Template talk:Navbox Homestuck Acts

Inclusion of Cascade
Cascade shows up on the MSPA Homestuck "map" under its own "banner", which is where I picked the text colour from (#323232, funnily enough). There has previously been some difference of opinion on what colour text should be used for the two intermissions; I used black and cherub-skin, but this was reverted back to the "banner" colours from the "map". In discussion with The Light6 on IRC we essentially arrived at a rule of thumb that we use curtain colours for acts and sub-acts, and the "map" otherwise. Hence I follow the map by including Cascade.

This is not the only reason to include it. One can quibble over the "importance" of acts, but [S] Cascade is unquestionably much more significant, both length-wise and plot-content-wise, than, say, A6A4

Redesign
It may be time to redesign the navbox completely to allow for the act hierarchy. But I'm struggling to decide how best to tackle that : / Anyway, regardless of merge or not, I have a new prototype design for the navbox SN, I'm not sure if I like the look of the new navbox. That's not tosay I entirely disapprove, I'm just... Not sure. I have a few suggestions though: Also I'm going to be honest: I've never really liked that manner of displaying Act 7. Maybe it could just be white text with a black border? I'm not sure how else to handle it. Aepokk Venset 15:34, January 28, 2013 (UTC)
 * First and easiest, fix the colors.
 * Secondly, I think rows should be arranged thusly:
 * A1, A2, A3, I1, A4
 * A5, I2
 * A6
 * A7


 * I considered arranging them like that, but I felt that if any acts are in separate sections, they all should be. And putting Intermission 2 in the same row as the Act 5 sub-acts may not be a good idea, as it could cause confusion. And I'm definitely aiming to be rid of any brackets in this thing, because they've never looked great (also we'd then have to put brackets in the A6 section, which would look terrible). Ultimately, the only real complaint I can think of that can be levelled against this design is aesthetic, namely how much taller it is than the existing one. And that isn't actually in any way a negative as long as there's a reason for it being that tall, which there is – aesthetics are not a priority over usability, and this design is extremely clear in dividing up acts and sub-acts.
 * For Act 7, white text with a black border would be done in exactly the same way. The problem with white is that the glow, if reduced to a small enough radius to act as a sharp border, has a habit of missing corners, so the text won't be fully outlined. And I'm also not certain that all browsers can show the glow so it's maybe not a good idea to use pure white anyway, just in case the glow fails. And although we could make it an image link, we'd then have to worry about Oasis/Monobook issues.
 * Also we don't know white is the appropriate colour. That's just a placeholder based on the white platform in [ S] Seer: Descend; it could well be changed when Act 7 arrives. And besides, the placement of A6A6 and A7 in that prototype at all is a placeholder – they wouldn't appear in the actual template until they begin anyway
 * I for one, am completely against SN's navbox redesign. You god rid of the brackets by adding in an unholy abomination against design and usefulness. Maybe if each act got an expanded section with, I don't know, links to scenes within the act. Or something. Just.... not that. Never that. NikLink (talk) 21:47, January 28, 2013 (UTC)


 * an unholy abomination against design and usefulness

But since I'm feeling generous, have a second proposal. And before anyone says anything about the colours, I colour picked from the curtains used for each act – specifically, a part of the image with the second brightest shade for each, for consistency. Which is why the intermissions are red. We can't really go by the MSPA map page for colours, since that has all the acts (not intermissions) as white apart from A5A1 and A5A2. We shouldn't really mix and match map page and curtain colours
 * Design: It's tall. That's about the only thing that makes it unattractive. Aesthetics take second place to function.
 * Usefulness: Every act and sub-act is clearly deliniated. There is no confusion as to what is part of what, and it's not all crammed together in a dense cluster of links. And most importantly, all acts are treated on a completely equal basis.


