Last modified: 2011-03-24 06:50:31 UTC
Wikipedia uses a number of interface elements in article header space using data from the article wikitext. They are placed outside the article body in the article header with CSS absolute positioning. Often when sitenotices and other messages are shown, they overlap with the information in the header, especially with the coordinates of location related articles. It is also difficult to copy the information, as many browsers select the content in its HTML order, instead of the order they have rendered it in visually. The problem is mentioned every year during the donation drive, but so far there hasn't been a solution, and only continuous complaints of the resulting problems. It would therefore be good to have a structure so that absolute positioning wouldn't be necessary. # Container(s) for the location(s) of additional interface elements defined in the skins # Placeholders within the containers per namespace, defined as pages like MediaWiki:elements-<namespace>-<containername>, where you could then have for example MediaWiki:elements-ns0-header with the contents "$protected $featured $spoken <br /> $coordinates" # Data from wiki pages given like "<element container='header' name='coordinates'>foo bar</element>", probably often with the help of templates This would allow information displayed outside the page body, or allow pages to add information for use by a tool in the interface area of the page, if the tool only applies to a certain group of pages.
There are also issues if you are on a site using multiple sets of skins, but you can't change the Site css for some of those (Yes, there is a case like that. Wikia's Quartz at the least) I was actually thinking of creating an extension to add the titleicons (as we refer to them) directly where they belong, instead of using the absolute positioning. I think the best implementation would be adding the containers for the various uses. Probably the only ones you'll ever need are titleicons (Sets of icons which show up on the right hand side of the title bar), page footer (In-content footer area), left/right columns (Small bars along the page side... Likely for wiki with semantic data, as a replacement for titleicons, or for dynamic content use), and page headers (Multiple types though, below title, below sitenotice, and above sitenotice most likely... Pick one, some, or whatever) I was thinking of using something like <titleicon></titleicon> in the page to add a new titleicon item. If there are no plans to add these kind of containers to core, feel free to poke me, I'd be open to coding an extension to allow for various content containers to be added to a page... I have a feeling it could be done using just a few hooks, and likely wouldn't need skin hacks (Though if you want something above the sitenotice it might). I'm "Dantman" on Wikia, MediaWiki, and Wikipedia.
*** Bug 23796 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 23796 ***
