User talk:Supuhstar/Archives/2008/May

Fair use rationale for Image:Marriott Logo.svg

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Fix'd (Marriott International)— Supuhstar * § 21:11, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Pascal's triangle table

Hi - I've asked a couple of times at WT:WPM what's wrong with the ASCII version and you haven't replied (maybe the question is buried among other comments), so I thought I'd ask here directly. What's wrong with the ASCII version? -- Rick Block (talk) 18:50, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, three things, mostly.

1. It looks unprofessional. It does not fit with the professional, corporate grey-and-white basic theme of Wikipedia. Moreover, on some screens, you have to scroll fight to see the whole triangle.
2. It's numbers don't align. Well, somewhat, But the lack of established borders makes them difficult if not impossible to read nearing the bottom row.
3. It's incapable of displaying the triangle's most interesting features. These are features such as the fact that if one highlights only the odds or only the evens, it resembles a famous fractal.

I attempted to fix both issues in the first version, but it lined up even worse, so after adding all the code, it looked perfect, or at least I thought it did. It turns out that these Wiki tables look different depending on which browser you use. So I made a second version. This one was an attempt at fixing all the problems. People complained about the borders giving "leader lines" to the cells, so I got rid of the border. They complained about the fact that it was too big on some screens, so I shrunk the text. They complained about slight misalignments, so I spent hours perfecting the code so it was rock solid, but it turned out that firefox didn't agree with me. Therefore, I have nearly given up now. I cannot see how I can fix it other than make everyone use Internet Explorer, and I am not about to do that. Therefore, with my most recent message, in a final desperate attempt, I proposed that the table be hidden, much like many things on the site, with a [show] button. If that gets shot down, then I will forfeit the idea. — Supuhstar * § 00:06, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

1. Really? In the default (Monobook) skin, it fits right in as far as I can tell (of course, I'm using Firefox). It looks like a block image with a very light grey background with a dashed outline. If I make the window more narrow than required for the whole triangle the dashed lines get a little weird, but I suspect at most window widths it looks perfectly fine. Do you prefer the rendering in Classic skin (from "my preferences" select "skin" and then "classic")? In Classic the background color is white just like the rest of the article. Is it the different background color in Monobook skin that bothers you?

2. In the ASCII version the bottom couple of rows get kind of cluttered, but a blank line could be inserted between each line which I think makes it look very much like your latest version (without the cell borders). Have you tried this? In particular, is the table without cell borders significantly better?

3. If we're going to use your latest version (no cell borders, no coloring) is there any difference here? In the current version of the article, the More subtle patterns section highlights (in ASCII!) the shallow diagonal pattern. If we go to a table how would this be done? Color (not a good idea)?

The main point is that the ASCII version works for all browsers, for all skins, even for screen readers (in case you didn't pick up on this user:Graham87 is the blind user I was referring to - and he says he prefers the ASCII version). You've spent a lot of time on the table version, and it looks great in monobook skin in IE (have you shrunk and expanded the window width?), but making it look like this for all browsers, for all skins, for all window widths, in a form accessible to folks using screen readers is a tremendously significant challenge. It might be possible, but I think the bottom line is we shouldn't do this unless there's some particular reason this should be a table. That it looks better, in IE in monobook skin in the window width you typically use, doesn't seem like a very good reason (to me). I really don't mean to be unappreciative of your efforts here, but turning this particular ASCII graphic into a table doesn't seem like a good idea.

As far as I know the show/hide mechanism doesn't work for two different versions of the same content - it allows content to be selectively displayed. I don't see how this would be useful here.

I believe your original idea here is quite worthwhile, but unfortunately doesn't actually work out. I hope you don't find this too discouraging. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:41, 22 May 2008 (UTC)