Template talk:NCAAFootballSingleGameHeader

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[edit] Comments About First Draft

Wow, it's huge. It looks pretty good, but it's very large. Can you set a max width of like 700px and see how it looks then? I'm just going by the old web design adage of expecting an 800x600 viewing area...though I'm pretty sure that's way out of date, it's still a good starting point. Fonts could probably use being reduced as well. The GT/FIU one especially suffers, probably because the name and nickname are so long, so they take up most of the space. Maybe try setting the widths of the different areas, either dynamically with percentages or strictly (not as good an idea). z4ns4tsu\talk 21:59, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Currently there is a 66% minimum set. Of that 66% (of the total width), 25% goes to the right and left columns and 50% to the middle. I can try the 700px max but I'll have to take the nowrap off so reducing font size will be a must. --MECU≈talk 22:47, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
It already looks a lot better just changing the font size. z4ns4tsu\talk 23:10, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Wow. Great work. And quick, too. I think you are on the right track, definitely. Three questions:
  1. Why does date and year have to be in two different fields?
  2. Can we make the final score a little more prominent? To me, it is getting lost in with the school record a bit.
  3. If we ever win the war to be able to use team logos in the same way every other major media outlet uses them, will we be able to adopt this to include them?

Again, great work. Johntex\talk 02:53, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

  1. Because Date is what you see at the bottom, and should be something like October 11, 2006. Year is what is used in the BCS date for linking to that poll. If you don't use the BCS field, the Year field can be omitted. The BCS ranking links to the [[{{{Year}}} NCAA Division I-A football rankings]]. Thus I needed the two fields. I agree it's slightly less intuitive, if anyone has a better idea on where to link the ranking headers I'd be fine with that. Maybe they all should link to that season's poll since it might be more useful for the AP & Coaches Poll?
  2. I'm working on it. I agree it should be bigger, but just changing the font size it then goes into the other text above and below it.
  3. Yes. There's even a hidden note in the code on where to put it. My thoughts are that it would replace the text of the team that that's kind of duplicate (it links different for now) on the left and right sides and put the logo there. Would need some adjustment on the sizes perhaps but that would be easy. Would also need to add a few variable fields.

Thanks for the comments! --MECU≈talk 13:53, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I had to idea this was being developed. Definitely an interesting infobox; never seen anything like it myself. One issue I noticed. Is there anyway you could permanently line up the team names and records at the top? I noticed that when one team has, say, only one rankings while the other has three, then they are no longer aligned. I haven't looked at the code myself but this may be achieved simply by adding a valign="top" somewhere. The problem can be seen on the 2006 Alamo Bowl article. I've started putting this on a few pages.--NMajdan•talk 19:14, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I think I took care of it.--NMajdan•talk 19:29, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I like it. Maybe the record should be enlarged just a little? Maybe non-bolded it wouldn't distract from the final score too much then either? --MECU≈talk 21:28, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problem with BCS ranking?

Hi Mecu, I added this excellent template to 2006 Rose Bowl and all went well except for the BCS ranking. If I include it, I get some wiki-markup showing in the article.[1] Do you know how we can fix this? Johntex\talk 20:39, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Johntex, it appears the issue was with the "Year" variable. You wikilinked the year when it shouldn't be. I took care of it.--NMajdan•talk 20:44, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Yah, I guess the user directions aren't a clear as they could be. I'll work on that. --MECU≈talk 21:28, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
My bad. Thank you NMajdan. However, the link for BCS goes to the 2006 BCS rankings article, which is not the best possible link for the 2006 Rose Bowl, which really was part of the 2005 season. What should we do about this? Thanks, Johntex\talk 21:36, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, that would be my bad. Thats what the "Year" field is for. It specifies what year should be linked for the Rankings page. I changes the value on that page from 2006 to 2005 which should resolve the issue.--NMajdan•talk 21:46, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bonus "Feature"

