Template talk:GN

GN navbar

I was bored, so I made this. Do ya'll suppose we should replace all of the other GN bars (issues, places, locations, characters) with this, or only the issues one? I'm up for either, but I think it would be simpler to just have this one template, rather than four. ---- 21:00, 19 January 2007 (EST)

I like it a lot. It might get too full at some point, but we can cross that bridge when we get to it.--Hardvice (talk) 21:06, 19 January 2007 (EST)

When that time comes, we can go back to the individual bars, but probably something more like:

User:Ohmyn0/sandbox Which isn't really that different, but it still links all the GN stuff together. ---- 21:19, 19 January 2007 (EST)

I like the content and the look of it, but I do think it's very full. I'm not sure all that info is needed on every GN page. I really like the one you have on your sandbox. It's cleaner, and doesn't inundate with info. The links to the portals are all that are really needed on the issue pages.

One note: can you make it so that the page you're on is bold rather than just black? Cool.

Nice work, Ohmyn0! - RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 21:36, 19 January 2007 (EST)

How about this: For the Issues pages, we'll have Template:GN, but for Characters, we'll have a seperate one, and I'll merge the Places, and Locations bars, but have them be too seperate categories. ---- 21:47, 19 January 2007 (EST)

I like how they look on the character pages, etc, because the information is pertinent - one character links to another. But I still think it looks way too busy on each issue page. I don't think we need to have every location, place, character, (and soon items? references?) listed on each issue's page. I think a simple issue-to-issue bar (like you have on your sandbox), plus a link to the character, place, and location portals is sufficient. But if I'm the only one who feels that way, then never mind. - RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 00:02, 20 January 2007 (EST)

I can see your point, and having seen the streamlined version, I'd have to say I definitely prefer that. The combined one doesn't leave us much room to grow, and it means we'd have to update two separate templates whenever we add a place or location.--Hardvice (talk) 00:54, 20 January 2007 (EST)

Good point - I hadn't thought about maintenance. - RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 09:08, 20 January 2007 (EST)

As I'm adding another place to the template, I'm realizing that maintenance will be a bigger hassle when we add a place (etc.) to more than one template than if we were to only add it to one. I'll go ahead and change the template now to Ohmyn0's sandbox. - RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 00:14, 21 January 2007 (EST)

Disambig Links

The three disambig links on this bar are bothering me. I've already gotten caught twice clicking on them and going to a disambig page when I really wanted to go to the GN page. I don't think anybody will be clicking on them wanting a disambig, but rather thinking it's a GN page, so I find them unnecessary. Further, now when they're bold on the page (for instance, on Wireless, Part 2), it shows up as a link, which is really weird. For instance rather than showing up as "... Wireless: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 ...", it shows up as "... Wireless: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 ...", which is kinda confusing. (I hope all that makes sense.) I'm going to make a few changes... — RyanGibsonStewart (talk)

• I had thought about adding the disambigs, mostly because the 1, 2, 3, links were to small, but I wasn't sure if it would be a good idea or not. So when someone added the War Buddies disambig, I decided why not, but I also made the links bigger so it didn't really mater. -Lөvөl 02:14, 21 March 2007 (EDT)
• The only thing that bothers me about formatting the series titles the same as the GN titles is that it won't be clear which novels are part of War Buddies and which aren't. Everything that comes after it will look like part of the series unless we can find a way to differentiate the War Buddies subtitles.--Hardvice (talk) 18:44, 20 March 2007 (EDT)
• To make that clearer, let's say the next four chapters of War Buddies are called A, B, C, and D, and the first two novels after War Buddies are called Orpheus and Eurydice. The bar with look like this: War Buddies: The Lonestar File · Unknown Soldiers · A · B · C · D · Orpheus · Eurydice. There's no way to tell which are and aren't a part of the series right now.--Hardvice (talk) 18:50, 20 March 2007 (EDT)
  • Right, I agree. I think I fixed it now ... or am I overlooking something still? — RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 01:03, 21 March 2007 (EDT)
    • Not quite, for example, if "How Do You Stop an Exploding Man?'"s Parts had names like Contact and Meltdown, it would look like this: How Do You Stop an Exploding Man?: Contact • Meltdown • Bully • Road Kill • etc., making it look like Bully and Road Kill are part of the series. (edit conflict, twice) -Lөvөl 02:14, 21 March 2007 (EDT)
    • Yes, you are. It's not actually related to the changes we made. Look at the bar and imagine the next five titles; there's still no way to tell where War Buddies starts and stops, because its parts are titled, not numbered, and therefore look just like any graphic novel, not necessarily part of the series. We need a way to differentiate subtitles from titles, is what I'm saying. Something like

Family Man • War Buddies: The Lonestar File • Unknown Soldiers • Burning Sensations • Bi-Curious George • Uluru's Girlfriend

vs.

