Category talk:Main Page

Would the thematic indices be better shown as a table, similar to Main Page Development Categories, Tabular version? LadyGeek 03:14, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * As long as the tables are easy to update, since this is a manually operated listing of categories and short descriptive elements. Blbarnitz 03:21, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Sue, I formatted a table for the Financial Category page and placed it on the Portal Main Page test page for now. (I will create a new page for these so that it won't mess up the Portal Page presentation.} This version is good in that it maintains consistency with the Portal Main frame styling. However, the Portal Main has an index of links, and these category tables contain links to Main Categories, but then provides descriptive comments indicating what each category contains. The styling in the box, however, makes these descriptions indistinguisable from the front page links. I have made the links bold as one means of setting them off from text. Not sure if there is another solution to this problem. Blbarnitz 06:00, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Barry, you beat me to it. I was going to do the formatting for you. The overall problem is that, even if the category generation could be made completely automatic, it still needs manual intervention to put the topics in an easy-to-read format. I think that a lot of readers have problems looking at the default alphabetical category listing. Using your thematic format helps considerably.

On this page, you can make the list as long as you want as there are no size contraints. The portal must fit within a box.

With this format, I may go and modify your tables to use the same box header and footer techniques like the portal page. That way, all the same templates are used. If you want to change the colors or layout, all you need to do is change the template and everything follows. A basic principle of software design - make your functions generic so you can reuse them everywhere. LadyGeek 00:21, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

On second thought, the tables are just fine. I did a quick experiment in the Categories development area. Due to the variable lengths in each category, the boxes don't align to the bottom dimension properly. For the sake of simplicity, the result is visually less aesthetic. It's more work just to keep them aligned. LadyGeek 02:50, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

The page title has been made general, so I deleted "Financial Planning". LadyGeek 02:54, 4 March 2009 (UTC)