 * For the record, I already did something similar to that about a month ago: I went in and picked the colors of the brightest strip on each curtain. I even used the same strip each time. But color isn't the main issue here. While I'm fonder of the original act navbox layout, picking from your new ones I have to say that I like the first proposal the best, mainly because of the fact that A5A2 is included. And I know you don't like the idea of mixing and matching the map with curtains, but I do think that making the intermissions green provides a clearer visual contrast.
 * EDIT: I looked back in the navbox's edit history and I think NikLink is right, that green may have been too bright after all. So using the second brightest strip seems like a good idea. Aepokk Venset 16:41, January 29, 2013 (UTC)
 * EDIT CONFLICT: Well now part of my reply is redundant oh well
 * Yeah, I know you did that; it must be said that the second brightest is preferable, though, simply because of the green. The difference, and the main thing I was referring to with the "before anyone says anything", was basically the intermissions. The thing is, visual contrast is of little concern. That we use colours at all is a fun little extra; if we didn't, all of the links would either be plain black or hyperlink blue, so it's really in no way a detriment for the intermissions to have the same colour as the acts.
 * It's perfectly possible for me to add the sub-sub-acts to this, but it ends up looking pretty untidy, since the columns end up offset. Really, the arrangement of Act 6 is something that will be subject to change just from the fact that we don't know if there'll be another intermission before A6A6. The current design of the proposal assumes not. That said, it's possible to do what I've done with Cascade, so I've added that (I assume you meant A6A5A2 rather than just A5A2, right?)
 * EDIT (CONFLICT): Actually, I could put horizontal divider lines between each block of acts and intermissions, which will give the intermissions the visual separation you'd like
 * Oh whoops, yes I did mean A6A5A2. By the way, just a heads up (and for all I know this is irrelevant, because you did pick the right strip or something, I haven't checked it myself), but the brightest and second brightest strips on the A5A1 curtain are barely distinguishable from each other. Aepokk Venset 17:01, January 29, 2013 (UTC)

By the way, I did like the Act 6 A5 idea, but wouldn't it make more sense to have it fade from pink to green and back to pink? Aepokk Venset 17:03, January 29, 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, I tried that. It looks terrible. You need a lot of letters for a smooth gradient, and the single gradient is not especially smooth as it is, so a double is really bad. And yeah, I'm pretty sure I got the right blue. I had all four curtains as layers in GIMP, so I sampled exactly the same place through all the layers

And with that minor adjustment in your sandbox, the second proposal officially has my vote. (Also I really hope this doesn't become another edit conflict I'm so terribly sorry that it's happened twice already) I mean it does seem odd that Act 4 would be grouped with Act 5, but I don't see what else we can do about it. Aepokk Venset 17:37, January 29, 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, I was somewhat unhappy about the grouping to begin with, but then, if A4 is separated from A5, so too should the first three acts be separated, and we're right back to proposal one in all its tall glory, structurally speaking. Look at it this way: it's not that A1/2/3 and A4/5 are grouped, it's that they aren't split by the presence of intermissions

I threw together a new spin of the Acts box here that would address some of the problems we're facing. It still has some smoothing out to be done but you get the idea. It looks weird and asymmetrical, but that's because the act structure of Homestuck is weird and asymmetrical, nothing to be done. I think it might help make things a bit clearer.NikLink (talk) 05:05, January 31, 2013 (UTC)


 * Wow I really like this one a lot Aepokk Venset 05:25, January 31, 2013 (UTC)


 * I seem to recall, NikLink, that you were the one who didn't like Cascade being on the template at all, and accepted a reduced-precedence link as compromise. And yet now you've given it more precedence than my latest design does :S
 * Also you'd have to come up with a far better symbol than ~ for 1-4 and the first intermission. One of the key points in my design is that all sub-acts are treated equally by being linked directly. Acts 1-4 and the intermissions have, effectively, one sub-act each. Cascade and the trickster sub-sub-act are miniature links. And the top-level intermissions are presented in the table as just that – breaks between acts, rather than being clumped in with the acts. Also mine is beautifully symmetrical and has newlines where I tell it to, not where Oasis forces it to by the mechanism of text wrapping :3 The act structure is not so "weird and asymmetrical" as you imply – indeed, symmetry is barely even an applicable concept to the act structure itself. What matters is how we choose to organise it, and we have little excuse for not making that symmetrical when it demonstrably can be done.
 * This isn't to say I don't think your design is good, per se. Just that I don't really see it as an improvement, and certainly don't see it particularly addressing things that aren't even really problems


