User blog:Average Exception/What is to come...

As some of you know (or not know), Wikia is currently in the middle of a transition. At the moment, people are beta testing the “new look” that will be implemented on every Wikia site. On October 20, all users will see the new look, though Monaco Spring (the skin we’re presently using) will be temporarily available; on November 3, the Monaco skin will be removed. Yesterday, the option to view the new skin became available. So, I decided to try the “new look,” and I have to say that I have mixed opinions about it.

It’s definitely different from what I’m used to, which can be both good and bad. I will admit that the aesthetics of the home page was slightly appealing. There wasn’t too much change; the sides were a bit plain, but perhaps that can be adjusted at a later date. Interestingly, the blog posts showed the avatars of the users; this will probably make it faster to identify who wrote the blog. The side bar was moved to the top of the page, which I didn’t think was too irritating; some of the components were missing, but perhaps this can be changed too.

Then I got to the articles, and things fell apart:


 * The biggest issue was the limited amount of space given to the actual article. The surrounding borders were bad enough, but more space is taken by another sidebar (is it a sidebar? I just see it as an unnecessary addition to the page.) Paragraphs that were decent in length became long after the sidebar pushed in the article (and introduced a random space in parts of the article)
 * The edit button that was conveniently off to the right is now adjacent to the section (accompanied by an image of a pencil.) If the sections are long, this change has no effect. However, when the sections are in close proximity, the edit button seems to get in the way.
 * The templates that are used to give additional information have become too large. It doesn’t help that they have been pushed in


 * In conclusion, everything looks clustered (to me at least...perhaps I am being too pessimistic; we will eventually become used to the new format, because we can't revert to Monaco anyway.)

If I burst the safety bubble that surrounded your thoughts, I apologize. I didn't want people to be surprised when the changes did occur (ready to shoot the messenger? haha) On a brighter note, the size of the avatars are increased when one goes to a user page (so we can actually see the pictures now)

For those who are curious, you can see for yourself by going to your preferences (under the "Skin" tab, choose "Wikia's New Look".) How will this affect the way we edit in Wikia? Will we have to create more pages to prevent clustering? Will we have to reformat our current articles? What are your thoughts?