Hey, I've noticed, in many places, that this wiki really has no standard for images. I'm creating this to give us a place to discuss such topics, rather than on individual pages. I also plan to copy all the comments to this section and then delete them from individual pages to help clean up the comments sections a bit. Say whatever's on your mind, help us come up with ideas to improve the layout, and visuals in general, on this wiki.
The only problem I have with that is my game crashes every time I try to get the crafting recipe from NEI, even with the TFC NEI fix mod installed. If I can figure that out, it would actually be my preferred choice as well.
The issue then becomes: what if someone who doesn't use NEI (or can't for some reason) wants to contribute? I'm thinking it might be best to stick with an "unmodded" version of the TFC "game". XD
NEI seems like a good idea, but I agree with Vis that not everyone would be able to contribute if it doesn't work (and there seems to be issues with TFC NEI now and then on the forum page). I've had a bit of trouble trying to get TFC to work, so I haven't bothered installing any additional mods/plugins.
Of course, uninstalling NEI to get screenshots could be a bit troublesome too I guess...
These are the full crafting images with a 200px width.
Next are:
These are the same tool heads cropped, 200px width.
The difference I want to point out is that with the full crafting window the arrows and such are the same size. With the images cropped, the sizes vary and it can be a bit more difficult to tell which squares you need to remove. I don't know if it would ever be difficult enough to confuse anyone, but they definitely aren't "standard". So, for the sake of standardization, I think all crafting images should use the full window. I don't think the file size difference is enough to cause any undue loading slow down and it, to me, just looks more asthetically pleasing.
Completely agree. And thanks for the tip on NEI :)
Ah, now I see. The shovel head is missing the first column of knapping squares, that's why it's different in size. So yeah, that could potentially cause confusion.
Another option I haven't really considered using, but I thought I'd throw out, is image maps and absolute image positioning. Using that would actually allow us to cut down on bandwidth a bit, and completely negate the "full window or cropped image" issue. It, of course, adds its own issues though.
First, image maps and absolute positioning are a nightmare for anyone who hasn't used them before. They aren't even fun for me, and I'm a seasoned web developer.
Second, the code needed to do that simply adds a bit more that can break.
Finally, I'm not sure if Wikia can even do that. I might be able to pull it off in the source editor but I haven't looked into it (and don't plan to unless we want to possibly pursue this option).
So, I got NEI working and it is a thing of beauty. I really like Attichicco's suggestion of using NEI for the recipes but, again, what about those who can't get it working (or refuse to use it, period, for whatever reason)? Do we want to basically be responsible for the graphics on the site but have others work on the text content?
Sorry for the late reply, life has been getting in the way a lot lately. (I swear I remember writing a reply to your image-maps post months ago!)
And I think that's just the thing. Sure, we are the wiki admins, but this isn't our jobs. Going through all the graphics to make sure they're uniform isn't highly prioritized in my opinion. As long as readers get the gist of things, I'm ok with graphics being a little wonky.
That said however, we should strive to simplify for contributors to stick to our rules/guidelines. I suggest that we (as in we, the wiki's main contributors) try to use NEI in whatever format we decide upon, and that new contributors stick to the default UI when taking screenshots. If the image is with default, we can change it to NEI at a later time when that is higher prioritized.
