MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css

Forced link underlining
This is something I really dislike, as my browser preferences have different settings on this. The last change to this is driving me bananas. Would it be possible to just toss the following line: a { text-decoration: underline } (near the top, so it shouldn't be hard to find) and leave the underline option up to the browser? --Thunderbird 17:38, 4 October 2005 (PDT)
 * Can do. =) 17:47, 4 October 2005 (PDT)

Link colors & other tweaks
For those who would like to voice an opinion about some possible improvements to help make navigating a little more obvious, click on your preferences link, then go to the skins menu options, and switch to monobook. After you've saved the change, take a look at any user page to see the background color change for user pages. The other suggested change is for the links - green for unvisited (as in go!), blue for visited, dark golden for mouseover, and the same red for needed pages. Then leave comments about it here. Don't forget to switch back to the puzzlepirates skin afterward unless you don't want that top YPP bar. --Guppymomma 19:38, 19 April 2006 (PDT)
 * Ow...My eyes did not agree with that color scheme. I'm sending you the bill for my optometrist. (In fairness, my eyes are getting a bit more used to it as I stare at it, but I think I'll stick with the regular color scheme for now.) --Emufarmers 19:58, 19 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Thanks for the PM, Fiddler! Now onto the content... I don't see very much of a difference between userpages and otherpages. Because I know to look for something, I did catch that userpages are now kind of beigey, but I'd have missed if it I didn't know to look. I think that background colour is a poor place to make this change, though, because most alternative background colours either make black text unreadable or conflict with the link colours, or, as in this case, are way too subtle to be practically useful. Would it be possible to tweak the borders on userpages so they become dashed? (That would stand out a lot more, IMO, with zero risk of colours clashing.)
 * Also, I'm not sure if it's been implemented or not yet, but the green-blue link paradigm doesn't seem to be working. I click, I come back, I refresh, and it's still green. Might be Firefox. Either way, thanks for looking into this... definetly needed a once-over, and anything to improve the wiki is fine by me. --Ponytailguy 13:24, 20 April 2006 (PDT)

For ease of comparison, here are a few pages with options for both skins: --Fiddler 13:33, 20 April 2006 (PDT)
 * The main page in default Puzzle Pirates
 * The main page in modified Monobook
 * My user page in default Puzzle Pirates
 * My user page in modified Monobook
 * The trinket article in default Puzzle Pirates
 * The trinket article in modified Monobook
 * An island page in default Puzzle Pirates
 * An island page in modified Monobook


 * A wiki is one of those applications where I'm not certain that a different color for visited and unvisited links is appropriate. It assigns two different functions (visit status and link validity) to the same variable (link color). Stylistically, if this is kept, the green should be lightened somewhat - on my monitor (an old SGI flatpanel), it's very difficult to pick out, compared to the black text (looks fine on my crt). I'm ambivalent about a differently-colored User: namespace. While it certainly differentiates it from the main namespace, I'm not sure it's appropriate to 'second tier' those pages, since current policy doesn't open the main namespace to all pirate articles. Would a mouseover textbox on red links (Create this topic!) clarify their meaning? --AtteSmythe 13:59, 20 April 2006 (PDT)


 * I agree with Atte on the green being hard to see among the black. Also, the colors seem to go against what I'm used to seeing on pretty much any website. Generally, the brighter color is for unvisited links, and the darker one is for links you've clicked on. This new scheme has those two switched. --Fannon 14:04, 20 April 2006 (PDT)


 * Ooh now this is one I'm torn over. I mainly have a liking for blue links over green ones - simply because blue links blend better with an article. I don't know whether changing the shade of green would make any difference. Red for non-existant links again doesn't blend well with an article - but they do stand out which might prompt users to create missing pages or notice broken links. However it might be slightly nicer if they were more maroony than red.
 * I've been using Monobook for ages - and I've grown quite fond of it. Suggestions in full: Blue normal links, Navy visted links, Maroon 'non-existant/broken' links. I like the userpage/talk colouring - quite attractive. Your objections to my colour suggestions are welcome ;-) --Sagacious 14:05, 20 April 2006 (PDT)

Table of Contents booching the template
Imgshack'd because I'm lazy, but the new template seems to be doing funny stuff with the TOC on userpages. (This one is from Zava's) --Ponytailguy 09:44, 8 May 2006 (PDT)

Style changes as of May 8
After quite a bit of consideration I've followed atteSmythe's general suggestion on not differentiating visited and unvisited links. All links are now the bright blue from before. The green color has been eliminated entirely. The yellow for hover links stayed the same as well; my tests showed that while a brighter yellow works well on bold text (as the links are on the forums) it doesn't work well with this size font. All blind links now have the same bright red; I was unnable to determine a method of creating a seperate mousever textbox.