Family Man • War Buddies: The Lonestar File • Unknown Soldiers • Burning Sensations • Bi-Curious George • Uluru's Girlfriend

Note how on the second one (which is the way things are laid out now), there's no way to tell if Uluru's Girlfriend is part of War Buddies or not.--Hardvice (talk) 01:57, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

• Since the text is already small, shrinking the subtitles could be problematic. Some other options:

put subtitles in non-italic text:

Family Man • War Buddies: The Lonestar File • Unknown Soldiers • Burning Sensations • Bi-Curious George • Uluru's Girlfriend

connect subtitles with dashes instead of bullets:

Family Man • War Buddies: The Lonestar File -- Unknown Soldiers -- Burning Sensations -- Bi-Curious George • Uluru's Girlfriend

put a colored box around the series:

 Family Man • War Buddies: The Lonestar File • Unknown Soldiers • Burning Sensations • Bi-Curious George • Uluru's Girlfriend

See what I'm after?--Hardvice (talk) 02:02, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

• I think the dashes or a different size of dots would work best, the different size text also works. -Lөvөl 02:19, 21 March 2007 (EDT)
• Sorry, it was late last night, and I don't think I even realized I was on the computer ... Yes I see what you're talking about. I actually played with using sdots ( ⋅ ) between the subtitles, but it looked odd. I like the mdash ( -- ) solution. My favorite, though, is the nonitalics. Thanks for breaking it down ... and entertaining me with your "predicted" titles. — RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 06:38, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

1

The links are too small again, how about "Pt.1" at least? -Lөvөl 11:48, 27 March 2007 (EDT)

• Yeah, I forgot about that. We can put the "parts" back (or pt.) We just need to make sure there are no-break spaces ( ) between the "pt." and the number. The goal is to try to keep the entire series on one line of the navbar at all resolutions.--Hardvice (talk) 00:04, 1 April 2007 (EDT)

Updated GN template

I've gone through and updated this template on all the GN pages. I did some spot checking on each page to make sure the external links to the image pages were working. I only noticed one problem, which I took care of earlier. (Page 5 of Monsters has a lowercase s, and all the other pages in that novel have an uppercase S. Ugh.) If somebody would like to go through each page to make sure everything is done correctly, that'd be great. As for me, I'm pooped and want to go finish my book. :) -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 21:06, 9 August 2007 (EDT)

• Did I mention that I love these new features? The direct links to the pages means I can make my own .CBR files in 1/10th the time I used to spend converting the .PDFs. Brilliant!--Hardvice (talk) 03:50, 16 October 2007 (EDT)
  • I agree, it's a great feature. The quality on the direct links is not as good as the PDF, but it gets the job done. It's especially nice when I want to go back and check a fact, and my slow computer doesn't have to deal with opening a PDF, and I don't have to scroll through each page on the interactive version. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 11:39, 16 October 2007 (EDT)

Animated video

So all the GNs on NBCs website now have video links, but they all link to Maya y Alejandro, I didn't know that when I added the option so I don't know if we will need it (I hope we will:). -Lөvөl 16:39, 24 September 2007 (EDT)

• I noticed that too. I hope we see more of the animated videos, they're kinda cool. According to Interview:Golden Handshake, though, it apparently requires an extra bit of technology. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 17:45, 24 September 2007 (EDT)
• The new videos not being put in the NBC Video Display, they are being added to NBC Video Rewind. The new viewer has more options including being able to download, but it has more ads. Do we want to change the old links? -Lөvөl 15:07, 28 March 2008 (EDT)
  • Hmm, those weren't the direct links. Can anybody find how to get the direct links? -Lөvөl 15:18, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

Getting lengthy

See Template Talk:Index for possible ways to shorten the list. ---- 02:02, 26 September 2007 (EDT)

Error

There’s an error in this template on The Rogue. I’m not familiar enough with wiki templates to figure it out. —Frungi 23:58, 19 October 2009 (EDT)

• And… it’s still there. Anyone? —Frungi 00:27, 9 November 2009 (EST)
  • Never mind, I figured out how to fix it. Had to put the JPEG URLs in manually, though. Hope I didn’t break anything. —Frungi 01:26, 9 November 2009 (EST)

From the Files of Primatech, Part 1 pdf path error

OK I tried to add in if-statement to the template to fix the non-Standard path of the recent From the Files of Primatech, Part 1 pdf. The standard path has /documents/ as in their path, but this one has /images/ instead of /documents/ so the template isn't working for this GN. The syntax of the if statement isn't right though, because it is always returning 'documents' and it isn't returning 'images' on the From the Files of Primatech, Part 1 page....anyone better at this type of scripting than me, give it a whirl. --HiroDynoSlayer (talk) 02/18/2010 10:36 (EST)

• Thanks for trying, HDS. And thanks for asking when you couldn't figure it out. :) You were using ifexpr, which searches for an expression. And since you had nested an ifeq statement inside, you were asking to add the word "images" if the expression is the PAGENAME "From the Files of Primatech". Doesn't make too much sense, does it? :) Two things wrong: ifexpr is really only used for numbers, not words. And the PAGENAME does not equal "From the Files of Primatech"--only part of it does. Instead, I used a pos statement nested inside an if statement. That way, it adds the word "images" if "From the Files of Primatech" is somewhere in the PAGENAME. Hope that helps. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 10:58, 18 February 2010 (EST)
  • Yeah I tried several different attempts at it, but I don't do alot of Wiki markup. One thing to consider, can we more-fully qualify the pagename to include ", Part 1" if we need to? If they keep the same unstandard "images" path format throughout this arc, then what we have will work fine the way it is. However, if they go back to the standard "documents" path format next week, within the same arc, then the generic pagename will cause it to use "images" when it shouldn't. So we might need to tweak it again next GN depending on what path they use for it. --HiroDynoSlayer (talk) 02/18/2010 11:10 (EST)
    • Yes, that's an easy fix if it's only a one-time deal. It will be tricky--but doable--if the new naming system for the pdf files continues past this arc. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 20:04, 18 February 2010 (EST)