Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[Håkon Wium Lie]

I wrote:

 >  > > http://www.princexml.com/howcome/2009/wikipedia/infobox/
 >  > >
 >  > > What is the likelihood of making as much as possible CSS? How to make
 >  > > infoboxes degrade gracefully for non-CSS browsers and IE users?
 >  > 
 >  > Youch, that's messy in IE7. Lovely though it may be, that 30-50% of
 >  > our audience would not be happy...

 > I think it's possible -- with some careful crafting -- to make things
 > look ok, but not pixel-perfect in legacy browsers. In lynx, the
 > table-free version looks better than the original one, but IE6/IE7
 > users outnumber lynx by a some magnitudes. 

I've updated the document to better support IE6/IE7. To ensure
graceful degradation for these browsers, an additional style sheet is
added by way of IE's proprietary "comment" syntax. The resulting
rendering leaves dt and dd elements on separate lines, and the infobox
is therefore somewhat longer. I believe this rendering to be
acceptable and it will serve a subtle hint to upgrade to a more
standards-compliant browser. (IE8 was officially released last week,
and there are other offerings, too :)

  http://www.princexml.com/howcome/2009/wikipedia/infobox/

The main benefit of this approach is vastly cleaner markup and reduced
size of the resulting HTML code. 

Cheers,

-h&kon
  Håkon Wium Lie  CTO °þe®ª
howc...@opera.com  http://people.opera.com/howcome


___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[Ray Saintonge]

Mathias Schindler wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 9:01 AM, Håkon Wium Lie wrote:
>   
>> Andrew Gray wrote:
>> 
>> However, I also think the web should not be hostage to IE6/IE7
>> forever. Some designers have declared war on IE6 for this reason:
>>
>>  http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/norwegian-websi.html
>> 
> There has been a debate about this recently at wikitech-l:
>
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-February/041587.html
>
> And I think I remember that there were proposals earlier to add at
> least a infobox on wikipedia sites with text like
>
> "It looks like you are using an Microsoft Internet Explorer. You can
> get better results when you use a web browser instead, here are some
> suggestions [link-ff], [link-op], [link-chr]"
>
>   
I would find such a notice insulting, and so would a lot of users with 
minimal net sophistication. Sure, there's a problem with off-the-shelf 
computer systems that come with IE prepackaged, but many of those users 
approach this problem with the phobia that changing browsers will cause 
a complete system crash.

I can understand how the nationalistic and marketing interests of 
Opera's home country would want to wage war on Internet Explorer, but 
that doesn't change the fact that some form of IE retains a plurality of 
users.  I'm using Firefox myself (meaning that I would not receive the 
message), and have no technical arguments in support of IE, but we still 
need to distinguish between serving Microsoft and serving Microsoft's 
users.  It's not for us to suggest that there is something inferior 
about someone who uses IE.

Ec

___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[Mathias Schindler]

On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 9:01 AM, Håkon Wium Lie  wrote:
> Andrew Gray wrote:

> However, I also think the web should not be hostage to IE6/IE7
> forever. Some designers have declared war on IE6 for this reason:
>
>  http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/norwegian-websi.html

There has been a debate about this recently at wikitech-l:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-February/041587.html

And I think I remember that there were proposals earlier to add at
least a infobox on wikipedia sites with text like

"It looks like you are using an Microsoft Internet Explorer. You can
get better results when you use a web browser instead, here are some
suggestions [link-ff], [link-op], [link-chr]"

There were many objections to this, including the question how to deal
with browsers that pretend to be the MSIE in order to access pages
that otherwise wouldn't let them visit the page and the omnipresent
neutrality mantra.

Mathias

___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[Jay Litwyn]

I like two things about CSS: it permits background colours. Why could they not 
hav just put bgcolor="" as a new attribute in a font? Many first choices of 
font face are ignored for not being present, while in PDF output, you get to 
say "Embed TrueType as subset: YES", following Adobe's style guide and a 
reasonable precaution against piracy that happens to be more compact.