I've also eliminated the light grey background on user and user talk pages. Instead, you'll find that the main content area is now bordered by a dashed maroon line instead of the standard solid grey.--Fiddler 11:13, 8 May 2006 (PDT)


 * Try a dotted one, maybe? Dashed is a bit clashy. --Ponytailguy 11:19, 8 May 2006 (PDT)


 * And dotted looks too subtle to me. (User and User_talk are different right now for comparison.)--Fiddler 11:43, 8 May 2006 (PDT)


 * Well, how about an animated rainbow dotted marquee border? (Seriously, I agree it's too subtle, but I agree that dotted is too subtle. Maybe a two-pixel dotted would make the difference more visible without looking out-of-place?) --Ponytailguy 11:48, 8 May 2006 (PDT)


 * Check out User:Fiddler/sandbox for a few samples. I'm leaning toward either 1px dashed or 2px dotted.--Fiddler 11:59, 8 May 2006 (PDT)


 * I'm fond of double and am amazed it didn't occur to me before. Maybe a plain gray-but-double? --Ponytailguy 12:00, 8 May 2006 (PDT)


 * Meh. Take a look, but I'm not a fan.--Fiddler 12:05, 8 May 2006 (PDT)
 * I'm for 4px double grey or maroon. I preferred the blue/green links but just wanted different shades. Nothing changed on the skin my end anyway. Ok it's updated. Although nice, I still say visited links should be navy. And the current user page border wants me to take a pair of scissors to my TFT monitor... --Sagacious 12:56, 8 May 2006 (PDT)

Back on track
Now this (double gray border) I like. It's subtle and definetly not clashy while still being noticeable. --Ponytailguy 14:34, 10 May 2006 (PDT)
 * Agreed - it looks very nice. Have I been subtly out-voted for the colouring of links and visited links? :-P --Sagacious 14:38, 10 May 2006 (PDT)
 * We had a scheme with seperate colors for visited and unvisited for quite a while; I'd like to get some more feedback on the lack of distinction first. It'll probably be a while before these changes are made to the default skin, so there's still plenty of time for debate.--Fiddler 14:46, 10 May 2006 (PDT)
 * I have to add... double is doing very sexy stuff to the tabs. It looks so incredibly cool. --Ponytailguy 14:53, 10 May 2006 (PDT)
 * Double good. 4 px grey is my preference.  The standardy link colors that you chose will work fine and I think not differentiating what's been visited or not is a good idea due to the way too many link colors issue confusing folks.  If they can't recall if they've looked at an article link, then they should go look at it again :)  --Guppymomma 14:58, 10 May 2006 (PDT)
 * I'd just like to see subtle distinction. So non-visited links in blue as they are, visited links in navy. Subtle distinction is good me thinks. --Sagacious 14:59, 10 May 2006 (PDT)
 * Did you ever notice the difference between a visited blind link and an unvisited blind link?--Fiddler 15:04, 10 May 2006 (PDT)
 * I have :) but I'm peculiar. --Guppymomma 15:13, 10 May 2006 (PDT)
 * Aye I'm sure I did. I noticed they aren't a bright when visited. This is a thing I've kinda got used to on the internet generally - links go slightly darker when visited. I use Monobook all the time and got used to the Blue/Green links. I liked them... --Sagacious 15:08, 10 May 2006 (PDT)

The double-border on the user page demo, above, does funny things in my firefox, at least. The lines aren't evenly weighted, and which one is weighed more depends both on the side of the box and the size of the text in browser (that is, they jump around as I ctrl-scrollwheel my text size). It's a rather unpleasant effect. Screenie --AtteSmythe 13:36, 11 May 2006 (PDT)
 * Ugh. It looks like the thicker line is always the top or the leftmost of the pair of lines.  I saw this on my sample page, but I thought it was the result of such little text inside the box.  What part exactly is unpleasant?  The un-eveness of the lines, or the shifting sizes as you change your text size?
 * The size-changing effect was particularly unpleasant, but not likely to be a frequent event. ;) The un-evenness of it just looks broken to my eye, though. Admittedly maybe just me. Perhaps it's just the border width? If I knew how to use greasemonkey, I'd play with it myself... --AtteSmythe 10:00, 12 May 2006 (PDT)
 * The only other border option that we haven't looked at is grooved. Or maybe just a solid line in a  different color.--Fiddler 17:42, 11 May 2006 (PDT)


 * Grooved? Please no. In the name of all that is good and holy, no, no, NO! Grooved borders are the hot pink shag carpeting of the table world. --Ponytailguy 17:44, 11 May 2006 (PDT)

Navigation bar hiding
My ability to cut and paste CSS code from Wikipedia and hope that it works here can only go so far--I'm stuck. When working properly hidden should display a [Show] link that works like the TOC's show/hide commands. I've copied over (what I thought was) the CSS from Wikipedia's monobook.css and monobook.js, but to no avail so far. Any tips? --Yaten talk 12:20, 31 July 2006 (PDT)
 * I have to ask the obvious. You are switching your skin to monobook to test it, aren't you? --Guppymomma 13:16, 31 July 2006 (PDT)
 * Yup. --Yaten talk 15:03, 31 July 2006 (PDT)