Forum:SH:Making a better "Timeline of media"

Forums > Senate Hall archive > SH:Making a better "Timeline of media"

This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments or questions on this topic should be made in a new Senate Hall page rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record. Toprawa and Ralltiir 07:43, February 25, 2012 (UTC)

Admin-action required

Given all-yays and no-nays, I'd say this motion has passed. I'm still working on the new timeline (slowly) and will likely convert things by era. That is, I'm nearly finished with The Old Republic era and would merge that into Timeline of media and then note on those sections of the other timelines that they're being merged into a master list. Then I'd start work on the next era, etc., etc. The only thing an admin needs to do is put [[User:Grunny/mediatimeline.js]] in MediaWiki:Common.js. It's best to do this early so that the caches start expiring from users (otherwise, I'll put the new headers in and they won't work cos cache doesn't have the new JS). --Morbus Iff 13:39, September 26, 2011 (UTC)

  • I'm not really sure whether Common.js is actually loaded in both skins (yay wikia), so it probably needs to be added in [[mediawiki:wikia.js]] as well. 1358 (Talk) 13:49, September 26, 2011 (UTC)
    • Done. And yes, Common.js loads in both skins. Cheers, grunny@wookieepedia:~$ 14:00, September 26, 2011 (UTC)
    • User:Xd1358: The system-wide MediaWiki:Common.js is loaded for all, but Wikia deliberately broke User:Example/common.js in hopes of transitioning folks to the Wikia skin, which required the more annoying user-centric instructions below. It's all madness. User:Grunny: thanks! --Morbus Iff 14:13, September 26, 2011 (UTC)
      • Wikia didn't break that, User:Example/common.js (and /common.css) is something that was added in MediaWiki 1.17, Wikia is currently on MediaWiki 1.16.5 so doesn't have that functionality yet. :) Cheers, grunny@wookieepedia:~$ 14:18, September 26, 2011 (UTC)
        • Bizarre: when I was looking into why common.css wasn't working, I coulda swore that I read some (now misguided) lament about it being Wikia's fault, specifically as part of an enforced "use the Wikia skin, whee!" effort. I still haven't upgraded my own wiki's to 1.17 either. Sigh. --Morbus Iff 14:21, September 26, 2011 (UTC)
          • You would have read about the site-level MediaWiki:Common.css, which we import into MediaWiki:Wikia.css. MW:Common.css was stopped from applying to the Wikia skin by default on the skin's release so that existing custom CSS didn't make a bunch of wikis look weird in the new skin (and confuse a bunch of admins who don't understand CSS), so user's were forced to make sure their CSS worked in the new skin before applying it. Not a problem here, but it could be elsewhere :). Cheers, grunny@wookieepedia:~$ 14:25, September 26, 2011 (UTC)
            • Thanks! --Morbus Iff 14:31, September 26, 2011 (UTC)

TL;DR / HOWTO test it out

  • Add importScript( 'User:Grunny/mediatimeline.js' ); to your monobook.js or [[Special:MyPage/wikia.js|wikia.js]].
  • Clear/purge your browser/wiki caches if you've previously had stuff in there.
  • Go to User:Morbus_Iff/Timeline_of_media, read the rationale for the changes, and try it out.
  • Yay or nay below. Enough yays, and I'll merge everything over and REDIRECT the other pages.


Original discussion

G'day. I've made a demo of an improved Timeline of media page but, unfortunately, it requires new CSS and JS to be added to MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Common.js which I don't have access to. As such, if you want to see this actually working, you'll need to copy the following two files into your own theme/user-specific pages: [[User:Morbus_Iff/monobook.css]], [[User:Morbus_Iff/monobook.js]], [[User:Morbus_Iff/wikia.css]], [[User:Morbus_Iff/wikia.js]] (and then wait for the cache to expire; ugh. Wikia seems to do this faster than Monobook.). The demo is at User:Morbus_Iff/Timeline_of_media and includes a list of bullet points on why it's better than our current approach. It's still a first draft, but it's in a demo-able state for onlookers to say "yeah, this is a better approach" or "well, what if..." or "nope, I like maintaining at least two timelines for every edit", etc. —Unsigned comment by Morbus Iff (talk • contribs)

