Mailing List Archive

On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 03:14:06 +0300, NSK <nsk2@wikinerds.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> What are the pros and cons on the choice of menu placement? Why at left?
>
> For example, I would prefer the mediawiki menu to be placed at the right side
> of the screen. Is anyone else who likes that placement?

For whatever reason, the left side of the screen is more natural to
right-handed people. As a BeOS user, it would make more sense on the
right side - thats where our Deskbar is, but I've seen a lot of
screenshots were people have moved it to the left. It just seems that
people are wired that way..

Cian
> --
> NSK
> Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
> Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
> Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org
> _______________________________________________
> MediaWiki-l mailing list
> MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
>

On Friday 29 October 2004 03:13, Cian Duffy wrote:
> right-handed people. As a BeOS user, it would make more sense on the

Can you remind me the name of the company that developed BeOS?

> screenshots were people have moved it to the left. It just seems that
> people are wired that way..

People who browse at low resolutions will have difficulty reading the content
if the menu is on the left. A menu on the right will enable these persons to
enjoy the content without horizontal scrolling. Menus on the left are also
awful when printing. These were the reasons why I placed the menu of
Wikinerds Portal on the right side.

BTW how is printing handled in MonoBook?

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org

On Oct 28, 2004, at 5:25 PM, NSK wrote:
> On Friday 29 October 2004 03:13, Cian Duffy wrote:
>> right-handed people. As a BeOS user, it would make more sense on the
>
> Can you remind me the name of the company that developed BeOS?

Be.

> People who browse at low resolutions will have difficulty reading the
> content
> if the menu is on the left. A menu on the right will enable these
> persons to
> enjoy the content without horizontal scrolling.

The sidebar takes up equal amounts of space whichever side it's on, so
scrolling is necessary or not depending on the size of the content. A
sidebar on the right makes horizontal scrolling much more difficult
when it happens, however, as the menu and content may end up
overlapping; IIRC we changed the default sidebar position from right to
left in mid-2002 for this reason. (The default is right-side for
languages using right-to-left scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew.)

In the MonoBook skin it's currently fixed to the default; no one's
gotten around to coding up the option to make it user-selectable in
MonoBook.

> Menus on the left are also awful when printing.

The sidebar doesn't appear when printing, so I assume you haven't tried
it.

> BTW how is printing handled in MonoBook?

There is a generic print stylesheet attached via a <link> element in
the HTML output. I would highly recommend you take a look at the HTML
and CSS output to see what's going on; if you have specific questions
about how something works or why something is done in a certain way,
feel free ask in reference to the particular code.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

On Friday 29 October 2004 03:59, Brion Vibber wrote:
> There is a generic print stylesheet attached via a <link> element in

But that's not WYSIWYG: User sees a page with a menu and the printer outputs a
page without a menu.

> feel free ask in reference to the particular code.

Thanks, I will.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org

>But that's not WYSIWYG: User sees a page with a menu and the printer outputs a
>page without a menu.
>
>
Why would you want to print the menu? Wouldn't you want to print just
the page content? When you print a Word document you don't expect to see
Word's chrome included in the printout.

--
Michael <mogmios@mlug.missouri.edu>
http://kavlon.org

On Friday 29 October 2004 06:12, Michael wrote:
> Why would you want to print the menu?

Presenting the MediaWiki/Wikipedia to someone when a laptop is not available.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org

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Please read http://ursine.dyndns.org/wiki/index.php/Top_Posting

Cian Duffy <myob87@gmail.com> writes:

> For whatever reason, the left side of the screen is more natural to
> right-handed people.

I'm not sure it has anything to do with which hand is dominant, but
rather which direction your language is read from. English is run
- From left to right, from the top going down. I hypothesize that the
top and left sides tend to be good, handy places for English (and any
other top-down, left-to-right language) speakers.
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NSK <nsk2@wikinerds.org> writes:

> On Friday 29 October 2004 03:13, Cian Duffy wrote:
>> right-handed people. As a BeOS user, it would make more sense on the
>
> Can you remind me the name of the company that developed BeOS?

Be developed BeOS. Be got purched by Palm, which then merged with
Handspring and became PalmOne.

