Forum:New infoboxes

The new infobox meta-template is finally finished and about to be implemented.

Over the next week(s), I'll convert the current infoboxes one-by-one and have my bot make the necessary adjustments to the articles where they are used. Due to the sheer number of affected pages, it's impossible for me to check every single one, so if you notice something's wrong with the converted infoboxes (missing data, formatting oddities or other errors) and/or the edits of my bot, please let me know on my talk page or in this thread (even if you've already fixed the issue in a given article).

Below you'll find a general feature overview of the new infoboxes as well as sections detailing the practical changes for people editing articles. I'll also create an extra section for each infobox template I convert which will contain any additional changes to that specific infobox (i.e. changes I made in addition to the updates which are applied to all infoboxes). -- Porter21 (talk) 17:48, October 8, 2011 (UTC)

Feature overview
General
 * New look: Matches current navboxes and portal pages; light background for better contrast.
 * Tooltip support: Inbuilt ability to display tooltips for content and label cells.
 * Support for custom CSS: Custom CSS can be applied to individual cells/groups/cell types/cell types within groups etc.
 * Automatic title generation: The  parameter is now optional; by default, the title of each infobox is now the page name (without disambig suffixes).
 * Enhanced condition mechanic. Rows can be displayed/hidden/be required/be optional based on a multitude of conditions.

Groups
 * Fluid groups: In contrast to navboxes, any group within the infobox can have as many rows as you like (until you reach the total number of supported rows).
 * Collapsible groups: Any group within the infobox can be made collapsible, uncollapsed or collapsed by default etc.

Columns
 * Multi-column support: Up to 4 columns are supported.
 * Customizable column widths per group: Widths of individual columns can be customized on a per-group basis, i.e. one group can have different columns widths than another.
 * Flexible layouts: Every row can have a different number of columns and a different placement of content/label cells.

Images
 * Multiple main images: Display up to 5 images in the main image area side-by-side or in a configurable amount of rows. The default size for each image is adapted automatically according to the number of images.
 * "Upload image" button: If no main image has been specified, an "upload image" button is displayed. A default name for the image is also suggested (based on the page name).
 * Image rows: Template now supports dedicated image rows (with customizable widths and descriptions) for images other than the main images.
 * Image size limits: Image sizes for main images and image rows are restricted so they can never exceed the width of the infobox itself.

Changes for editors

 * Multiple  parameters are no longer necessary. Instead, there is a single parameter  where multiple games can be specified if separated by comma (e.g. "FO1, FO2").
 * is no longer a required parameter (but it can be specified to alter the default title).
 * Several other standard parameters have been renamed in order to improve clarity of their purpose. These are: (old name -> new name)
 * The whole "empty" mechanic does no longer work. Rows are optional by default, i.e. they are only displayed if any content cell in the row has been filled in. If a row has been made required via conditions, it will still be hidden if all content cells are set to "@hide". Due to the improved condition mechanics this shouldn't be necessary as often anymore though.
 * The "noresize" (or "@original") option for image sizes (, now ) is no longer needed and does no longer work. Now, images are only downsized if they are too large but no longer enlarged if they are smaller than the default.
 * The majority of  fields is no longer needed and therefore is being removed.
 * The icon placement is different. Rather than being displayed in the title row, icons appear as an overlay of the main image.
 * Base/proto IDs now need to always be enclosed in ID, DLC ID or Proto when used in infoboxes (i.e. like everywhere else) because monospace formatting is no longer applied to the corresponding cells. This is to ensure proper formatting regarding the number of digits and avoid the ugliness of having explanation texts in those cells displayed in monospace font.
 * The "noresize" (or "@original") option for image sizes (, now ) is no longer needed and does no longer work. Now, images are only downsized if they are too large but no longer enlarged if they are smaller than the default.
 * The majority of  fields is no longer needed and therefore is being removed.
 * The icon placement is different. Rather than being displayed in the title row, icons appear as an overlay of the main image.
 * Base/proto IDs now need to always be enclosed in ID, DLC ID or Proto when used in infoboxes (i.e. like everywhere else) because monospace formatting is no longer applied to the corresponding cells. This is to ensure proper formatting regarding the number of digits and avoid the ugliness of having explanation texts in those cells displayed in monospace font.

