Template talk:Infobox item

Revision as of 13:10, 27 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)

Doesn't look too bad from here.

- Bomb Bloke 13:45, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Now here's a question: Why does this template have the image caption, 2nd image, and 2nd image caption parameters? The only real use for a caption for the first picture would be to put the name of the item, which would ostensibly be what the name parameter is for. And I can't think of any reason for, and have not yet found any page that makes use of, the second image and caption. Would it be the end of the world if those three parameters went missing?

--Cogniac 05:52, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Probably more trouble then it's worth to remove the caption/secondary image tag (though I had been thinking about making it so the two images were side by side instead of vertically stacked).

The secondary caption tag is indeed obscure (that's the only one that hasn't actually used as of yet, and I'm not sure it ever will be), but I assume the idea is to have it there "in case anyone ever wants it" - and likely because it would've probably been more work to remove it just for secondary images...

- Bomb Bloke 07:51, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Decided to re-arrange things as mentioned above... There is now only one caption tag, and (if used) it appears underneath the item name (as opposed to under the item image). If an item has multiple images, they now appear side by side, as opposed to one on top of the other. Two examples.- Bomb Bloke 14:07, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Not sure if you've given up on this, or what's going on...

About a week ago I took a stab at putting items in a miniature backpack display, but the code for stacking images is effectively disabled in wikis. It can be done, but it requires site CSS edits that I can't make.

But still, just having the image sitting up above the infobox on it's own seems kinda... bare. I was thinking maybe if we wrapped some fancy stuff around it to add "weight" to the look. As an example, I've added an edited version of the header image Ceruleus has used on a few pages to your sandbox version as an optional parameter. Look any good?

- Bomb Bloke 11:20, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I haven't given up, I'm just doing many things at once lately, both here and in real life. I'm preparing to fight the good fight in the Quest section now, as well.
I had kind of been thinking that the item pics just floating up there looked kind of...sad - in the white, black, and gray box background varieties. I will take a look at the sandbox and see what's up.
--Cogniac 21:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
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