MediaWiki talk:Common.css

Naming conventions

To distinguish different groups of classes, the following prefixes are used:

• mp_ Main Page
• cp_ Composer pages
• nav_ Navigation templates (for help pages etc.)
• babel_ Babel templates

In some cases, a class name consisting only of the prefix (without the underscore) may exist.

Classes should not be used outside the scope defined above, to prevent unexpected changes. --Leonard Vertighel 10:17, 28 September 2007 (EDT)

Colour guide

Colours used on this site, and examples where they are used.

The colours for the Babel boxes have been copied from Wikipedia and are not part of the IMSLP colour scheme.

Alternative colour scheme

Colours for possible use as occasional alternates? Slightly violet/blue tinted rather than brown/beige Philip Legge _{@ © talk} 19:06, 2 March 2009 (EST)

Nice. For the main page, perhaps we could use right column one for Featured, and 2 for recent additions?-- Snailey _{Yell at me Email me} 19:18, 2 March 2009 (EST)

Thanks. It might make a nice change, but I'd want to see a mockup of the mainpage and various category/work pages before changing common.css! The colour to match the dress and hair colour of the lady in the main page background is just a bit more like burgundy :) Philip Legge _{@ © talk} 19:38, 2 March 2009 (EST)

You could use Main Page/draft. -- Snailey _{Yell at me Email me} 19:43, 2 March 2009 (EST)

Have a look. I'm slightly worried about blue on (slightly bluish) grey being difficult to see by colour-blind visitors. I've also had a play with a green tinged set of colours as well. Philip Legge _{@ © talk} 21:15, 2 March 2009 (EST)

Before changing the actual main page, this should be proposed in the forums for community review, as was done with the current page. My personal opinion: doesn't harmonize with the image, unless you were going to replace it (not sure, you removed half of it). In particular the blue makes both the Burgundy and the image itself look rather dull in comparison. Also the orange-violet contrast in the masthead feels a bit acidic to me. --Leonard Vertighel 02:55, 3 March 2009 (EST)

Let me expand on this. The current page was conceived as a whole, with the painting at its heart. The painting features two prominent colours, the dress of the figure, which are echoed in the colours of the page. To these, a warm grey matching the sky on the painting was added. Obviously this is not the only way to go about it, and I don't even claim that the result is particularly great (I'm no great artist). But I do think I succeded in producing a somewhat harmonious and coherent whole.

The new proposal on the other hand features a dominant cyan (pure secondary colour), which has just about nothing to do with the painting. To this, a desaturated violet and somewhat colder shade of burgundy are added. Now there is nothing wrong with this (I'm not particularly fond of it, but certainly not everyone is fond of my choices either), but in my opinion you can't just paste the same painting into this. To me, the result looks like storm clouds above her head, and the cyan just about drowns her. IMO, you need to find an image to match the new colour scheme (might be hard); or go Pop art and make a version of the Lippi painting featuring your new colours; or do something else entirely. But putting the Lippi into the new colour scheme feels almost like pasting a random piece of Haydn into a Beethoven sonata. My opinion of course... --Leonard Vertighel 04:40, 3 March 2009 (EST)

OK, I've changed my mind. No offence, PML, but I really prefer leonard's, except the right column should be split by colours.-- Snailey _{Yell at me Email me} 10:56, 3 March 2009 (EST)

Naturally the idea would be proposed over at the forums before implementing any change, but in that instance it's useful to have something to show, rather than have nothing in hand. The draft page had to be partially hard-coded, which is why I couldn't get the top half of Music to appear: as soon as I introduced the image using the css code, the burgundy colour of the nav box would revert to the more familiar red default. I dare say some of your criticism would be alleviated when looking at the draft page, if one could get both the image and the burgundy to appear. I've changed the cyan to the green alternative, though this I find rather less appealing than the cyan, which I didn't believe was in danger of drowning Music (I'm tempted to find another different hue and give it another go).

