first bullet always comes out as a plain asterisk. But the self-collapsing stuff works nicely, and fields are easy to add. Check the examples below. &mdash;Darth Culator  (talk)  04:33, 9 February 2006 (UTC) I think I'd prefer doing away with the lines and going with a strictly solid gray format. If you look at the Droid tri-fighter article, this actually looks pretty nice. The lines don't really help that much with separation, I don't think. Opinions? RMF 22:03, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Colors are pretty. CooperTFN 04:36, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * "Self-collapsing". That means if there's an empty field, it just automatically hides this in the article? VT-16 08:19, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Right. Just like the new planet infobox, you put all the fields in the page, but leave the empty ones blank, like in the examples below. If you don't put in all the fields, it looks really silly. I put the same instructions below as I have just placed on the template page. &mdash;Darth Culator   (talk)  14:52, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Instructions for new template
To use the new ship infobox, copy and paste the following code at the top of your article, then replace the text in parentheses (as shown in bold below) with the information for your article. All fields must be present for the box to function, but leave the value for a field blank if the information is unknown. (Example: " height=| " if the height is unknown.)