Revisiting some old ideas

Ignoring the discussion of Tabs for a moment, I'd like to bring back up the discussion of the NavBox. I made a few iterations of the NavBox, which you may view here. It shows the original one Khenta made, in addition to A, B, and C.

• A lists the skills in text and hovering over shows the icon, in addition to being clickable links obviously.
• B is the exact same thing but shows icons rather than text, and hovering over them shows the name. In addition, it is a clickable link as A was.
• C is like B but instead of a table, it is tabs.

Now lets discuss the advantages and disadvantages.

• A Disadvantages:
  • Hard to read.
• A Advantages:
  • Faster to load than B and possibly faster than C.
  • Can be viewed without breaking on any window size.
• B Disadvantages:
  • May make pages take longer to load.
• B Advantages:
  • Easy to read/attractive looking.
  • Can be viewed without breaking on any window size.
• C Disadvantages:
  • Looks ugly (in my opinion)
  • Breaks when you view on smaller screen resolutions.
• C Advantages:
  • Possibly loads faster than A and B.

I have not performed any tests to be sure if any of these load faster than eachother.

I also wanted to make a version D which would look identical to B, but call forth a sprite map of a smaller resolution rather than loading the full size individual icons. This would make it significantly faster to load. I however have no idea how to do this in wiki syntax. If you guys want to give it a try, please give it a shot, as I think B looks the best.

If the majority thinks C is nice but it breaking is the disadvantage, then if someone wants to perfect or rewrite the tab template, that is also welcome.

I ordered these skills by Skill Tab, rather than element type, talent type, etc. I call Skill Tabs type organization '1'. (Hence why they are named 1-A, 1-B, 1-C.) If you want to make your own organization that you think would be better, name it 2. Likewise, if you want to make a new table type, rename it E, F, G, etc.

Thoughts?

Edit: I forgot to mention that in all three tables, they are also listed in alphabetical order.

I'm pretty sure Mikaya (and formerly anemki?) were assigned the task of dealing with the wiki navigation by Kadalyn (either that, or they volunteered). Just saying.

That aside, A and C are just plain bad. A is too cluttered and messy, while C defeats the purpose of having a navigation box to begin with since you'd have to navigate through the nav box. For B, there really is no reason to be using images for a wiki nav. Keep in mind that certain devices have an option to disable images, so that'd screw with it. The hover boxes are also redundant for all 3. You also have to ask yourself if it's necessary to list all the skills, or only the skills that'd be in the same tab as the skill page you're looking at (i.e. combat, music, bard, alch, etc).

Mikaya's version is the most developed/refined right now. The only issue I have with hers is that I don't think it's necessary to categorize by elements since removing those categorizations would remove the duplicates, but that only applies to the talent style. The standard style versions are fine.

I was not aware they were working on it. I like her concept, but I do have some criticism to offer:

• What of skills that overlap two talents, such as Magic Mastery and Shockwave, which occupy both talents, yet are currently listed as just under Mage. (Speaking of which, Shockwave is currently listed as Lightning when it should be Support like Blaze is.)
• In addition to the above, most if not all hero skills are in regular talents. For example, all three Diva skills get 2x training from the Music talent.
• I personally would like links to the other skill tab types. Perhaps making all tabs' navigations on all pages, but make them all collapsed except for the type that is currently important.
• I don't think we should use both tab type and talent type, that will cause issues. In particular in the example of Lexis's NavBox, First Aid ends up in the Magic Skills box. . . But what I'm moreso concerned about is the Life Skills box, it would include way too many talents with overlapping skills in some like Production Mastery. It will get way too messy if we use both Talents and Skill Tabs. I'd rather use one or the other.

@Yinato

• Just because some devices cannot show images doesn't mean we shouldn't use them. There could be reasons to not use them, but I don't see this as one of them particularly because nothing else on the wiki is tailored to be perfect for mobiles. Besides, it should show up as text if not an image, right? I'm not sure on that.
• Images are far easier to recognize than words in my opinion.

B is absurdly slow to load, and a sprite map would be annoying to keep up to date. B also is super easy to bug out just by having your mouse in the menu area while scrolling through, at least on my current workstation.

