Talk: Mognet (Dissidia)

What would be utterly brilliant is if we could eventually get an individual screenshot of each letter. It would make the page look much better than either the existing plain text or the bulky tables that I'm gradually replacing the plain text with -- Sorceror Nobody  18:51, July 21, 2010 (UTC)

Better still, if we did have a screenshot for every letter, they could all be imagemaps. This would therefore preserve the ability to link names and terms in the letters to the appropriate articles -- Sorceror Nobody  17:33, July 24, 2010 (UTC)

Nah. I prefer the format we have now. Images take up more space and makes the page take longer to load. Only one Mognet image from each author will do, in a gallery at the bottom. That is what I believe will be better. Jeppo (Talk | contribs) 17:38, July 24, 2010 (UTC)

If the code needs some TLC, how about making a template as a subpage of this page? We'd need one for single letters and one for "triple" letters, but that could all be {{#if:}}'d into the coding, as could the two colours -- Sorceror Nobody  13:38, August 10, 2010 (UTC)

Phat tables

I'm having some issues in getting the tables to fit on the page. My laptop screen is wide enough, but I know that my desktop's only allows the article pagewidth to be 764px. This presents a problem for the triple-letter tables. Really, they do need to stay in the current side-by-side arrangement, but it's already about as wide as it can be. Unfortunately, even with my modifications including friggin' Arial Narrow as the font (which I would actually rather not have), we're still getting this sort of problem ("be"). Obviously, I could just make that particular column wider and the other two narrower, but that kind of misalignment would horrify my OCD. It's less of a problem for ones like this ("Remember"), since it's a single letter, but it still won't look brilliant if it's wider than the rest.

Obviously, by far the simplest solution to this would just be to make the text really small, but I think we can probably agree that it's not exactly the most appealing course of action. The best potential solution I've come up with so far is actually to use tabs. The only issue there is that for consistency's sake, we'd have to tabbify the blue letters too, and given how many Nomad ones there are, there simply wouldn't be room to label the tabs with anything more than numbering, which is... a little unsatisfying. I can't really see any other particularly viable solutions, though.

EDIT: First outline for possible implementation here -- 16:34, September 3, 2010 (UTC)

Ideas? -- Sorceror Nobody  10:45, September 2, 2010 (UTC)

I see one potential pitfall with your tab idea, and that's people may not know about the tabbing system and they won't click them when they appear. I know this occurs because when I experimented with tabbing on the FF League on my userpage, about a third of the people who voted in the polls on the visible tab didn't vote in the polls on the other tab. So one-in-three people may not see the information given in the second and third mognet letters if tabbing is used.

Basically, I suggest that we only use tabs if there is absolutely no way one could fit all the data on a single page. A better idea for the Mognet page is to stack the letters vertically rather than tabbing three at a time. It may not be as pleasing to the eye, but at least we know that the reader is getting all the information he or she needs. Jeppo (Talk | contribs) 18:31, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

Hm... I certainly do see your point but we can't really hesitate on tabs just because they are unfamiliar, because otherwise they never will become familiar, ne? Anyway, the enemy tables are gatting tabbed up, so tabs are becoming much more prevalent across the wiki. In fact, the Dissidia story pages are being tabified, and this happens to be a Dissidia-related article, so it'll likely have the same "audience", as it were. Tabs might be a potential issue, but avoiding them won't resolve it, and using them here would make things much tidier -- Sorceror Nobody  18:51, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

I see what you mean. If only there was some clarity telling readers to click on the tabs. Plus the fact that tabs are restricted to one row is annoying, but aside from stacking them on one column, tabs seems to be the only viable option. Jeppo (Talk | contribs) 21:29, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

Okay then, how about this? Tomorrow, I'll convert the article to tabs, and we'll see how it looks. I'll stick a note at the top of the page about the tabs, too. Worth a go? -- Sorceror Nobody  21:45, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I think the tabbing on the Nomad section looks a little untidy. Space isn't an issue with these, so perhaps two letters per row would be better? Jeppo (Talk | contribs) 17:41, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

I would have liked to have done it as a single tabber div, and I only split it into two because a set of 21 tabs across the top is substantially wider than the tabber div, which unsurprisingly looked really stupid. An alternative for that is whitespace inside the tabber div, of course. Anyway, I assume that by "space isn't an issue" you mean "it doesn't matter how huge the page gets" which, while true, doesn't seem very appealing. Also, having two per row will look untidy because 21 is an odd number >_> -- Sorceror Nobody  17:59, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, wouldn't it be better to just have a percentage width instead of a fixed width, like this...

