Template talk:VersionCompatibilityVersion/sandbox

Details of Purpose?
Can you provide more specific details of what you wanted to accomplish here? Kolano (talk) 11:14, 30 December 2015 (CET)
 * Trying to create something like this: http://i.imgur.com/pzrJ6n9.png
 * I can't seem to display the text outside the box. By the way, the stacking bars aren't intended. It isn't paint job but rather a piece of screenshot of something I made in CSS test area. Lucario (talk) 06:11, 31 December 2015 (CET)

div class="versioncompatibilityversion" Seems to combine the multiple color bars into a single bar but hides the revision texts when it's going outside the box. Lucario (talk) 12:23, 31 December 2015 (CET)

(not quite) Finished!
It could be better but due to my limited coding abilities, it's good as it is now! How is the new version compatibility bar? Maybe try to accustom to it first in several game page previews to find out? (just add "/sandbox" in each template then preview) Lucario (talk) 21:18, 2 January 2016 (CET)

I'm not counter to revising this, but there are still some minor issues with the current revision:
 * Longer revisions, almost anything with 4char revision indicators, are being cut off (i.e. ).
 * Close revisions overlap problematically. With the older style, overlapping revisions would overlap but the newer revision would still be legible. Here overlaps make both revisions illegible. Might be addressable in a few ways:
 * Adding background color to the revision label, perhaps with transparent gradient borders to help things not look odd against non-white backrounds.
 * Handled it this way for now. Such obscures the earlier revision, but at least one is legible this way.Kolano (talk) 19:49, 3 January 2016 (CET)
 * Revising things to handle odd/even revisions slightly differently (up/down, or top of the bar/bottom of the bar).
 * Going with fully vertical text

Beyond those, I'd like to take some time to try to work in some other revised functionality before we'd deploy updates: Kolano (talk) 22:48, 2 January 2016 (CET)
 * Add indicators of major revisions in addition to the end points beneath the bar (i.e. 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 5.0)
 * Revise the default covered range to exclude 2.0 revisions (i.e. cover from v3.0-v5.0)
 * Working out a concept of hard vs soft stops. So we could more accurately indicate where a known compatibility change occurs vs compatibility happens to be such at some revision (but the change may have occurred in an earlier one). Basically I'd like to allow replacing the solid 1px right border with a transparent gradient, so the one compatibility would fade into it's prior one.
 * Allow the covered range to be revised, so it would be possible to display 5.0-1.0 or other range of revisions.


 * I'm against text going vertical. It doesn't free up the space between revisions very much compared to diagonal texts. It will in turn harder to read and require more space above to avoid text cut-off. Besides, it's extraordinary to see the revision getting nearly complete overlapped anyway. Well, my original intention was to resolve the overlap problem between two revisions closing each others, but not for those that's nearly complete overlapped. But I'm in for the white/transparent background just in case. I was thinking this illegible text is better than the older revision getting its revision number cut-off or impossible to click.


 * Maybe we can create mouse over popup so that the revision link will appear when the mouse is hovering the bar or the black arrow. Or mouse over to make the white background so the overlapped text will appear legible? The rotated texts will be no longer needed for this.


 * Your new ideas sound good too. You can edit this template and see how it goes. I'm satisfied with this new template though more features are welcomed. Lucario (talk) 16:45, 3 January 2016 (CET)


 * kolano, after seeing the semi-transparent white background in effect I'd actually prefer the illegible text again. Maybe you could revise it to make the white background thinner, blurrier, and don't extend behind the black arrow? Lucario (talk) 18:53, 4 January 2016 (CET)


 * The semi-transparent background being too thick and extending behind black arrow is now fixed. I still prefer the illegible texts though. Lucario (talk) 21:00, 4 January 2016 (CET)


 * There's now no more 2.0 starting point. The first revision tested will be starting point of game's compatibility chart. If I'm not mistaken, that fulfills one of your wishlist: "possible to display 5.0-1.0 or other range of revisions"? I'm not sure if we need to implement such way to revise the default covered range above 2.0. Simply removing the old revision lines from game pages may be what you're looking for. Lucario (talk) 09:04, 13 May 2016 (CEST)


 * Indicators of major revisions made the new bar layout look cluttered and I don't even want to think what would happen if we include indicator for 5.0, so slashed that out. Lucario (talk) 10:18, 14 May 2016 (CEST)