If you look at Fifth Down, you can see for the stadium= field I put "Faurot Field in Columbia, Missouri" which I think looks a little nicer then as it also gives the location of the game in the USA as well as the field. I didn't intend it that way, but it works quite well it seems. --MECU≈talk 21:28, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inappropriate

This template takes up the entire width of the page, at least for me. The style doesn't seem proper for an encyclopedia at all, it's more like a sports web page. Can't we fit all this information into an Infobox-size column at the side? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:59, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you saying the template on the template page takes up your whole screen, or the template used in an article? On the template page, it is huge (don't know why), but when it is used in article namespace, it looks find. This template was agreed upon by the college football WikiProject. We feel it suits our needs perfectly. Of course, I can't speak for everybody but I'm sure a few more people will chime in as well on this discussion. What would be the difference in having this template at the top of an article as opposed to the left side? I don't see a difference. And since this template is used for football games, maybe a format like a sports site is preferably since it is what most people are used to seeing. It contains all the data it needs, position shouldn't matter too much.--NMajdan•talk 04:08, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
On 2006 Alamo Bowl, it takes up the full width of the text area. It really seems to contravene house style to have something so big that it pushes the actual article text down the page and shoves information in a BIG FONT in my face. I don't need the score in big numbers to find it. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 04:23, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I like the fact that it spans nearly the width of the screen. I don't think it contravenese the MoS. At this very moment, we are running a donation campaign that features a banner going horizontally across the screen at the very top of all pages. Unlike the funds-solicitation, the game header is actually informative content. I also like the big font for the final score as it makes it easy to see the final result (and winner) at a glance. Johntex\talk 06:56, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Remember what WP:IUP#Displayed image size says: "Larger images should generally be a maximum of 550 pixels wide, so that they can comfortably be displayed on 800x600 monitors." In essence, this template is basically making the same problem. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 05:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
That IUP contradicts Wikipedia:Guide to layout which says images should not be more than 300px and Help:Infobox states an infobox should not take up more than 1/3rd of the width, which means 266px wide (or less, with the sidebar) for a 800x600 which seems to be the concern. It would be interesting to see what screen sizes actually come to Wikipedia, but that's beyond this. This is an infobox in the loosest of classifications. Why the need to make every infobox on the right, boxy gray background redundant from article to article? Help:Infobox only claims "An infobox on Wikipedia is a consistently-formatted table which is present in articles with a common subject to provide summary information consistently between articles or improve navigation to closely related articles in that subject." This infobox fulfills that as all college football game articles should have it, and therefore provides a uniformity in presenting the most basic, critical information at the top of the page. I subject that this isn't an image, so image policies should not be relevant to it. The main issue seems to be the size and location. I looked at WP:MoS and there doesn't seem to be anything covering this. If Night Gyr could point to a more specific location on that page, or quote it here, that would be helpful. It is possible to limit the size and reduce some of the font sizes, but again, I don't see the point? Unless it overlaps other items or is too large on a 800x600 screen to force the user to scroll right (but then would depend on the content, as some team names are larger than others). Could Night Gyr upload a screen shot of the article in question to help the rest of us that don't have that problem? In short, we need more info before making changes haphazardly. --MECU≈talk 14:20, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
As an after note, I removed the gametime from the template and it shrunk down a little. Perhaps making game time another field that is on it's own line above the date would help prevent this in the future. If Night Gyr takes a screen shot, you could look at the history before my edit to show a before and after. --MECU≈talk 14:24, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I have just made a change to the template to make the date/stadium variables display one above the other instead of inline with eachother. This should help keep the width down in some instances. --MECU≈talk 19:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Good work, Mecu. Johntex\talk 19:58, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hidden Notes

I aded a hidden note into the template saying "Team records and rankings are to be PRIOR to the game, NOT after the game." I hope I inserted it correctly so that it will appear when the template is used. I am not the template expert here, so others may want to check me. Johntex\talk 21:04, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

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