The "hide" items aren't showing up as links. I think this is because the href attribute doesn't work in MediaWiki. Master Jonathan — Jedi Council Chambers Tuesday, August 30, 2011, 03:46 UTC
That's correct: it's difficult in MediaWiki to use the normal # for JS-specific links. However, they don't actually HAVE to be links - the JS I wrote handles the clicking of them, regardless if they're using an A element or not (right now they're just using a normal ol' SPAN, which is just fine). The current plan is to style all those "hide/show" phrases with the type-specific background colors (as seen on the current Timeline of media page). If you've installed the JS in your user/theme-specific page already, and the "hide/show" phrases aren't working, we're still waiting for your cache to clear, unfortunately. --Morbus Iff 03:57, August 30, 2011 (UTC)
WIth that said, I'm not familiar with `importScriptPage` inside MediaWiki... --Morbus Iff 03:59, August 30, 2011 (UTC) Joy - I'm no longer seeing it working under Monobook either - still working under Wikia though. Will need to investigate more. --Morbus Iff 04:04, August 30, 2011 (UTC)
Seems like it was a cache issue after all - switched back to Monobook this morning to do some debugging, and the hide/show phrases are working for me now. I'll continue to work on the demo, but give it a try again, eh? --Morbus Iff 11:09, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

Alrightly, I've uploaded my second demo, which is pretty well finished with what I'm envisioning. You no longer need CSS for it - I've moved all that stuff back to being embedded, but you'll still need the latest JS version of my wikia.js or monobook.js. Per User:Master Jonathan's concerns, I've made the hide/show buttons into "real" links. As before, the Wikia theme seems to expire its JS a lot quicker than Monobook does - I'm still not seeing the right JS being loaded in Monobook yet. Take a look and let me know if this is of interest to you. If it is, the next steps would be to a) include the JS in MediaWiki:Common.js, b) convert over Timeline of media to the new format, merging in data from the various other timelines, c) #REDIRECTing the other timelines to the revised Timeline of media page. --Morbus Iff 15:30, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

I like the concept, but I would want to see a finished product before formally supporting it, as I'm concerned that putting everything on one page will cause the page size to balloon to the point where loading times will be unreasonable. I'm lost, though, as to why it's not working in Monobook; the cache should not be a problem, as it can be manually cleared/bypassed (which I have done several times), so I suspect that the JS just doesn't play nice with Monobook. I know very little about JS, so I can't help you there; Grunny might be able to help, though. I do know that you'll need to get it working in Monobook before you'll get many useful comments, as many users on this wiki don't want anything to do with the Wikia skin. Master Jonathan — Jedi Council Chambers Tuesday, August 30, 2011, 19:38 UTC
RE: size of page. It won't be any worse than the current Timeline of media - in fact, it WILL be smaller in size (as I'd merge in Timeline of comics as story lines and not individual issues like Timeline of media), and it will render faster because it will be in multiple tables (one per era) instead of the giant single table it currently is. RE: JS. The really odd thing about this is if I take the JS in monobook.css and paste it into Firebug, it works immediately. I've since confirmed that I'm not seeing a cached version of the JS so, yeah, I can attest that it appears broken in Monobook for reasons I'm not yet sure of. I might need a "document ready" sorta thing in there (which would explain why it might not work in the normal page load but does under Firebug). Will fiddle with that tonight, and will also drop a line to Grunny. --Morbus Iff 21:41, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

@all: My monobook.js is now working - purge it and give it a try. --Morbus Iff 00:06, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