I forget what the second thing about CSS that I like is. I was going to say 
that it made frames obsolete and potentially more numerous. I am thinking that 
frames tend to hold things that nobody really wants to print, because they do 
not do anything on paper.
___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 1:53 AM, Daniel R. Tobias  wrote:
> On 3 Mar 2009 at 11:49:01 -0500, Gwern Branwen wrote:
>
>> All of those are pretty interesting things - what side of the road
>> tells you both historical information, and also is terribly practical
>> if you're there*
>>
>> * Although one certainly hopes that anyone driving in a particular
>> country will not need Wikipedia to tell them something like this!
>
> I could see the Simpsons cartoon doing something around this...

You sure your name isn't Matt Groening? :-)

> The Simpson family has just landed in a foreign country, and Homer has
> rented a car, a new high-tech model with built in Internet access.
> He suddenly realizes he doesn't know whether to drive on the left or
> the right in that country, and brings up the Wikipedia page to look
> it up.  At that moment, back in Springfield, one of the school
> bullies (isn't one of them named Jimbo?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Springfield_Elementary_School_students#Jimbo_Jones

> has just vandalized the
> country's Wikipedia article to change the driving side to the
> opposite of its correct value, and thus Homer starts driving on the
> wrong side, honking and cursing out all the other drivers who he says
> are all doing it wrong.  "Hey, you guys, you're supposed to be
> driving on the left!  Wikipedia says so!"  Then the other drivers,
> prompted by Homer's advice, pull up the Wikipedia page in their own
> Internet-enabled cars, and realize they've been driving wrong all
> their lives, and all switch to the opposite side.

Sounds eerily prescient.

Carcharoth

___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[Daniel R. Tobias]

On 3 Mar 2009 at 11:49:01 -0500, Gwern Branwen wrote:

> All of those are pretty interesting things - what side of the road
> tells you both historical information, and also is terribly practical
> if you're there*
> 
> * Although one certainly hopes that anyone driving in a particular
> country will not need Wikipedia to tell them something like this!

I could see the Simpsons cartoon doing something around this...  The 
Simpson family has just landed in a foreign country, and Homer has 
rented a car, a new high-tech model with built in Internet access.  
He suddenly realizes he doesn't know whether to drive on the left or 
the right in that country, and brings up the Wikipedia page to look 
it up.  At that moment, back in Springfield, one of the school 
bullies (isn't one of them named Jimbo?) has just vandalized the 
country's Wikipedia article to change the driving side to the 
opposite of its correct value, and thus Homer starts driving on the 
wrong side, honking and cursing out all the other drivers who he says 
are all doing it wrong.  "Hey, you guys, you're supposed to be 
driving on the left!  Wikipedia says so!"  Then the other drivers, 
prompted by Homer's advice, pull up the Wikipedia page in their own 
Internet-enabled cars, and realize they've been driving wrong all 
their lives, and all switch to the opposite side.


-- 
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/



___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[Daniel R. Tobias]

On 3 Mar 2009 at 23:28:37 +1000, K. Peachey wrote:

> Infoboxes are tubular data (in most cases) so they can and commonly
> should be displayed in tables.

They're rectangular, but you'd have to roll them up to make them 
tubular.  :-)