Feedback & problem reports
Sweet.--Gothemasticator 02:16, October 9, 2011 (UTC)


 * Been waiting for this, cant wait for it to hit weapons - although you probably not going to like the amount of weapon modifiers (e.g. perks that already exists) people will want added to it. User avatar tag.gif Avatar talk.png 19:27, October 9, 2011 (UTC)


 * I knew I never should have started adding perks to the infobox in the first place :P -- Porter21 (talk) 21:32, October 9, 2011 (UTC)
 * We could just convert all article pages to one big infobox with a small rectangular area in the upper right corner reserved for text. :p --Gothemasticator 20:39, October 11, 2011 (UTC)

You know what occurred to me, you are removing the name parameter due to redundancy in most case (making it optional). I was wondering if it might be an idea to adapt the infobox to use the games, appearances and mentioned parameters in the infobox to parse the games template, further reducing redundancy. User Avatar talk.png 17:40, October 14, 2011 (UTC)
 * That is the plan :) -- Porter21 (talk) 17:45, October 14, 2011 (UTC)


 * Hmmm, I really should keep up with your blog posts, they really do have good insights hihi. User avatar tag.gif Avatar talk.png 17:49, October 14, 2011 (UTC)


 * To be fair, I wrote that blog half a year before you registered :) -- Porter21 (talk) 17:58, October 14, 2011 (UTC)

Can't the consumable infobox handle more than 3 games anymore? Stimpak (Fallout) has 4 game appearances, and nothing's displayed. Removed one solved it. Jspoel  02:15, October 25, 2011 (UTC)


 * There's a global limit of 3 abbrevations for the overview page links, i.e. if more than 3 abbreviations are entered, it reverts to displaying only one link to the general overview page. For a number of infoboxes (e.g. the character one), there will no longer be a separate "appearances" parameter, but the "appearances" row will be generated automatically based on the  parameter (which saves us quite a bit of typing), so the   parameter will occasionally contain a lot of games (see Harold, for example). Hence I had to set a limit for the displayed overview page links, otherwise you get quite a wall of text in the supertitle in these cases.
 * I hope to find a better way to display the overview page links at some point which will not require me to set an artificial limit, but for now this will have to do I'm afraid. -- Porter21 (talk) 13:20, October 25, 2011 (UTC)

Discovered the same problem with the Category:Fallout: New Vegas skill magazines images as with the armor images. They're not using the full height because of the icon. Can you take a look at that. Porter? Jspoel  21:16, October 25, 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, that's working as intended. By default, the icon is displayed on top of the main image area; however, for some infoboxes that's not desirable (primarily all item-related ones because they use transparent images), so for these I've set  to "@outside" - i.e. the icons are displayed above the main image area rather than on top of it. If that option is set, the image doesn't get any smaller than it normally would be, there's merely a gap added above it to make sure the icon doesn't overlap. I'm aware that this currently causes a somewhat unbalanced look because the main images are not vertically centered when that happens, but I'm going to address that in the next update to the main infobox template (today or tomorrow most likely). It's also possible to adjust the offset with the   parameter (i.e. in this case, you could set it to "0px" and the gap would disappear), but please wait and see whether that is still necessary after the next update before using it on a large scale. -- Porter21 (talk) 09:58, October 26, 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we should start a project to help with this one, the scale is massive so I think it would require one. ---bleep196- 12:48, October 31, 2011 (UTC)
 * Are you referring to the icon offset discussion above or the new infoboxes in general? -- Porter21 (talk) 13:10, October 31, 2011 (UTC)

Since I'm not touching user pages when updating the infoboxes, I figured I should at least leave this list of user pages with invalid settings for  here in case they're found causing issues later down the road (or someone else wants to do something about them).

