MW 1.xx templates
If you want to be the bikeshed painter, feel free to choose the colors. :-)
How about using 3 colours: red for old, unsupported versions, green for latest version, orange for recent versions. Or is that missing the point? Probably still need some varying shades within that, so they don't all end up the same. Just a thought - don't know if it's a good one.
I really like the themed colours idea that HappyDog is suggesting. One question: Is there a list somewhere of what versions are supported and unsupported? I don't think I've come across that anywhere. I like your proposed scheme, though I'd add...let's say blue...to it for future/beta versions, since we clearly have cases of those as well (e.g., {{MW 1.18}}). – RobinHood70 talk 20:40, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
Not sure what the official line is at the moment. Used to be latest version, plus previous, plus 1.6 (for people stuck on PHP4). I suspect the latter has been dropped by now, but worth checking. Maybe ask on IRC or the mailing list? May turn out that the old:new ratio is too lopsided for this kind of colouring to be very useful. --HappyDog 00:40, 27 July 2011 (UTC)
1.6 (for PHP4) has been completely discontinued. Any docs that still suggest using it are completely wrong and should be fixed.
Okay, I figured I'd been forgetting about this long enough that I should probably just do it. The version scheme I went for is:
| Grouping | Colour | Templates | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-API | Red |
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| Older with API | Orange |
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| Current + Previous |
Green |
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| Future | Pastel Blue |
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I suffer no delusions of being Picaso, a graphic artist, or a web-page designer—nor is my monitor even calibrated—so if any of these colours look horribly out of whack, feel free to change them!
Also, I haven't changed any of the international versions for a variety of reasons, including wanting to finalize the English ones and due to the language barrier. Once we're sure we like these ones, I'm happy to change the international versions as well if there's agreement that I should do so.
Good! Though I would offer a couple of suggestions - take 'em or leave 'em:
- Reverse the saturation order in each row, so the darker (stronger) shades are more recent than the lighter (weaker) shades.
- Make the division between the first two tiers after 1.6 (rather than 1.7). I feel that the PHP4/PHP5 minimum requirement is more relevant than the No-API/API feature change. There are a whole bunch of features that could be similarly used as the divider, e.g. No Categories/Categories, so a requirements-based distinction is better. In my view, there have been three stages of 'modern' MediaWiki. Major changes were introduced in 1.7 and 1.16, but most other versions have been more gradual evolutions. The division should probably reflect that (In other words, I would start a third 'old' tier at 1.16 when that is retired, rather than adding that to the existing second tier).
- The two shades of green seem like different greens rather than the second being a lighter version of the first.
- Shade future versions in grey, rather than a colour, and make the border dotted. Might make it clearer that they don't exist yet.
Sorry, I completely forgot about this. Since several of your suggestions were things I'd also considered, and the rest I think are great ideas, I'll go ahead and implement them. It's not like these are hard to change if anybody dislikes them.
Okay, done. The only tweak I made to your suggestions is that the future versions still fade in the same direction, giving the next version a more solid colour than the later version, which is more ephemeral. Here's another copy of the table for comparison:
| Grouping | Colour | Templates | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PHP 4 | Red |
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| PHP 5 | Orange |
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| Current + Previous |
Green |
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| Future | Grey |
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