>> screenshots were people have moved it to the left. It just seems that
>> people are wired that way..
>
> People who browse at low resolutions will have difficulty reading
> the content if the menu is on the left. A menu on the right will
> enable these persons to enjoy the content without horizontal
> scrolling. Menus on the left are also awful when printing. These
> were the reasons why I placed the menu of Wikinerds Portal on the
> right side.
>
> BTW how is printing handled in MonoBook?

Well, as I understand it, at least with monobook, the CSS is written
in such a way that allows things to degrade nicely when sent to the
printer. Not WYSIWYG, more like having a "printer-friendly" version
embedded in the same page as the browser-optimal version.
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NSK <nsk2@wikinerds.org> writes:

> On Friday 29 October 2004 03:59, Brion Vibber wrote:
>> There is a generic print stylesheet attached via a <link> element in
>
> But that's not WYSIWYG: User sees a page with a menu and the printer
> outputs a page without a menu.

Why is that a problem? It degrades nicely to a printable version
without all the added fuss of having to go to another page to get a
printable version.

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NSK <nsk2@wikinerds.org> writes:

> On Friday 29 October 2004 06:12, Michael wrote:
>> Why would you want to print the menu?
>
> Presenting the MediaWiki/Wikipedia to someone when a laptop is not available.

Seems like the obvious solution there is either 1) a public library or
2) printed screen shots.
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>Presenting the MediaWiki/Wikipedia to someone when a laptop is not available.
>
Why would they care what the menus look like? Menus are just menus -
it's content that is worth looking at. Despite what so many websites
seem to think (Flash menus and the like!).

--
Michael <mogmios@mlug.missouri.edu>
http://kavlon.org

On Friday 29 October 2004 09:00, Michael wrote:
> Why would they care what the menus look like?

Some menus are sexy.

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org

On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 12:23:56 +0300, NSK <nsk2@wikinerds.org> wrote:
> On Friday 29 October 2004 09:00, Michael wrote:
> > Why would they care what the menus look like?
>
> Some menus are sexy.

In which case, as suggested, you can demonstrate them with a
screenshot. You wouldn't expect a sexy Mozilla skin to also show up on
your printout; nor, as somebody's mentioned, would the menus on your
word-processor show up on your letters and reports, however "sexy"
they might be.

That said, the automagic printable version does seem to be incredibly
non-intuitive to people. Unfortunately, I can't think of a convenient
way of saying "contrary to what you might think, this page will look
OK printed" other than implying the exact opposite (with a "printable
version" link or somesuch). I believe last time this was mentioned,
there were suggestions of having a javascript "Print" or "Print
preview" link somewhere, which might give the right impression, but no
decent implementation was found (especially the latter seems to have
no easy solution). Anybody fancy trying to take this idea any further?

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]

On Friday 29 October 2004 14:50, Rowan Collins wrote:
> no easy solution). Anybody fancy trying to take this idea any further?

I wonder whether all browsers can support the <link> attribute that MediaWiki
uses for linking to the printing skin.

Will it work on links?

--
NSK
Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org
Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org
Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org

On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 21:53:26 -0700, Paul Johnson <baloo@ursine.dyndns.org> wrote:
>> But that's not WYSIWYG: User sees a page with a menu and the printer
>> outputs a page without a menu.
>
> Why is that a problem? It degrades nicely to a printable version
> without all the added fuss of having to go to another page to get a
> printable version.

Yeah, but when one doesn't know or expect that (and is, perhaps, in a
situation where they don't care to spare paper in testing, such as
a public computer lab with pay printouts) they won't *try* to print from
the mediawiki site. They'll spend extra time copying articles to notepad
or a wordprocessor to print from there, or, if they've been around longer,
will do what I did before I knew the site was printable and switch back
to classic skin so they can have printable links back.

[.Yes, there is "print preview". But that also is unexpected behavior.]

*Muke!
--
website: http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt: http://kohath.deviantart.com/

FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/

I feel like this conversation is futile and that it is only being
perpetuated for the point of an argument.

On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 08:01:58 -0600, Muke Tever <muke@frath.net> wrote:
> Yeah, but when one doesn't know or expect that (and is, perhaps, in a
> situation where they don't care to spare paper in testing, such as
> a public computer lab with pay printouts) they won't *try* to print from
> the mediawiki site. They'll spend extra time copying articles to notepad
> or a wordprocessor to print from there, or, if they've been around longer,
> will do what I did before I knew the site was printable and switch back
> to classic skin so they can have printable links back.