-- Porter21 (talk) 12:00, November 1, 2011 (UTC)


 * That explains the 700+ pages wanting the image 'empty', plus the mass of unused images currently used in the extra parameter on user pages, lolz. User avatar tag.gif Avatar talk.png 13:40, November 1, 2011 (UTC)


 * Special:WantedFiles was re-cached a few hours before the bot run was finished; the real number of links to "File:Empty" is only ~50 (but it's indeed solely user pages linking to it ;)). Not sure what you mean regarding the unused images? -- Porter21 (talk) 13:46, November 1, 2011 (UTC)
 * Never mind, got it now. Well, if it's causing things to show up on maintenance pages I should maybe have the bot fix those pages after all...? -- Porter21 (talk) 14:05, November 1, 2011 (UTC)


 * My bot is currently running through all non-main space pages at present (that transclude infobox character), to convert extra to footer and removing empty from the image parameter. Just a FYI, seems the Vault namespace wasn't touched either in the conversion. User avatar tag.gif Avatar talk.png 14:21, November 1, 2011 (UTC) EDIT: and decapping image parameter, the rest I will leave up to them.


 * Thanks. My bot only works on the mainspace to avoid messing up pages; I didn't think of VA:T. Are there any other pages in the project namespace which use infoboxes? -- Porter21 (talk) 14:56, November 1, 2011 (UTC)

There are some, mainly sub pages of projects showing examples of page layouts etc. User Avatar talk.png 15:54, November 1, 2011 (UTC)


 * Ok, should be fixed now. -- Porter21 (talk) 16:09, November 1, 2011 (UTC)

22 October 2011
Added a new option today: -- Porter21 (talk) 10:33, October 22, 2011 (UTC)
 * With  you can specify how many main images should be displayed per row. By default, this is now "2", i.e. if there are 4 main images they will be displayed in a 2x2 grid. I think this makes better use of the available space for horizontal images (which are the majority of images used in infoboxes) while still allowing us to use the previous default (all images in one row) for infoboxes with vertical images.
 * I'm not too happy about this. Take for example Beer (Fallout: New Vegas). The image has been pushed very close to the left border. When there's just one image (and that's the case on 99% of the pages), it should be centered in the infobox. Hope you can change that again. Jspoel [[file:Speech Jspoel.png|10px|link=User talk:Jspoelstra]] 16:52, October 22, 2011 (UTC)
 * As usual, please refresh your browser cache. You're still using the old CSS, which is why you're having these issues. I've changed nothing regarding the centering of images. -- Porter21 (talk) 17:08, October 22, 2011 (UTC)
 * Hadn't thought of that. It worked. Jspoel [[file:Speech Jspoel.png|10px|link=User talk:Jspoelstra]] 17:20, October 22, 2011 (UTC)

31 October 2011
New update today. Changes: -- Porter21 (talk) 13:06, October 31, 2011 (UTC)
 * "@original" ("noresize") mechanic removed. The template now no longer enlarges images which are smaller than the default (unless specifically specified via the corresponding  parameter). I.e. if an image is 68x64px and the default image size for the infobox is 240x240px, it will not be stretched but instead be displayed at its original size. Images which are too large are still being downsized as usual.
 * Icon display altered. If an  has been specified, half of its value is now also applied below the main image to create a more balanced look.
 * Main image area now has a min-height. This makes infoboxes look less crammed if the main images do not have a lot of height (e.g. weapon mod pages or pages for "classics" items) and should reduce the number of icon overlap issues.
 * Made template more robust against erroneous user inputs. To be brief, less red expression errors if people enter non-intended values e.g. for image sizes.

1 November 2011
Small update: -- Porter21 (talk) 19:03, November 1, 2011 (UTC)
 * Infoboxes will no longer display an "upload image" button if  is set to "none" (i.e. for mentioned-only stuff).

15 January 2012
Another (very) small update: -- Porter21 (talk) 13:50, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Renamed "sort by" to "sort key".