-- 
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/



___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[Ray Saintonge]

Gwern Branwen wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 8:09 AM, Andrew Gray wrote:
>   
>> On another note, wow. I hadn't realised how much stuff was in our
>> infoboxes. The five lines of government I can understand, the two GDPs
>> ditto, but do we really need a quick-reference for "proportion of area
>> which is water", the Gini coefficient, or the side of the road it
>> uses?
>> --
>> - Andrew Gray
>> 
> All of those are pretty interesting things - what side of the road
> tells you both historical information, and also is terribly practical
> if you're there*; Gini coefficient is an excellent concise indicator
> of economic & political development; and water-proportion affects
> recreation, economic focuses, and historical course. Given the minimal
> space they take up and their subordinate position, I don't see much
> ground for complaining.
>
> * Although one certainly hopes that anyone driving in a particular
> country will not need Wikipedia to tell them something like this!
>
>   
It is easy to argue that any specific factoid is significant about the 
subject, and that it should thus be included in an infobox, but the 
present issue is a broader one about how many factoids can an infobox 
contain without degradation of its usefulness.  The primary infobox for 
a subject needs to be limited to the most important information which 
the average reader is most likely to seek, and which he can find in a 
predictable place.  I don't have much basis to make a specific 
recommendation about how many factoids a primary box should contain, but 
a good rule of thumb might be: If you need to scroll to see it all, it's 
probably too long.

That said, nothing in this prevents separate secondary infoboxes.  If it 
is agreed that per capita GNP for a country belongs in its primary 
infobox, nothing prevents having a secondary box containing a broader 
selection of economic indicators.

Ec

___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[Carcharoth]

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 4:49 PM, Gwern Branwen  wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 8:09 AM, Andrew Gray  wrote:
>> 2009/3/3 David Gerard :
>>> By Hakon Wium Lie of Opera:
>>>
>>> http://www.princexml.com/howcome/2009/wikipedia/infobox/
>>>
>>> What is the likelihood of making as much as possible CSS? How to make
>>> infoboxes degrade gracefully for non-CSS browsers and IE users?
>>
>> Youch, that's messy in IE7. Lovely though it may be, that 30-50% of
>> our audience would not be happy...
>>
>> On another note, wow. I hadn't realised how much stuff was in our
>> infoboxes. The five lines of government I can understand, the two GDPs
>> ditto, but do we really need a quick-reference for "proportion of area
>> which is water", the Gini coefficient, or the side of the road it
>> uses?
>>
> All of those are pretty interesting things - what side of the road
> tells you both historical information, and also is terribly practical
> if you're there*; Gini coefficient is an excellent concise indicator
> of economic & political development; and water-proportion affects
> recreation, economic focuses, and historical course. Given the minimal
> space they take up and their subordinate position, I don't see much
> ground for complaining.

I think the point is that some people find them distracting, so the
information could be organised better. A good infobox acts as a
summary for the most-needed and salient information. Other data
should, technically, be relegated to other infoboxes on subarticles,
while still retaining some way of presenting all the data in one place
for those who want that as well.

It's not easy to work out what the balance should be, nor to organise
the mass of available data on a country. When wanting examples of
bloated infoboxes, I tend to look at chemical elements and planets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth

Though actually, the thing that annoys me most about infoboxes is that
if there is one bit of data I'm looking for, it invariably isn't
there. I then Google it (though I should really find the time to add
it to the Wikipedia article).

Here is a test. Imagine you are looking for a rough value for the
diameter of the Earth. Try finding it quickly in our article on the
Earth. How long does it take you to find the value you want, and what
distracts you along the way? Did you find what you wanted in the
infobox or in the text of the article?

Do the same to find a rough value for the Earth-Sun and Earth-Moon distances.

Is this information easy to find? Is it presented in an accessible way?

Try using out Earth article to find out that a rough value for the
Earth-Sun distance is. It's roughly 150 million km as any bright
schoolchild will tell you, but in our Wikipedia article, that is
buried deep in the article and in the infobox it is presented as three
orbital characteristics (aphelion, perihelion, semi-major axis).

Maybe the answer is that Wikipedia doesn't do "rough" answers, but I
know other websites that present such data in more accessible ways.
Try finding, on Wikipedia, a table showing the distances of the
planets from the Sun. It seems to be here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_objects_in_hydrostatic_equilibrium

Incidentally, the Earth-Moon distance is in the first sentence of Moon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon

And wonders of wonders, it includes "about thirty times the diameter
of the Earth" - which makes the data accessible and informative. :-)

[Both "Moon" and "Earth" are featured articles, btw.]