 * I thought I was thinking two problems I heard people (maybe it was you, I really don't recall) complaining about


 * a) The navbox was too cluttered and dense
 * b) The parentheses were getting pretty confusing and unwieldy


 * And I addressed both of your issues while still keeping it somewhat compact. As for the coding, I have no fucking clue - I've never used wikia formatting and I spent a couple of hours last night cannibalizing the Acts and Characters navboxes until I stopped breaking the code long enough to get it done. It's pretty ramshackle, just wanted to show the idea of it - being that it gives the 'big' acts their space to properly categorize all their subact shit without having the 'little' acts take up a bunch of space. Also on your proposal: maybe it would look better if you added the act names in? Just a thought.


 * The Cascade thing doesn't look that out of place when it's big with the format I gave the subacts. Might change it. Whatever. NikLink (talk) 00:32, February 1, 2013 (UTC)


 * By "act names" I think he means the titles, and actually that would work really well with your original proposal. We could even have "Through Broken Glass" as an overall Act 6 title, seeing as Hussie stopped naming them after that. (I am still very annoyed that he stopped updating the map) Aepokk Venset 00:42, February 1, 2013 (UTC)

I need to catch upw with this discussion soon. But one thing I wondered about just now is why we don't simply use the felt colour for the intermission 1 and 2. I'm fine with red too, because that's the curtain colour used for them, but yeah, I don't think we neccessariely need to limit ourselves to that. bitterLime 08:53, January 31, 2013 (UTC)

So after catching up I am in favour of SN's second proposal, though I am not sure I like how cascade and act6a5a2 are treated. But that's a minor detail. ALso my suggestion to make the intermission felt coloured still stands. bitterLime 17:23, January 31, 2013 (UTC)


 * I thought I was thinking two problems I heard people [...] complaining about

Yeah, my bad, I assumed you were referring to it relative to my latest design, rather than generally.

Adding the full act names is completely missing the point of the template. It's to aid navigation. Colour is a pretty extra that is perfectly acceptable because it doesn't make it take up unnecessary space.* Adding the act names is pointless. Adding links to Homestuck: Act 5 and Homestuck: Act 6 is of limited merit; those pages contain little information, and are themselves really just navigational hubs. So while they can be added, they don't need to be. Cascade is optional but useful. A6A5A2 is less useful, but I don't see the harm if people want it there.

Look at it this way. Our act pages consist of plot summaries. Therefore, the useful option – useful being the proper MO of the wiki – is being able to read through all of them in order. Cascade has a useful place here, because it contributes enough plot events that, unlike most Flashes, it is hard to summarise briefly. Openbound... kinda; we could easily add it under A6I3 just as we have Cascade under A5A2, if people think it warrants that. A6A5A2 doesn't really need to be on the template, since it's entirely covered on the A6A5 page. The pages for Act 5 and Act 6 contribute nothing to plot summary, and indeed, if one navigates purely by the Previous/Next links in the act page infoboxes, those two pages are skipped over entirely. So they don't need to be in the template.