First day after starting save file	Play for 5 days straight	Play for 10 days straight
About Moogle Letters and PP	From the Mognet Head Office	From the Mognet Head Office
Moogles will write you letters every day. They may not have much substance, but take a look anyway; they will include a gift of PP, useful for unlocking things from the PP Catalog on the Start Menu.	Hey, have you got all of Stiltzkin's friend cards yet? If you play every day, I'll pass some along.	Hey, thanks for the help! If you keep it up, I won't have to use that disgusting concoction, and can maintain my coat's lustrous shine! N-now, keep that a secret, okay?
Present 30PP	Present 300PP Friend Card "Stiltzkin: 8"	Present 300PP Friend Card "Stiltzkin: 5"
Sender:Mognet Superintendent	Sender:Manager A	Sender:Manager A

It does take a lot of code, though. But at least it solves the ugliness of tabbing and fixed widths. Jeppo (Talk | contribs) 18:22, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

I firmly believe that we should imitate the line breaks of the actual letters. Of course, this means that the root of the problem is that SE put a stupidly large number of the line breaks in ridiculously stupid places, giving us some stupidly long lines and stupidly short ones too >_> Anyway, we can't do a full pagewidth table unless, when that pagewidth happens to be 764px, the letters all fit. Which they don't. Which, you may recall, is precisely the problem that this whole "Phat tables" section was created to deal with -- Sorceror Nobody  19:08, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

I just thought I'd comment on the design: I don't like how there are three neighbouring boxes across the width of the page. And I can't say I like how the tabs have been split into two in the top-section. Also, yellow "Friend card" on the background isn't really easy to read. I imagine you're copying it from in-game, are you sure it's the same? If it is, it sucks. :) 88.108.90.15 19:20, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the three side-by-side letters, my sandbox contains my tab-based alternative to the current "stacking" of letters. Secondly, the splitting of the tabber divs is because there are too many tabs for the width of one tabber div, but I suppose we could just widen it... I'll do that, and we can see whether it looks significantly better. As for the colours... I've tried to match reasonably closely to the game, but really, all I'd need is a screenshot so that I can just read off the actual colours. Or, in the same vein as my attempts to colour-match for the FFXIII missions, we could just drop the gold on the Friend Card text, seeing as that's the "problem" colour, ne? -- Sorceror Nobody  19:48, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

It does look a lot better now. I do second what ILHI says though. That yellow writing is difficult to read. Maybe it is best to scrap the coloured text completely? Jeppo (Talk | contribs) 20:33, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

Well, I think the goldenrod and teal used for the "header"-type text should stay, as it looks rather nice IMO, but certainly, I do not really object to making the Friend Cards black text like the other Presents -- Sorceror Nobody  21:08, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

Only five letters left, unless there are any more blue ones that are hidden away behind obscure requirements. Anyway, shall I go ahead and convert the rest of the page into the tabs as in my sandbox? I'd start by just replacing it all with the template, but I can't apply the template without using tabs, because (1) the template is too wide for three side-by-side in widescreen Monobook (let alone Oasis) and (2) side-by-side would double up the inbetween borders anyway, which would look stoopid >_> -- Sorceror Nobody  21:50, October 9, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, sure. But remember that even tabs don't work in Oasis yet, but I think that's due to the tabbing code not being added to the wiki's wikia.css. Jeppo (Talk | contribs) 21:53, October 9, 2010 (UTC)

I know. In fact, I think that I was one of the first few people to notice the tab failure, since I use them so much. You also seem to think I care even remotely about Oasis :P Anyway, I'll probably work on this tomorrow -- Sorceror Nobody  22:39, October 9, 2010 (UTC)