OK, the Monobook JS is now working on my end as well. I see your point about page size and load times, so if we can get some additional input from other users, we might be able to give this a shot. Anyone else care to comment? Master Jonathan — Jedi Council Chambers Wednesday, August 31, 2011, 01:07 UTC
As requested on my talk page, here's a script to do the same with less duplication [[User:Grunny/mediatimeline.js]]. You can install it with importScript( 'User:Grunny/mediatimeline.js' ); Try it out and let me know if there any problems/suggestions. Cheers, grunny@wookieepedia:~$ 01:08, August 31, 2011 (UTC)
Grunny: Your script isn't working for some reason. I don't know enough about JS to guess at why. I've only tried it on Monobook, not on the Wikia skin. Master Jonathan — Jedi Council Chambers Wednesday, August 31, 2011, 01:21 UTC
It works fine in the Wikia skin, but monobook is borking weirdly on user pages... so changing to the deprecated addOnloadHook makes it work, but using jQuery's doesn't. This only seems to be affecting user pages and only for locally loaded JS. Either way, works for now. Cheers, grunny@wookieepedia:~$ 01:59, August 31, 2011 (UTC)
Aha! Found the issue, whoever added the script to move interwiki links to the sidebar to the Monobook JS caused borkage on pages that did not have interwiki links (i.e. user pages) and made jQuery functions break. Fixed now, so the original version of the script now works in both skins as it should :). Cheers, grunny@wookieepedia:~$ 02:16, August 31, 2011 (UTC)
I switched over this morning, and can't seem to get your revisions working. --Morbus Iff 17:11, August 31, 2011 (UTC)
Nope, wait, there it goes. My original script acted on the whole DIV - making it a giant button. Your smaller version operates only on the A, so I was just clicking in the wrong place, per se. Seems to be fine. So I'm gonna round up some other timeline editors and get their input into here. --Morbus Iff 17:13, August 31, 2011 (UTC)
  • Looks outstanding. This can be quite useful in searching for very specific series amongst all the clutter. Great job! -- Riffsyphon1024 06:50, September 28, 2011 (UTC)

Opinions from the Time Lords

  • The final product looks good to me, it's basically everything the disparate timeline lists are now, but in one location where it's apt to get more attention from editors. The technical jiggery-pokery just flies over my head anyway. I say "Yay", let the Crisis on Infinite GFFAs begin! DD97Which bear is best? 19:59, August 31, 2011 (UTC)
  • You could make the columns sortable. It would help if you're looking for everything by a specific author, don't want to see things organized by year, etc. —Xwing328(Talk) 20:36, September 1, 2011 (UTC)
That's easy enough to do, but the sorts would only work per era. --Morbus Iff 02:52, September 2, 2011 (UTC)
Sorting added. --Morbus Iff 02:56, September 2, 2011 (UTC)
Thanks! —Xwing328(Talk) 16:49, September 8, 2011 (UTC)
  • Just to give my opinion on public records (been talking about this on IRC): I approve. –Tm_T (Talk) 15:30, September 3, 2011 (UTC)
  • Something in this edit broke the show/hide links, probably the removal of the classes. Master Jonathan — Jedi Council Chambers Saturday, September 3, 2011, 19:33 UTC
  • This is looking great, and a step in the right direction! --Eyrezer 10:46, September 6, 2011 (UTC)
  • Also works well for mobile user (Opera mini tested). (: –Tm_T (Talk) 14:43, September 26, 2011 (UTC)
  • This seems to be working fine from Safari on a Mac. Can you tell me what specifically I should be testing it for? I'd love to see this go live and get updated, since searching for dates is currently a quite laborious process! ~SavageBOB sig 13:34, October 11, 2011 (UTC)
    • Never mind. I think I figured it out. Seems to work swimmingly! When can we go live? ~SavageBOB sig 13:38, October 11, 2011 (UTC)
      • I should be finished up with the first era, The Old Republic in a few days. See "admin-action required", top of the page. --Morbus Iff 13:51, October 11, 2011 (UTC)

Date unknown?

  • Morbus Iff, any ideas for how to deal with publications that do not have a clear date? I am thinking of Iridonian Darkness, Czerka 431 and Permanent Demotion, which all occur in the KOTOR period, but as far as I can tell have no specific year associated with them. --Eyrezer 09:43, October 11, 2011 (UTC)
    • I don't have a decent suggestion. If the range is pretty small (KOTOR-sized, not TOR-sized, for instance), then I suppose you could mark them up as "c 1234 BBY - 123 BBY" (c for "circa"), and then note why you put them there. If the range is any bigger than that, I suppose we could just throw them at the bottom of the timeline, in a "no idea where this goes, but it's media and should be on this page." Incidentally, I've removed Capture of Darth Revan from the reworked timeline - I don't see how it is a piece of media (vs. Payback or Onderon Cutoff, which are pretty clearly indicated as scenarios). Nor could I find anything scenario-ish about this via searching. Correct me if I'm wrong? --Morbus Iff 11:23, October 11, 2011 (UTC)