User blog comment:Rupert Giles/Prototype for a new article layout/@comment-876022-20141212040549

The progression and development of the Venus skin/theme needs to listen more towards the feedback of users than the previous incarnation did, that being Oasis. Many have stated the removal of the toolbar is a mistake and I feel the same way. Although no longer will the URL inspector in Chrome and other browsers hide the links as they are in the cog on the left of the article, there are things that can be changed to fix it.

The custom menu (#articleNavSettings) shouldn't disappear when you no longer hover over it and the menu should appear when clicking the cog. I would also like to see a interface message to replace "Admin" (Admin Dashboard) in the custom menu so that it can be changed to be more specific for the community at hand.

The interface QQX language turns various characters in the Wiki Navigation into   and other html codes. Advertisements will still sometimes forget that they should be silent and are bigger than the slot they are in, as seen here. This also goes into how the oggHandler does not work as intended on articles in the new layout. Just something I figured I would mention.

After messing with the text, I've been more inclined to see it at no more than 16px and a line height of 20 to 22px. If it was my way, I would try to adopt the three sizes of text that some news sites use on news articles.

Infobox templates are in disrepair with the new layout as I've had to go and change a lot to make them fit appropriately in the section provided. Some articles that have the infobox twice the size of the text look even more weird when that infobox is pushed down by advertisements, or Recent Activity when logged in. I've also tried to figure out why in many articles that a image set to float left will not appear at the top of an article as it did in Monobook, Quartz, Monaco, and the Oasis skins and be farther down the article than it should.

If there are any positives, it resides in the Wiki Navigation being more aesthetically pleasing. That in itself is not enough to make up for the issues that need to be fixed either locally or globally.

As a final bit, I would like to know how much of changing Venus, the new skin, is under the same policy the Global Navigation is under for the entirety of any given community. If not, I have a lot of fixes I'd like to implement to make it functional. 04:05, December 12, 2014 (UTC)