As for the intermissions, I've already made my argument on the colour of those. If a large majority of people think that Felt colour would be a good idea then, well, I'll just deal with it... but my personal view on the matter isn't going to change: we should, ideally, use a consistent colour set for the template, of which we have two ready-made. The first, map page colours, is a bad idea because the acts are white on there. The second, curtain colours, works just fine

I'm not sure how I feel about including Openbound. Isn't that just paving the way for including Descend and Myststuck and other flashes? Hell, someone might even want to add [S] Make her pay. just because it's the only flash in A5A1. Aepokk Venset 17:33, February 1, 2013 (UTC)
 * It's a question of how much plot they contain; no other walkaround is as long as (the combined parts of) Openbound. And no other Flash is even close to as long as Cascade. I consider Openbound a borderline case – it does contain a lot of fluff that isn't really plot so much as backstory that's likely to remain irrelevant – and if it's excluded, then every Flash page bar Cascade definitely is. Myststuck is perhaps the only thing that might come close to Openbound, but it's mostly weird puzzle shit and, frankly, one could skip Myststuck entirely and only get confused about a couple of relatively minor things. Openbound is similar, but I think would cause at least some confusion from "who the hell are all these characters, and why don't I get the doubtless numerous in-jokes in their speech bubbles?" on reaching Ministrife.
 * As noted, Openbound is very much a borderline case, and I basically only suggested the possibility of including it because, like Cascade, it's a Flash/HTML5 with a dedicated page for its plot(?) summary. Walkarounds generally are tricky issues because they all have that, but it's usually not for plot so much as for describing navigation. One thing that does set Openbound apart from other walkarounds, though, is that it constitutes a large part plotwise of the intermission housing it, being almost all of the "Furthest Ring side" of the intermission. No other walkaround is that large a part of its act, and it's only walkarounds that, like Cascade, have a separate page that can be argued to warrant their inclusion. A6A5A2 is a slightly different issue in this regard, and may or may not be agreed to warrant inclusion even without its own page.
 * tl;dr Openbound probably is a stupid idea to add, though a case might be made for it; either way, I pretty much just put it there in case anyone wanted to see how it would look if it is included

I was hoping we wouldn't have an A6I5, and the arrival of Jade made me more hopeful. But no, an extra link now has to be added to the template, ruining the nice, balanced layout I had painstakingly set up previously : | So, I've rearranged my design again and, somewhat to my resigned irritation, yes, it's just 'continuous' now. But at least it's impeccably tidy, which is still a massive improvement on the existing template

This discussion kinda stalled after no real consensus was reached. However since Hussie has updated the map I think it is worth noting that Hussie sub-divided Homestuck into 3 parts; Part 1 = Acts 1 to 4, Part 2 = Act 5 and Intermission 2, Part 3 = Act 6. The same division that NikLink used in his design. - The Light6 (talk) 10:03, April 16, 2013 (UTC)
 * This is true; however, while NikLink's design does follow them, it still just looks somewhat untidy, being very bottom-heavy. Really, I would say the parts aren't worth factoring into the template, because adding them doesn't convey useful additional navigational information, which is what we should judge the issue based on


 * I think it would be useful. It's essentially taking NikLink's design and changing the names of the rows. Plus it's a lot more logical than organizing it by disc, especially given the disc change in the "middle" of Act 5 Act 2. Aepokk Venset 15:21, April 16, 2013 (UTC)
 * Okay, huge bump, I've not been paying much attention to the wiki for ages, regrettably.
 * Once again: the sole consideration for the template is what is navigationally useful. A reader coming to the wiki and wanting to find the page on, say, Act 3 doesn't need to know it's in Disc 1 and Part 1, they only need a link to Act 3. So the template only needs the Acts (and intermissions etc.). The Discs are part of the narrative, not actual discs, so they do not affect navigation. And the parts are no more relevant now than they were before they were even defined, i.e. not relevant. The template should be as simple as possible, and details that aren't useful should be left out


 * On that note, I do regretfully have to say Niklink's design isn't the best, but now I have to wonder whether yours is that much of a significant improvement over the current navbox. They both seem fine to me. And on the note of colors, they have now all been provided by the disc screens (barring A6A5A2) and the only one that would give us trouble (as noted below) is A7. Though if we used the color-coded parts version of your second proposal (and I do like the second proposal far more than your first), having white text actually wouldn't be an issue. Aepokk Venset 18:06, May 18, 2013 (UTC)