The fact is that other than a few specific instantces (where the
person probably has a vague idea what he/she is doing anyway), when a
page is printed only the article content is needed.

> [.Yes, there is "print preview". But that also is unexpected behavior.]

This is browser dependent no wiki has control over this. A good
browser, however, should render using the print.css style sheet.

-- Jamie
-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://endeavour.zapto.org/astro73/
Thank you to JosephM for inviting me to Gmail!

>That said, the automagic printable version does seem to be incredibly
>non-intuitive to people. Unfortunately, I can't think of a convenient
>way of saying "contrary to what you might think, this page will look
>OK printed" other than implying the exact opposite (with a "printable
>version" link or somesuch). I believe last time this was mentioned,
>there were suggestions of having a javascript "Print" or "Print
>preview" link somewhere, which might give the right impression, but no
>decent implementation was found (especially the latter seems to have
>no easy solution). Anybody fancy trying to take this idea any further?
>
I like to put a 'Printable Version' link on pages even if they actually
will print exactly as the normal pages. Usually I use the same URL for
the current page and just add ?print to the end. The only difference
usually is that I use a little Javascript to pop up a print dialog box
automaticlly for the print version. Sometimes I do make minor template
changes for the printable versions too. If I think I want to change
things that might be harder to do with just CSS.

--
Michael <mogmios@mlug.missouri.edu>
http://kavlon.org

One thing I noticed is that no browser I've tried supports alternative
stylesheet selection for print media. I was somewhat disappointed in
Mozilla in this regard. It'd be nice if there were multiple stylesheets
available that the browser would let you choose which you wanted to
print with.

> Yeah, but when one doesn't know or expect that (and is, perhaps, in a
> situation where they don't care to spare paper in testing, such as
> a public computer lab with pay printouts) they won't *try* to print from
> the mediawiki site. They'll spend extra time copying articles to notepad
> or a wordprocessor to print from there, or, if they've been around
> longer,
> will do what I did before I knew the site was printable and switch back
> to classic skin so they can have printable links back.
>
> [.Yes, there is "print preview". But that also is unexpected behavior.]



--
Michael <mogmios@mlug.missouri.edu>
http://kavlon.org

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Rowan Collins <rowan.collins@gmail.com> writes:

> That said, the automagic printable version does seem to be incredibly
> non-intuitive to people.

Only because of poor web design by most people, even well known sites.

> Unfortunately, I can't think of a convenient way of saying "contrary
> to what you might think, this page will look OK printed" other than
> implying the exact opposite (with a "printable version" link or
> somesuch).

That's not a bad idea.

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On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 19:22:11 -0700, Michael <mogmios@mlug.missouri.edu> wrote:
> I like to put a 'Printable Version' link on pages even if they actually
> will print exactly as the normal pages. Usually I use the same URL for
> the current page and just add ?print to the end. The only difference
> usually is that I use a little Javascript to pop up a print dialog box
> automaticlly for the print version. Sometimes I do make minor template
> changes for the printable versions too. If I think I want to change
> things that might be harder to do with just CSS.

index.php?title=foo&action=print ? (plus rewrite rules) It would seem
like a relatively easy hack.

-- Jamie
-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://endeavour.zapto.org/astro73/
Thank you to JosephM for inviting me to Gmail!

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 12:05:27 -0400, Jamie Bliss
<astronouth7303@gmail.com> wrote:
> index.php?title=foo&action=print ? (plus rewrite rules) It would seem
> like a relatively easy hack.

This used to exist, but when the default skin was changed to one using
XHTML + CSS, it was moved to CSS instead as representing a "nicer" way
of doing it. So although we *could* reimplement such a link, it would
a) not actually do anything, and b) imply, wrongly, that printing
without clicking it would lead to an ugly printout (so that people
will never realise there's an easier way to achieve an identical
result).

I repeat my suggestion that if we can find a "good enough" way of
popping up a print preview (or, as a last resort, a "Print..." dialog)
from a JavaScript link, we could have a "Print this page" button that
did so without doing any additional loading. That may be a big "if",
though, I admit.

Otherwise, we need to find a way of switching the active display
stylesheet with the minimum of server load - perhaps playing with
*that* in JS? (What am I saying? I normally hate JS! But then, we're
talking CSS anyway, so it's not like it's a client-side/server-side
issue).

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]