Business Template/Talk

Business Template

Talk Page

This page is where differences in opinions about RocWiki pages are resolved, and notes are left from one contributor to another related to content.

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The readability and organization of this business template needs improvement. The implied record format maps only one location clearly with its attribute hours and accessibility. For businesses with more than one location, pages suffer a loss of readability, scattering closely related information up and down the headings. Also suffering a loss of readability and graphity, business with just one location get a page with too much space for colored headings than for information under them, especially with Yes/No tags under Alcohol, Accessibility, and single-line phone and websites.

Without nested tables, hours laid out like Delmonicos Italian Steakhouse with shifting left-right indent are hard to read, compared to Ariana Kabob House, even though Ariana has structurally more complicated hours. Again, readability, comprehensive ease, and graphity are the issue. —John Lam

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2007-04-23 22:02:33   I had 3 people totally not involved with rocwiki look at it here and they like the original format John. It looked really scattered the way you changed it dude. —PeteB

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2007-04-23 22:32:01   What's “scattered” are fields such as Hours, Accessibility, and Alcohol, for places with multiple locations. Some fields such as Hours and Accessibility properly belong to Location, while Alcohol belongs to the business. Normalizing the data and graphics not only clarifies it for readers, but also presages a move to a hCalendar and hCard-compatible macro blocks. —JohnLam

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2007-04-23 22:34:55   Why don't we have a community discussion on this before you decide what is right besides the current standard template? —PeteB

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2007-04-23 22:57:22   That exactly was the reason i started this page! I had hoped you would comment in reply or otherwise address the concerns, but i heard nothing while you reverted nearly all my edits on formatting Hours and such! For practical matters, the standard template fails except in simple cases. —JohnLam

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2007-04-24 01:15:43   John-I would like to give you a fair critique of how you think the template should be, but it's not clear to me exactly what you would like to see. If you could create another page (maybe called John's Business Template) with what you think the template should be, I would be glad to look at it and tell you what I think. —StevenDibelius

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2007-04-24 01:26:05   One thing I will say regarding the hours on Ariana Kabob House is that I don't like that you removed the bold from certain text. I also think adding lots of table formatting can help with the odd indents, if I correctly understand what you mean. I would make it:

—StevenDibelius

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2007-04-24 02:23:33   On a different but related topic, which of the following to people prefer:

A)

-or-
B)

The difference is in having heading widths be the same all the way down, or having heading widths vary based on data directly underneath.

—StevenDibelius

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2007-04-24 14:43:52   Steven, a problem with the first example is the wiki cannot currently support nested tables. It works only outside the context of other tables.

Otherwise, yes, i also like the bolded subheads and have restored them. —JohnLam

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2007-04-24 14:50:30   The reason I asked was actually because my proposed way of formatting the hours in the previous comment would require nested tables unless option B was chosen. Option B is actually a series of different tables rather than one single table. By making a series of tables, you can do something like the Hours example I made.

If you took my hours table above and plugged it in to the standard template table, you are right in that it would not format as desired because nested tables aren't supported:

If, however, you were to place hard returns between each section, meaning you no longer have one table but rather a series of them, you can do some of that more advanced formatting:

My question to the community then is: do you prefer having a single table that is an even width all the way down, or would you rather have the ability to add table formatting within each section but lose the clean look of a single table? Those would be A and B below.

A)

-or-
B)

I'm not saying that one is better than the other. This is just a possible solution I came up with and am looking for some feedback. Of course, what would really be nice is having nested tables. —StevenDibelius

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2007-04-24 15:26:10   Steven-Option B will get mauled if the store has multiple locations and people try to put them side-by-side...and why use all that space??? Just my concern. I had a complete stranger-someone I vaguely know in another department look at your post and they like Option A because "the categories are clearly laid out and you just go straight down the page and the information is right there". —PeteB

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2007-04-24 20:25:55   The consistent widths of Option A make it easier to group information at a glance. Likewise, the whitespace and consistent alignment in the Hours section of Option B makes it easier to read and store (and eventually automatically parse) information. —DaveMahon

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2007-04-25 10:53:25   I don't know anything about nested tables and everything else you're talking about, but I just want to throw in a vote for choice A. I think it has a much more finished, directory-like look as opposed to some information thrown together with pretty headings. —RachelBlumenthal