Carcharoth

___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[Gwern Branwen]

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 8:09 AM, Andrew Gray  wrote:
> 2009/3/3 David Gerard :
>> By Hakon Wium Lie of Opera:
>>
>> http://www.princexml.com/howcome/2009/wikipedia/infobox/
>>
>> What is the likelihood of making as much as possible CSS? How to make
>> infoboxes degrade gracefully for non-CSS browsers and IE users?
>
> Youch, that's messy in IE7. Lovely though it may be, that 30-50% of
> our audience would not be happy...
>
> On another note, wow. I hadn't realised how much stuff was in our
> infoboxes. The five lines of government I can understand, the two GDPs
> ditto, but do we really need a quick-reference for "proportion of area
> which is water", the Gini coefficient, or the side of the road it
> uses?
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray

All of those are pretty interesting things - what side of the road
tells you both historical information, and also is terribly practical
if you're there*; Gini coefficient is an excellent concise indicator
of economic & political development; and water-proportion affects
recreation, economic focuses, and historical course. Given the minimal
space they take up and their subordinate position, I don't see much
ground for complaining.

* Although one certainly hopes that anyone driving in a particular
country will not need Wikipedia to tell them something like this!

-- 
gwern

___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[geni]

2009/3/3 David Gerard :
> By Hakon Wium Lie of Opera:
>
> http://www.princexml.com/howcome/2009/wikipedia/infobox/
>
> What is the likelihood of making as much as possible CSS? How to make
> infoboxes degrade gracefully for non-CSS browsers and IE users?
>
>
> - d.

Hmm it's broken in seamonkey.



-- 
geni

___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[Andrew Gray]

2009/3/3 David Gerard :

>> On another note, wow. I hadn't realised how much stuff was in our
>> infoboxes. The five lines of government I can understand, the two GDPs
>> ditto, but do we really need a quick-reference for "proportion of area
>> which is water", the Gini coefficient, or the side of the road it
>> uses?
>
> Why not? It's incredibly templatable and it's probably of use to *someone*.

Yeah, but the more information we put in the infoboxes, the harder it
becomes to find the most frequently requested bits - area, population,
etc. I'm all for us being helpful to the people who want to know
abtruse demographic data, but if we can do it without the schoolkids
looking for "population" getting overwhelmed, so much the better!

Perhaps this would be an excellent use for the show/hide buttons we're
getting on a lot of templates -the "demographics" section giving you a
population figure and an option to show another forty sets of
statistics, for example.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk

___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[David Gerard]

2009/3/3 K. Peachey :

> The author has only taken in account standards compliant browsers
> (Firefox, Safari, Opera to name a few) which is wrong since they are
> not 100% used, i believe IE 6 which is hardly compliant in these
> matters is still at 40% usage, thats just the people visually
> accessing (eg: monitor and web browser), we also have to take into
> account people using screen readers and other such methods for
> accessing the internet.


Careful design for graceful degradation should make it work well. i.e.
if it looks good in lynx/links then that's a good start for screen
reading, for those who don't have common screen reader software.

CSSisation strikes me as desirable, but working with/around IE6's
utter brokenness is not optional.


- d.

___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[K. Peachey]

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 10:30 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> By Hakon Wium Lie of Opera:
>
> http://www.princexml.com/howcome/2009/wikipedia/infobox/
>
> What is the likelihood of making as much as possible CSS? How to make
> infoboxes degrade gracefully for non-CSS browsers and IE users?
> - d.
Infoboxes are tubular data (in most cases) so they can and commonly
should be displayed in tables.

The author has only taken in account standards compliant browsers
(Firefox, Safari, Opera to name a few) which is wrong since they are
not 100% used, i believe IE 6 which is hardly compliant in these
matters is still at 40% usage, thats just the people visually
accessing (eg: monitor and web browser), we also have to take into
account people using screen readers and other such methods for
accessing the internet.