I'm not sure whether you're being facetious about "pop art", but I certainly wouldn't arbitrarily recolourise the Lippi. All the same, looking at the original source for the image, the colours are possibly in need of restoration in the painting: what was probably a blue-grey cloak (but not as bright a blue as the cherub's wings, say) has become rather greyer; the blue of the sky and sea is washed out and the dark greens in the trees have become rather browner. The dress seems more toward burgundy, whereas the hue of Music's hair is more toward the orange side of the red, and so the actual colour used on the nav box splits the difference somewhat.

So if anything, I would probably retouch the photo merely to change the colour balance subtly, so the red isn't quite so dominant that the other shades are crushed. As for the yellow/orange site title against the dark olive background rather than the grey: again, personal preference. I don't mind having vivid colours in the masthead, and I think the combination of olive (masthead) over burgundy (nav box) is more successful than the current grey over red. Philip Legge _{@ © talk} 16:56, 3 March 2009 (EST)

Fixed it for you (has nothing to do with "hard-coded"). And frankly, I rest my case. The proposed colours (both versions) do not occur in the painting, and in my opinion do not harmonize with it either. And speculating about what the colours could be, means going at it backwards. If you think you can restore the image, then you need to do that first (though frankly I have no idea what you would use as a reference, hardware calibration issues aside). In the end, the colours will need to match what you actually have (restored or not), and not some hypothetical image. --Leonard Vertighel 17:17, 3 March 2009 (EST)

Thank you Leonard, though what I meant by "hard-coded" is that the color tags had to be added as extra style information to the page, and I had forgotten the background-color tag rather than background - it's been a while since I last fiddled with css.

Given that the Allegory of Music is not being used in its entirety in any case, and part of the image below the welcome text box is deliberately faded to white, I have to say that I don't see the point of your argument about the colour balance within the painting being set in stone and unalterable. You can find about four different scanned versions of this painting on the web (e.g. [1], [2], [3] in addition to Wikipedia) with quite different colour and contrast balances (one of which is quite awful, sickly yellow-tinged!), so whether the version used at IMSLP is representative of the actual painting is unknown. At least one of these (the rather darker one) is rather less "washed out" than the others, which might be as I suggested above, that the vibrancy of the colours (mostly due to the passage of time) has been slightly muted. Philip Legge _{@ © talk} 19:50, 3 March 2009 (EST)

Did you even bother reading what I actually wrote? Decide on the image version you want to use first. Then do some actual work and develop a matching design based on the image you picked. For example, for the present page I spent several days making various mockups in a graphics program to determine what actually works with the image I had picked. By all appearance, you on the other hand basically pulled some colour schemes out of thin air, without any reference to any actual image, and decided that it might be nice to repaint the page with them. I'm trying to assume good faith here, but frankly you are coming across as a bit presumptuous to me. Almost as if I took some composition of yours, and without any serious analysis, decided that it might also sound nice if I replaced all C's with F-sharps. Now I'm no composer (but I do know a little about webdesign), but I dare say you would not approve of this method of writing a variation on your theme. --Leonard Vertighel 03:04, 4 March 2009 (EST)

I might equally well ask the same, as to whether you had read my posts, or whether you were posting in good faith, if this is the tenor of your response. However, I am prepared to back down, since it is obviously of such concern to you: I gather now, especially from the "pop art" comment above, that I probably shouldn't have bothered. Regards, Philip Legge _{@ © talk} 07:00, 4 March 2009 (EST)

May I ask which part of your posts you feel I misinterpreted? To answer the analogous question for you: contrary to your claim, I never said anything to the effect of "the colour balance within the painting being set in stone and unalterable" (your words). What are you trying to tell us with your theoretical discussion about the possible colours of the painting? What do you expect me to say as long as you don't tell us "this is the version of the painting I want to use, and these are the colours to go with it"? --Leonard Vertighel 07:37, 4 March 2009 (EST)