Template talk:Infobox item

Revision as of 22:23, 10 May 2009 by Cogniac (Talk | contribs) (→‎A Discussion of Aesthetics and Function)

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It appears you are attempting to create an item box. Work began some time ago on such a template but I don't think it was completed. Perhaps you can combine your efforts or get some ideas from it. See Template:Item. - JC the Builder 18:35, 13 September 2008 (PDT)

Thanks for the heads up. Hadn't seen that this page existed, let alone your comment. It appears we've joined forces already. Wish us luck! Thadius856 00:10, 16 September 2008 (PDT)

Ordering of Hit Properties

Until just now, I had arranged all of the hit properties (except hit chance increase, which belongs with others like it) alphabetically. I spent lots of time tonight researching exactly which order they go in, and had great success! Here's the exact order that they will appear on any looted, enhanced, crafted, etc. item:


Hit Properties:

  • HSL
  • all slayers here
  • HD/HF/HH/HF/HMA (1 max per item)
  • HCA/HEA/HFA/HPhA/HPoA (1 max per item)
  • HML
  • HLD
  • HLA
  • HLL


You'll notice that the leech properties are all over the board. I'm not sure exactly why this is, but I've confirmed it on over 100 items. All of the hit spells are grouped together; order within the group doesn't matter, since only one can be on each item. The hit areas follow this same rule, oddly enough. HLD comes before HLA, why I have no idea, but again I've quadruple-checked. I haven't found any exceptions yet. Please let me know if anybody here does. Thadius856 00:10, 16 September 2008 (PDT)

Exceptions to the Rules

I've stumbled upon a few items in my travels about Sosaria that some items break the mold, so to say. While I unfortunately don't remember many of them, two items in particular come to mind. If I recall correctly, they've all been artifacts. This leads me to believe that the items are programmed manually by the developers, who err occasionally. Please add to this list as you find others. Thadius856 00:10, 16 September 2008 (PDT)


Exceptions:

A Discussion of Aesthetics and Function

I submit the following: when pictures are displayed in this template it looks terrible; you can't see most of them due to the black background. I can tell from the name being "Infobox item" that the original idea was probably to mimic the Infobox templates from Wikipedia, which frequently feature a picture or pictures plus an "at-a-glance," bullet point description of a page's topic. However, since the true goal of this template is to simulate the tooltips that one sees when hovering the mouse pointer over an item in-game, and those do not have barely-visible pictures floating in them, I think it would be best to remove the two image parameters. A possible alternative might be to display pictures at the bottom of the template while stopping the black background directly before them.
--Cogniac 02:22, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Infoboxsample1.png

On my LCD screen, even the images that are literally black are well defined, though it seems this screen is a lot better at contrast then eg my old CRT monitor was. Anyway, the current system looks good to me.

My main gripe is that removing the code from the template would require editing a lot of pages to compensate. I'm fairly sure I've put infoboxes in hundreds of articles thus far. That, and putting the images underneath the box would shove them way down the page for items with lots of properties.

One possible solution is to leave the formatting as is, but put a gray box around the image(s) (as pictured to the right). Heck, this gray box could even be optional via a template parameter, meaning only the articles that actually have dark images would need to have it implemented.

Another (somewhat more complex but still probably do-able) option would be to have the template present the images like this, with an optional parameter to change the "container" to something brighter (like this).

Likewise, if shown other mock-ups I could probably manage other layouts. The style doesn't overly concern me, I just don't like the idea of taking the images out of the template completely.

- Bomb Bloke 07:29, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I think the problem is that I'm seeing this template as serving the same function as the Tooltip template on WoWWiki, as seen in action here: Handguards of Potent Cures (as well as on thousands of other pages). Since items can't be dropped on the ground in WoW, the game uses an item icon system for displaying unequipped items in backpacks and containers. Due to their standardized icon size, they also use these icons in all of their tooltips in-game. As a result, it makes it very easy for their wiki to have item pictures in tooltips by just imitating the exact in-game format by using the icons. If the goal of our template is to mimic UO's in-game tooltips (which I think it is), then we have already failed by having pictures embedded in it; a thing that does not occur in-game.

There's probably going to have to be some more discussion about this template, but I'm starting to like the general feel of your "gray background" idea. I might throw something together in the sandbox later to get feedback on.

--Cogniac 23:39, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Check out the Sandbox for a demo.
--Cogniac 05:23, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
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