Wikimedia Commons and the English Wikipedia have customized their site-wide CSS to put a checkered pattern on the transparent part of files on the file description page.
Because I view this code as almost necessary on any wiki that supports uploading PNGs, I filed a bug about including it in the default site-wide CSS: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26470
There's definitely missing functionality here. On wikis that don't use a checkered background, a lot of users end up downloading the images to their computer to look at them in order to determine if a background is white or transparent. That sucks.
There was previous discussion about this, but more discussion is needed, apparently. Is site-wide CSS the best way to do this? Would a toggle on the file description page make more sense? User preference?
MZMcBride
MZMcBride wrote:
There was previous discussion about this, but more discussion is needed, apparently. Is site-wide CSS the best way to do this? Would a toggle on the file description page make more sense? User preference?
MZMcBride
It's easy to add such "preference" as a gadget.
Platonides wrote:
MZMcBride wrote:
There was previous discussion about this, but more discussion is needed, apparently. Is site-wide CSS the best way to do this? Would a toggle on the file description page make more sense? User preference?
It's easy to add such "preference" as a gadget.
That requires installing the Gadgets extension, copying over the appropriate pages, and then explaining to users how to activate the functionality. That seems a bit less than ideal.
I read over the previous discussion about this (on mediawiki-cvs, I think) and I still don't understand the exact issue with everyone seeing a checkered background. There was an arbitrary distinction created between editors and readers and a theory was put forward that readers could never see a checkered background, but that it was quite helpful to editors. I think readers would like to know as much as editors whether a background is white or transparent, and a checkered background is the standard way to do this.
MZMcBride
Op 29 jan 2011, om 17:29 heeft MZMcBride het volgende geschreven:
Platonides wrote:
MZMcBride wrote:
There was previous discussion about this, but more discussion is needed, apparently. Is site-wide CSS the best way to do this? Would a toggle on the file description page make more sense? User preference?
It's easy to add such "preference" as a gadget.
That requires installing the Gadgets extension, copying over the appropriate pages, and then explaining to users how to activate the functionality. That seems a bit less than ideal.
I read over the previous discussion about this (on mediawiki-cvs, I think) and I still don't understand the exact issue with everyone seeing a checkered background. There was an arbitrary distinction created between editors and readers and a theory was put forward that readers could never see a checkered background, but that it was quite helpful to editors. I think readers would like to know as much as editors whether a background is white or transparent, and a checkered background is the standard way to do this.
MZMcBride
For a while I had pretty much the exact same thoughts like "What is the downside for readers ? What does it matter ?"
But after reading that thread[1] I'm starting to understand and kinda agree with it.
Compare the following two pages (when logged out):
* http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A-gunner.gif * http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A-gunner.svg
Although as me, being a graphic designer, I'd say: "Ah, SVG that's awesome. Vector is obviously better and I see that it's transparent as well."
But I can imagine an end-user thinking. Hm... Why is this .svg whatever thing distorted ? It's got these squares all over it. I'll use the other one.
Now in this case there there's a choise (I linked to both versions), but that's not always the case. It may be hard to imagine as being a technologically advanced/ experienced user, but I believe these are real scenarios. People are really direct and without doubt when they see (too) (much) weird stuff, they click the [x] and go away, left disappointed.
So as far as I'm concerned this is still a dilemma. Readers want to read articles and look at cool pictures, icons in articles and accross the interface.
There shouldn't be a checkered background when an transparent PNG icon is placed on the top right of an article (say like the Featured article star), there shouldn't be when it's a logo in an infobox.
Should there be when it's in a <gallery>, on a File:-page or in the Filehistory ?
-- Krinkle
[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/30603
2011/1/29 Krinkle krinklemail@gmail.com:
Op 29 jan 2011, om 17:29 heeft MZMcBride het volgende geschreven: Compare the following two pages (when logged out):
A nice example. A couple of others: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spider_internal_anatomy-en.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cross_section_jellyfish_en_%28edit%29.svg
These and many other SVG illustrations are included in the main article in a size that's too small to read. Clicking an image is the standard way that users are taught to enlarge images.
While a chequered background can be useful to visualize the alpha channel, we can reasonably posit for a general reference source like Wikipedia that the vast majority of users who enlarge images like the above do so to inspect details of the image, not to assess secondary image characteristics like file format or alpha channel, and indeed many of them likely have no understanding why the background is there to begin with. For those users the chequered background is simply useless noise.
The same is likely to apply in many (although of course not in all) contexts of third party MediaWiki use. A simple "show/hide transparency" toggle for media with an alpha channel would be a nice standard solution. Defaults for a media repository like Wikimedia Commons could reasonably differ from those for a general reference source like Wikipedia, as typical user intentions are likely different.
Erik Moeller wrote:
A simple "show/hide transparency" toggle for media with an alpha channel would be a nice standard solution. Defaults for a media repository like Wikimedia Commons could reasonably differ from those for a general reference source like Wikipedia, as typical user intentions are likely different.
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
We could remove the checker by default (pleasing the reader) and add a button to reveal the transparency. This could be implemented for the File: namespace.
With these comments in mind, I've updated the relevant bug in Bugzilla to focus more on a toggle solution in JavaScript. I don't imagine it'd be very difficult to implement, so I've tagged the bug with the "easy" keyword.
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26470
MZMcBride
On 29/01/11 17:46, Krinkle wrote: <snip>
Compare the following two pages (when logged out):
We could remove the checker by default (pleasing the reader) and add a button to reveal the transparency. This could be implemented for the File: namespace.
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org