Okay and now here's my proposal. It's basically Sorceror Nobody's, with colors tweaked. I used the game colors for the parts, as hussie did. I cut the saturation percentage in half for parts 1 and 2, and then down to a quarter of the original percentage for part 3. Though it still looks a bit odd. Aepokk Venset 19:13, May 18, 2013 (UTC)

Colors
Here's a suggestion: We could use the exact colors used for all of the acts HS 5614 (here) and HS 8137 (here). A6A6 appears to be darker, and A7 even has a defined border color! We could leave Act 5 and the intermissions as they are, obviously. Aepokk Venset 04:27, April 14, 2013 (UTC)


 * So I just took it upon myself to do that, however I have no idea what to do with the Act 7 color because that formatting is very foreign to me. The hexcodes are: inner-#FFFFFF and outer-#C3C3C3. Aepokk Venset 05:13, April 14, 2013 (UTC)
 * I think #C3C3C3 text toes the line on readability. #FFFFFF is definitely a no :P


 * Bold is slightly better. But yeah #FFFFFF is definitely a no without a border. That's was I was asking, if there was a way to make the text #FFFFFF with a #C3C3C3 border. But like you said, it probably wouldn't be readable. I did want to test it though. Aepokk Venset 17:58, May 18, 2013 (UTC)

Once again
With the implication that A6A6 will have eleven parts, it becomes clearer than ever that we really do need a redesigned template now. Because it is going to look beyond terrible as it is. Naturally, I'm sticking with the latest iteration of my existing proposal, to which I have added the links for the eleven subdivisions of this act (and corrected the curtain colour)
 * I'm willing to go with your proposal and say screw the parts. Because trust me I tried, and there really is no way to make it look good. and if you want to take a look at my variation on your idea, I made the parts work pretty well with white, gray, and black. For the record, I painstakingly checked the curtain colors (by which I mean the official Act colors on the disc storage/viewer abstraction) and I'd recommend using mine. This includes the Cherub skin green for the Intermissions, Caliborn gray for Cascade, and the bright green for the A6A6 Intermissions. A6A5A2 is the only one we'd have to guess at, and A7 still presents a problem unless we make its background a different color or simply ignore its color, as you have, and leave it black. I'm still against that solution however. Aepokk Venset 14:54, August 28, 2013 (UTC)
 * For the record, Light said Oasis was expanding its horizontal resolution, so it may not even be an issue. Aepokk Venset 15:00, August 28, 2013 (UTC)


 * Yeah the flexible width will mean most users will have significant gains in horizontal resolution, however the new minimum size (for the lowest resolution) is only a tad larger than the current width. - The Light6 (talk) 15:45, August 28, 2013 (UTC)
 * Well at the very least it will hopefully mean we can go back to A1, A2 etc for the A6A6 subdivisions instead of 1, 2, etc. Aepokk Venset 16:15, August 28, 2013 (UTC)
 * There simply aren't defined colours on the disc storage abstractions for anything other than acts and sub-acts. So we can't extrapolate colours from that for intermissions, Cascade, or sub-sub-anythings. Curtain colours are far more reliable because they exist for everything, and it's really overcomplicating it far too much to try and adapt anything else whatsoever to it. With curtain colours, only divisions that we have not yet reached are subject to any debate whatsoever, and that debate will be solved as soon as they are reached, which is also the point at which they are added to the template. The issue wholly solves itself.
 * As for the part colours, good grief that black looks horrible. And you can barely read A6A6 against it (and readability isn't very good for the grey, either). I will reiterate this point, because it bears repeating: the Parts are entirely superfluous for the navigation template. Furthermore, if we don't end up reaching a consensus on things like link colours, honestly the only viable solution is to strip all colours from it. Because they're not necessary, and the one thing we absolutely should never do for a navigation template is overcomplicate it without good reason