User blog comment:Susanolivia/Fixed Width, Sidebar, and the Removal of Monaco/@comment-3139726-20101020173231/@comment-1025281-20101026063756

I apologise; I did make a typo: I meant experienced users who definitely know CSS, rather than experienced users all knowing CSS. In any case, the CSS fix to make the page wider is not too complex: you use the classes ".WikiaPage", ".WikiaHeader" and ".WikiaFooter .toolbar" and set the widths to whatever percentage you like, e.g. . This will set the widths of the top Wikia Header, the main page width, and the toolbar width.

And we could go in circles about how important the fixed width is. The fact is, most wiki farms do use the fixed width, but they are not MediaWiki based, because there is no other MediaWiki-based commercial wiki farm that is close to the size of Wikia. It is therefore difficult to place the kind of direct comparison you are asking for.

Of course, I am fully aware that this is far from being the only design issue. However, in my opinion, they are merely readjustments, not downgrades. Yes, there are fewer links in the sidebar. But that might mean that every link in that sidebar has greater prominence and is less likely to be glanced over. Yes, you no longer have a direct link to recent changes by default. But it's so easy for advanced users to add this to "My Tools" that it shouldn't be an issue.

I wish to clarify that I don't like or dislike the new skin, and given the choice, I would stick with Monaco. However, I do feel I need to debunk comments that appear to be unfair, or not grounded in hard, solid fact, and these comments are many in number.