Template talk:Australian Senators

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Could we perhaps do this template without the colours/parties? It looks very "busy" and hard to comprehend. -- Barrylb 22:59, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

It is busy, but one of the the points was to visually show the party distribution by state. I'm not sure how to do this without colours. I'll try making the colurs paler and see what people think. The 8 transcluded subpages which contain the colours are:

Moondyne ≡ talk 03:58, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't look busy as such now, but with the pale colours it looks very hard to try and work out which party is meant to be which if you didn't already know - the shades are too similar. I think it might be easier to either drop the party colours altogether, or instead tack (Lib) (ALP) (Dem) etc on the end of the person's name, as AFAIK they do with the US. I also think it might be better to shrink the text down a size, to prevent the problems this table has with names going over lines Rebecca 04:20, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
The American one is {{Current U.S. Senators}}, and they've had a bet both ways. I'll give that a go. -- Moondyne ≡ talk 05:49, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
They don't have the issue of the minor parties, however, and I think that's where the colour problems lie here. Rebecca 06:03, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

This is wrong. There are more than 3 Victorian ALP Senators. Someone has mixed something up. Xtra 08:47, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

There's 4 - sorry, I had Steve Conroy wrong. It's fixed now. -- Moondyne ≡ talk 09:12, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] The colour subtemplates

The coloured sub templates are nice! Great idea -- it's dramatically improved. I updated them so they take a parameter instead -- otherwise you have to remember to do a closing span tag and it's unintuitive.

There is still a little problem though -- it's really hard to see the current politician bolded when you're on a politician's article. I wonder if there's a way to make the colours still helpful but less distracting and/or increase the text size without making it more difficult to follow? — Донама 10:03, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Donama, thanks for that - much better setup now. Only "font-size:small" and larger font sizes show as bold. "font-size:x-small" and "font-size:xx-small" don't change appearance if bolded. And "small" is going to be too big. I don't see the lack of bolding as a big deal. -- Moondyne ≡ talk 13:39, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Colours

These are still too light. I can't tell one party from the other. Perhaps a coloured box next to each person would be better? (JROBBO 10:24, 15 May 2006 (UTC))

[edit] The point

What is the point of the template when categories do the job cleaner and with less clutter? Dysprosia 05:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

That's a good point.--cj | talk 17:36, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps better with a hide/show button? -- Moondyne ≡ talk 15:44, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Last edit on 7/2/2007

I'm not sure what the issue was with the previous revision, the current revision for me at least now has quite a large space to the right of the template and looks completely off balance. Timeshift 14:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, I reverted my last edit back to cj's version dated 2 Feb. For me it was wrapping some of the longer names onto 2 lines. But no problems, I can live with that, as what you saw sounds worse. —Moondyne 14:34, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
What screen size and res are you on? Timeshift 14:40, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
1024x768 - 17". Using Firefox (IE7 appears the same). —Moondyne 14:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
What does Template:Politics of Australia look like to you on the parliamentary and election pages? Timeshift 14:45, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
It looks fine - 100% of available screen width, in both the template page and on one of the pages which includes it as a transclusion. —Moondyne 14:49, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some thoughts

I was looking at the SA upper house candidates, which is based on this one as it turns out, and noticed some major usability issues - I'll reproduce them here for wider discussion.

  1. The font is almost unreadable on a smaller monitor. I use 1280x960 on a 19" monitor and even I'm having difficulties. The "references-small" size, which is a relative size of 90% from normal if done manually, would seem adequate for the purpose. I note that Template:Politics of Australia already uses this size.
  2. Secondly, there is no difference, or no perceptible difference, between the background colours of the respective parties, although I can see from reading the source code there should be one (my suggestion would be to have a much darker coloured box to the left, or even a font colouring, representing the party). If this can't practically be achieved, I would suggest removing the feature entirely as it would then be mere template bloat.

(Edit: On looking VERY carefully I can sort of make out a difference between the Green/Dem and other ones. But that took around 15 seconds to identify.)

It's important to remember that many Wikipedians are sight impaired and may not have access to the most modern or reliable computer equipment, so usability issues are very important. Orderinchaos 12:45, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Fair comments OIC. This template was based on the idea from {{Current U.S. Senators}}, but after reviewing yours and others comments on this page, I get the impression that no-one is overly exited by it being in every senators article. It seemed to me to be a good idea at the time, but unless you or someone can improve it per your comments of its shortcomings, perhaps it should be deleted. I would not stand in the way of that. —Moondyne 15:10, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Uncollapse

Is there a way to |state = uncollapsed this template? Timeshift 18:10, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

I hope not. Large templates should stay collapsed until I want to open them. Iorek 06:00, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
During the election I think it needs to be open for the 2007 election page. Timeshift 06:28, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Not everyone has 1280x960, which is why we have things this way. Orderinchaos 09:21, 4 November 2007 (UTC)