I'm not entirely sure how much of a good idea this is... we get a lot of "I tried it and it was good!" things which did not change the rating or have anything notable in them, which do not belong on the version compatibility graph. By the definition of "where compatibility change occured", if we strictly followed our own rules this is almost never an issue. The only times I can think of where it would genuinely be useful is cases like, a bug occurs and it is fixed rapidly. But the wiki often misses those anyway. :P But anyway, we shouldn't change anything until clear improvements are established, and I'm not really seeing them right now. - MaJoR (talk) 16:14, 4 January 2016 (CET)


 * As of right now the styling of this new bar isn't really good, such as a wasted space above and few other ugly styling layouts. They will be ironed out eventually. By the way, there is overlap problem like this Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader that this new bar may be better for that. Let's also take narrowed browsers into consideration, where the revision labels will be overlapped even more in there. I'm hoping to implement this hover popup (like http://www.wickham43.net/hoverpopups.php) which works for Safari on iOS. Currently I and other iOS users cannot view notes or revision number of the overlapped revision. Lucario (talk) 18:53, 4 January 2016 (CET)


 * Major, there are a bunch of Compatibility Graph updates to work through. We'll work on a few things here before releasing it. I'd guess your concern were partially raised by the "unsure of revision" change. Addressing such rather than ignoring it allows for a few things:
 * Specifically shows unclear changes. Given there are over 700 in the [:Category:VersionCompatibilityVersion Template missing notes] list there are likely many of these.
 * Lets us label titles /w unclear revs for investigation. The category above addresses many of them, but there are unclear entries with notes.
 * Generally allow us to more clearly address cleaning up things like [Ben 10 Alien Force: The Rise of Hex]. We know the rating was updated to 4 back in 2012, but don't know what revision from that timeframe corrected the crashing formerly seen.
 * Cleaning up compatibility graphs will generally be a longer term project. Tasks like reviewing the Issues lists will help with such.

Overlapping Text Correction
Overlapping versions had initially been accounted for by adding a background color to make the topmost version legible. This was recently revised to use the presence of a 4th parameter to shift a later revision sideways. The new correction makes up to 2 overlapping revisions visible. But I don't think works out for more than 2. The restoring the background color would help a bit with that (i.e. so at least 2 of three overlapping results would be legible). Use of the additional variable also complicates things, so I'd like to find an alternate solution.

I think we also generally dislike consuming the additional space above the graph just for labels. One way I'm thinking a bit about to address both would be creating a hovering window over the graph acting like a magnifying glass. Allowing the graph to be drawn wider than the page, and increasing gaps between revisions (perhaps to the a 1 rev per px resolution. Alternate revision labeling would also be feasible. Not clear that works out smoothly, as there would still be limited resolution to the mouse coordinates. It might also alleviate the need to allow revising the revisions to cover. Kolano (talk) 07:39, 5 January 2016 (CET)
 * I think games with three version compatibility revisions overlapping together even with this new bar layout is just extremely rare. I don't think we'd have to worry about that. Let the extreme cases have illegible text. Lucario (talk) 12:04, 12 May 2016 (CEST)

Default Revision Range
As discussed elsewhere, we may need to reduce the number of revisions covered to keep it's output reasonable. I'm not clear on a good range to trim it too. There have been so many 4.0 revs I think limiting it to just those may be appropriate, but I'd like to hear from others before moving forward with related changes. Kolano (talk) 07:39, 5 January 2016 (CET)

Any flaws? Dislikes?
Ok, so I haven't found a (an obvious) flaw as of late besides the flaws inherited from the current bar layout (tooltips unavailable to iOS). Is it good enough to replace the current bar layout? Like I said you could try get accustomed to it after previewing sandbox templates in the game pages so you can judge better.

There are two game sandbox pages with this new bar layout that you can check without previewing:
 * The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GC)/sandbox
 * Super Smash Bros. Melee/sandbox

If this new bar layout as whole can't be out of the sandbox, is there something you'd like to add to the current bar layout at least? Lucario (talk) 08:41, 13 May 2016 (CEST)

Thanks for working on this. I like what's been done thus far, particularly removing the static end points. I'd like to see the tooltip text revised though. We should show the rating text for all tooltips, not just when there were changes, and I'd like to get rid of the "Rev"/"Compatibility Updated"/"What's New" labels which just seem like excess text to me. Kolano (talk) 16:45, 14 May 2016 (CEST)