Images might be easier to recognize, but they aren't necessarily easier to remember. I'm pretty sure people think "blacksmithing", not "that skill with the hammer making a bang on the anvil" (implying I also think the icons on A aren't very useful). Images are not browser searchable. At the very least, the alt text must be changed on images to be more navigation friendly for screen readers. B is not easy to read, because you have to continually move and hover to actually have anything to read. I would also say "click this icon for the page on ___" adds no value. Maybe a skill summary would be nicer there, but also much more difficult.

General critique: I think it would be better if the skill categories were linked.

Sprite maps wouldn't be hard to keep up to date. At the moment, the game already has them as spritemaps, gui_icon_skill_00, 01, 02, and 03. 00, 01, and 02 will never be updated unless they redraw icons again like they did in G17 (which is unlikely). 03 would be the only one that would be needed to be updated. At this rate, NX is releasing skills once or twice a year and it is a simple task to data mine and reduce the resolution of the one image.

The thing that concerns me is how do I incorporate a spritemap into wiki syntax? My knowledge of CSS is already limited. Should that be possible, it will load a LOT faster. (That won't change how some people feel about images though. And personally, I think "Blacksmithing" will still be really easy to find given being in alphabetical order.)

The fact that you still have to hover over icons to search is bad. You need to quantify your advantages/disadvantages more objectively. "Easy to read" and "prettier" are neither.

Mikaya has 2 variations: a talents nav box (which is the one I'm against due to duplicates) and a standard nav box. Ignore the talent version (which there's only 1 of on mika's page) since that's the most problematic one of the two. That'd take care of the first 2 issues you have with it. Your 3rd point (not referring to your opinion on which skills to include, but the parts after it) would be counter-productive since it'd result in people having to navigate the navigation box, which is why I avoided mentioning tabs for the nav box to begin with.

As for the images show up on devices that have images disabled, it'd partly depend on the device. While it's true nothing else is really coded to be primarily mobile-friendly, there's also nothing else on the wiki that uses images instead of text for navigating pages at that level (look at the main page) aside from user templates, which are for personal use, and the skill tables (I only used icons for that since the icons are all the same size, while the names varied in length and would stretch the tables they were in). While it may be faster for you to recognize pictures, that's only because you're familiar with the images, and it depends on the person (I find it both easier and faster to read 1~2 words vs looking at a picture).

• My third bullet wasn't clear enough. I didn't mean the Tab template when I said tab, I meant the Skill Tabs. Like have all over the navigation boxes on all skill pages (without the headers for Combat, Fighter, Puppetry, etc) and keep all of them collapsed except the box that contains the skill the page is currently on. One-click wouldn't defeat the purpose of a skill nav box.
• What about the talent page? That is primarily sorted with skill icons.
• I think method B covers both visual-recognizers and word-recognizers because the skills are already in alphabetical order and hovering over the icon brings up a tooltip displaying the name. Wheras the Newmenu on the front page only appeals to word-recognizers and not visual-recognizers.
  • Does the alphabeticalism and word-tooltips still make it hard for you to sort through?

It'd be 2 clicks if it was using tabs template, which is what I thought you were referring to. The problem with B is that it can be distracting due to the all the different icons presented in a small area. With the talent pages (and other pages), it was at least spread out.

Um, the word you're looking for is alphabetizing, not "alphabeticalism" (you might want to google what that means, because it's not a real word in the dictionary, and wiktionary has a very different definition from alphabetizing). Having it in ABC order is fine, but the hoverbox will hide other skills most of the time.

Also going to add that Mikaya and Sakura have said that they're against all 3 of your proposed versions in the IRC when you originally made them. Most of the active contributors are asleep (I will be soon as well), so don't expect confirmation/discussion for the next few hours.

Sorry about that.

How about instead of a hoverbox I just make the name of the skill show up like this. That should work on almost every if not all internet browsers.

I'm still against using that many small images in such a small space for navigation, but in terms of hover, that's fine. I said not to use hover box due to how large the box itself would be, and because it would've covered the links to other skills regardless of whether words or images were used.

Yes, Anemki at one point was suppose to help. I'm pretty positive I posted the problems with each format I've come up with. I do not want images as Yinato stated plenty about images.

Anyways, I will have have the proper table, by default, open for that page. Say if it's a magic skill, the magic skill table will be open while others related to magic be closed. As far as implementation, I feel it can be further worked on to some degree and I don't think I ever gotten the approval for it.