Board Thread:New Features/@comment-2240397-20160318153556/@comment-3032314-20160418174807

So I guess Wikia decided that previous builds were too good, or something, because this version is atrocious. Rather than grumbling about the badness of change, however, let's have some specfic criticism. To test the Infobox Builder out, I made a new infobox on my test wiki.

http://i.imgur.com/ponUmAN.png

There are four new buttons on the bottom of the editor:


 * The first is a redundant link to Fandom. Because the whole thing is wrapped in an, the page will be thinner and have duplicated content unless you open it in a new tab
 * The second is a link to the current wiki's main page. Unfortunately, it only breaks the editor unless you open it in a new tab
 * The third has an image of a magnifying glass, but it does absolutely nothing
 * The fourth has a "hamburger icon", but it doesn't do anything either

Conspicuously missing is the "source mode" button. You can get there by changing the template type to something other than "Infobox", but that feels like a hack to me. "B-but Darth, a good GUI completely eliminates the need for a source editor, so nobody will ever want to use that old piece of trash again!" TotallyNotDessamator has a point: for the majority of users, a good GUI will deprecate more complicated tools. However, this iteration of the Infobox Builder is far from "good".

For example, the Infobox Builder is still incapable of handling horizontal groups (i.e. ). You also cannot change the parameter names (  attributes) for... well, anything. There's no way to  data, and you can't add a   value either. There are a ton of other missing features, so you pretty much have to use a source editor... which the folks at Wikia are apparently trying to get rid of!

Fortunately, the Infobox Builder doesn't even activate if any of those features are present, so most existing stuff should be safe. If you're working on a new infobox, you can use the template type hack to keep this new tool away. If your situation is especially dire, you could add something like:

...but don't expect that to work forever.

To summarize, the Infobox Builder is still buggy and missing a lot of features. It really shouldn't be globally available yet, and the fact that there's still no opt-out means that ordinary users, the people who will benefit the most from this tool once it's finished, have to use roundabout tricks to accomplish basic tasks.