This page is for comments/questions on the DNRWiki site. Recent changes can be seen in All Recent Changes. Please place recent comment threads at the top.

Just testing some stuff here:

http://wip.cbi.tamucc.edu/dnrwiki/VeryNew/AlsoNew

REGULAR IMAGES

some text to the right

some text to the left

image all by itself above

INTERMAP IMAGES

AnchorWord

some text to the right

some text to the left

image all by itself above

• Eventually, it would be nice to simply embed already existing websites into our pages...all we would need to do is remove the calls to WebHeader and WebFooter in the cgi programs that generate them...i.e., pquery
• Well, I've spent too much time trying to get the top header to "extend" (to the right) to whatever size the largest image is in the wiki. It's not a difficult task, except for the fact that Netscape 6 looks different than Netscape 4 which looks different than Internet Explorer...so, unles anybody *really* wants this feature, I'm going to put it to rest.
• Frank suggested a left menu icon for NWS Offshore Platform.

• The subtitle for the DNR pages needs to say "A Division of the Conrad Blucher Institute..." --Pm
  • Ok....I'll do this with all the dnrwiki images in Photoshop...this brought the total size for all images used with dnrwiki from 138K to 114K...all images are PNG-8 format
  • 114K is *way* too big. Surely it can be made smaller?!?
  • Ok...I'll find a way to get them smaller...total of 25 images in all.
  • Ok...it's down to 108K...including the new icons, logos, etc....this is still way too big...but I can get it down smaller...
  • Ok....it's down to 85K....but I know I can get the menu items smaller...what makes it difficult is there are multiple images that have the color gradient in them...so I have to modify the color tables manually so the resulting gradient looks the same.....

• I'm just accessing the dnrwiki from home and the lighthouse/menu GIF images are waaaaay too big (i.e., too slow). I'm on a 512kbps link and there's a noticeable lag between when I hover over an image and when I see the resulting lighthouse, I suspect on a slower link it would be unbearable. --Pm
  • Make all of the images into GI Fs^? instead of PN Gs^? if possible. I noticed last night that the PNG images look different under Netscape (6.x and 4.x) and Explorer.
  • The lighthouse is fine for me on my 56K link. It's the titles that take a while to download. -Scott

• Fix the Start HTML Fmt^? so that it doesn't create the surrounding table. The default implementation of Pm Wiki creates a left margin of 20 pixels in order to keep the text from hugging the left border. Since we have the menu on the left, this left margin isn't really needed (and gets in the way). --Pm
  • Update Pm Wiki from CVS. I just added a $BodyLeft variable that controls the size of the left margin. You can use this in local.php to experiment with different left margin sizes, and if the page looks best with no left margin, rewrite Start HTML Fmt^? and End HTML Fmt^? to get rid of the surrounding table entirely. --Pm

• Pm Wiki now uses "Home Page" as the default title for a group instead of "Front Page^?" (yes, yes, I know, I keep going back and forth on this). What should it be?
  • Hmm...I prefer Front Page^?...but "Front Page^?" software won't gripe, will they? I wouldn't think so... - Jessica
  • I don't like "Front Page^?" (besides the software reference)--Front page sounds like a magazine or newspaper. I really want it to be the place where the user starts, which is typically "Home". --Pm
  • DONE (local.php reflects this change)
  • What about a generic "Start" rather than "Home"? To me, the "Home" analogy doesn't really make sense. When I start my day, I'm at home (usually), but viewing a web site is more analogous to visiting someone else's house and you don't always start at home when you want to view the big picture. -Scott
  • Yeah, I thought of "Start" or "Start Page^?", but I didn't like these much either. About the best I can come up with "Main Page^?", but it's a close call between that and "Home Page". --Pm

• Left menu is spaced based on white space between lighthouses. To make it look more balanced, perhaps spacing should be based on white space between text...I'll leave it for now, unless someone says otherwise - Jessica
  • I think it looks fine the way it is now. -Scott
  • Yup, spaced it out a bit better when I added the new Home icon.
  • Gack! You're probably changing things as I type, but when I move the mouse over the "Home" icon, the whole left menu convulses and "Home" disappears. -Scott
    • Yup..was making changes....The above incidence of menu convulsions is no longer happening, right? It's fine on my machine.
  • Looks fine on my machine.
• Also, in other web locations, Real-time (in reference to Real-time Nagivation) is titled "Real-Time"...perhaps change this as well. - Jessica
  • I don't think so. I think the only reason that the "T" in RTNS is capitalized is because of the acronym. -Scott
  • In a title, the 't' can be capitalized, as in Real-Time Navigation System. In a sentence, the 'r' and 't' are not capitalized, as in "real-time navigation requires real-time data."

• The main page (and others that don't have the menu beneath the title) look odd to me with the extra whitespace. -Scott
  • Have an alternative? If I reduce the whitespace, then the "Edit Recent Changes" deal will be higher on the screen, which will not look consistent among the pages...Or, would you prefer the menu bar still be there, but just without menus or perhaps with a message like "A Division of the Conrad Blucher Institute for Surveying and Science"? Hmm...I like this last option...unless there are objections, I'll do this.
    • DONE
  • Where the Edit links show up is completely unimportant for this application--what's best is that the pages look "right" to someone who doesn't know the links are there. --Pm
  • What looks odd now is that there is about a half inch of vertical whitespace between the bar and the text. The extra space seems like a spacing error. -Scott

Latest images for review:

Perhaps I'll change the rocks to grass...or something that looks more like the Texas Coast...

Isabelle suggested using the photograph of a real lighthouse that is actually along the Texas coast...here is a new icon using a photo at Point Isabel...kind of fitting, eh? :)

I modified the pic a little...the lighthouse looks a little more straight here:

Hmm...now that I've seen the above in the website...the icons are too large, and too green...fixing this...

Another icon to choose from:

If we go with just a logo, and then something fancy with the mouseover text, perhaps a log like this:

Here's my favorite so far...the red is the same red used in the header image, and the yellow ray is the same yellow used in the header subtitles...it looks nice with the rest of the page...

Some additional comments on the icon have brought about this new icon...it's a tad bit slimmer, and doesn't have as much land...folks wanted to see the text as more of the focus, rather than the lighthouse:

And here's a sample of a new DNR header (for nonwiki pages) that would go better with dnrwiki: