Forum:How do I change the gif that is shown when publishing a page?

Hi everyone, so I saw this cool thing on the Tardis Wiki when you publish a page, it has a different gif and text that is showing the page is being published. I'm wondering how to do that. Can anyone help?

ώε ιivέ foя εvέř (talk) 14:50, September 15, 2012 (UTC)


 * You might want to ask User:CzechOut about this -- he's from the Tardis wiki and probably knows what you're talking about.

Yeah I guess that's a good idea. But i'll wait a bit before asking to see if anyone else knows. ώε ιivέ foя εvέř (talk) 15:27, September 15, 2012 (UTC)
 * I believe what controls that is this code from their Mediawiki:Common.css:

div.loading-message { font-family : 'Lucida Grande', 'Trebuchet MS', 'Gill Sans', Verdana, 'URW Gothic L', 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif !important; letter-spacing: 1.5px; text-transform: uppercase; }  background-image: url(http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/tardis/images/c/c6/TardisLoader.gif) !important; background-size: 242px 200px !important; background-repeat:no-repeat !important; background-position:top center; background-color:transparent; overflow:visible; height:200px !important; width: 600px !important; }
 * 1) EditPageEditor .loading-indicator .loading-message .loading-throbber {
 * Does playing around with that help?-- Category:Acer4666 15:31, September 15, 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, I think to change the actual text of the loading screen, rather than its style, you go to MediaWiki:Wikia-editor-loadingStates-saving on your wiki-- Category:Acer4666 15:37, September 15, 2012 (UTC)

Ok i'll try this thanks alot for all of your help! ώε ιivέ foя εvέř (talk) 16:38, September 15, 2012 (UTC)

I tried it but its not working :( I guess i'll just ask Czech ώε ιivέ foя εvέř (talk) 17:23, September 15, 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh right sorry should have mentioned, if you haven't imported your common.css into your Wikia.css, I think you have to put that code into Wikia.css to see the effects. You should be able to see it working at this wiki I just tested it on-- Category:Acer4666 17:35, September 15, 2012 (UTC)

Weird. Somebody else just asked me about this. Basically, you guys have already sussed what to do here, but I'll just copy and paste the response I gave another user on my wiki:

To be honest, it's a pain in the ass. It took a lot of fiddling around. There are about three parts of it.
 * 1) Creating a transparent .gif that you'll use as the loading "throbber"
 * 2) Changing the appropriate MediaWiki messages: MediaWiki:Wikia-editor-loadingStates-loading and MediaWiki:Wikia-editor-loadingStates-saving
 * 3) Fiddling with the location of the throbber through CSS

Here's the alterations to MediaWiki:Common.css we use, but it wouldn't work right out of the box for your own wiki, because it takes into account the precise text message we use, and the exact size of our throbber.

This part affects the text of MediaWiki:Wikia-editor-loadingStates-loading and MediaWiki:Wikia-editor-loadingStates-saving. div.loading-message { font-family : 'Lucida Grande', 'Trebuchet MS', 'Gill Sans', Verdana, 'URW Gothic L', 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif !important; letter-spacing: 1.5px; text-transform: uppercase; } And this part changes the .gif throbber away from the default: background-image: url(http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/tardis/images/c/c6/TardisLoader.gif) !important; background-size: 242px 200px !important; background-repeat:no-repeat !important; background-position:top center; background-color:transparent; overflow:visible; height:200px !important; width: 600px !important; }
 * 1) EditPageEditor .loading-indicator .loading-message .loading-throbber {

What you would need to do is upload your animated gif, then go to its file page (say, file:throbber.gif), then click on it again there so that you're getting to its base images3.wikia.nocookie.net page. You'd then cut and paste that URL into the bit where we've got TardisLoader.gif, above.

Then you'd have to mess around with the background-position and the height and width values to get it where you want.

There's no one-size-fits-all answer to your question, which is probably why you don't see that many wikis messin' around with the loading message. Note that w:c:faction paradox has a similar thing going on, but I'm pretty sure I had to mess with the height and width to make it work over there.

If you're looking for something a little less dramatic than what we've got at our two wikis, you might try w:c:memoryalpha, who do a neat little subtle screen thingie. It makes the whole background, apart from the 25px-ish height of the loading message, highly translucent. It's quite a nice effect, which I think should be the Wikia default. 20:48: Tue 18 Sep 2012