Lets look at some of his "Suggested principles":
* style attributes are not allowed
Style attributes are the basis for all CSS (eg: height, width, float,
color just to name a few) formatting whether you do it using inline
css or from a separate file.

* table markup are only used for real tables, not for layout purposes
These are real tables, Tables are for anything being shown in a
tabular format which they are and even his (or her) example shows this

* all div and span elements have a class attribute with a meaningful value
They currently do, the infoboxes that have classes being used are
generally using them to attach/identify the appropriate metadata

* semantic elements (e.g., dl, dt, dt, ol, li are preferred over div
and span, when appropriate
A div is a "container", those semantic elements he has listed are
forms of lists , text
whether it being formatted into paragraphs or simple lists (aka dot
points/numbered) should be within a container (aka a div). A span
element is a current and standardized method for modifying text within
it's container, for example you have a div which is designed to show
purple text but you want the last two words to be fluro green, you
would wrap this last two words in a span and style it accordingly.

___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[David Gerard]

2009/3/3 Andrew Gray :

> Youch, that's messy in IE7. Lovely though it may be, that 30-50% of
> our audience would not be happy...


Indeed. I emailed Hakon Lie inviting his participation, but noting
that dropping even IE6, lovely as that would be, is not a happener in
the foreseeable future. We can't presume a world with non-broken
graphical browsers. So any CSSing would be required to allow for this,
and degrade well in pure text form.

It's a goal well worth trying for. The question is how to get there
and if we really can make the markup actually smaller and less
confusing.


> On another note, wow. I hadn't realised how much stuff was in our
> infoboxes. The five lines of government I can understand, the two GDPs
> ditto, but do we really need a quick-reference for "proportion of area
> which is water", the Gini coefficient, or the side of the road it
> uses?


Why not? It's incredibly templatable and it's probably of use to *someone*.


- d.

___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[Carcharoth]

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 1:09 PM, Andrew Gray  wrote:
> 2009/3/3 David Gerard :
>> By Hakon Wium Lie of Opera:
>>
>> http://www.princexml.com/howcome/2009/wikipedia/infobox/
>>
>> What is the likelihood of making as much as possible CSS? How to make
>> infoboxes degrade gracefully for non-CSS browsers and IE users?
>
> Youch, that's messy in IE7. Lovely though it may be, that 30-50% of
> our audience would not be happy...
>
> On another note, wow. I hadn't realised how much stuff was in our
> infoboxes. The five lines of government I can understand, the two GDPs
> ditto, but do we really need a quick-reference for "proportion of area
> which is water", the Gini coefficient, or the side of the road it
> uses?

Probably yes, but not in a box but in a separate article. I think I
saw one once, a separate article on stats for a country, but I can't
remember where I saw that. When some infoboxes are longer than a small
article, you know something has bloated somewhere.

I looked at United States:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States

And the number of sub-articles is mind-numbingly large. Many of those
have sub-infoboxes, so maybe too much is being put in the main country
infoboxes?

Here we go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States

The weather articles are similarly stats- and table-heavy.

I'm sure they are useful, but do people really use them?

Carcharoth

___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Re: [WikiEN-l] A proposal to de-table Wikipedia infoboxes

[Andrew Gray]

2009/3/3 David Gerard :
> By Hakon Wium Lie of Opera:
>
> http://www.princexml.com/howcome/2009/wikipedia/infobox/
>
> What is the likelihood of making as much as possible CSS? How to make
> infoboxes degrade gracefully for non-CSS browsers and IE users?

Youch, that's messy in IE7. Lovely though it may be, that 30-50% of
our audience would not be happy...

On another note, wow. I hadn't realised how much stuff was in our
infoboxes. The five lines of government I can understand, the two GDPs
ditto, but do we really need a quick-reference for "proportion of area
which is water", the Gini coefficient, or the side of the road it
uses?

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk

___
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l