Thread:Hackey5/@comment-4189499-20150409024114/@comment-5645428-20150415123800

Sorry for the late reply. I'm quite enjoying this discussion since I don't often get to talk about this kind of stuff with others here, and I'm always interested to listen to others' perspectives on these kinds of things.
 * The URL of this page takes up a third of the bar, and that is in fact how much most of my 30+ tabs' URLs occupy, with perhaps only a couple taking up just more than half. I would consider using almost the entire upper region of the browser window for an almost entirely empty bar a waste of space, where far more utility could otherwise be implemented (and I'm using a mere laptop, compared to the huge monitors people use nowadays). I must question where you got the idea that you "can't customise how Firefox looks". It has the largest collection of add-ons and customisations compared to any other browser! On the other hand, my Chrome has this quirk that dropdowns and popovers momentarily fill themselves with the appearance of the page's full content, like a squished snapshot. Do you know why this would be happening?
 * I'll have to dispute your points when it comes to making impressions. I don't think we'll be deterring readers with visuals quite as captivating as we've got here. Those wikis which are striking by their uniqueness are the ones that get noticed; something that differs from the typical Wikia rigidness. But of course, a desire to find content will overrule one's critical analysis of styling, and to decide to join a wiki is definitely more motivated than some pretty colours, these aspects equally sought to be fulfilled here. I had a look at the hitchhiker wiki, but then I didn't really see much of an issue. Simply, the background image sticks out more against the text, which is a given when seeking to use transparency for that effect. It has to be taken into account that everyone's experience is different based on their utilisation of technology alongside their personal preferences, and I would imagine each of us are not seeing the same page identically. As I said, I will eventually get around to making some polls to gain input on the site visuals so to hear from a wider perspective.


 * Traditional documentation is an inherited MediaWiki feature. Wikia imported a number of templates as the defaults included on all new wikis, and this is why it has been widely adopted, not specifically being chosen as a preferred means. For especially complicated templates or slight variations of the same template (userboxes, for example), this form of documentation may be useful and work well when used right, but I reiterate that the less pages there are to manage, the better. All related content being in one place is always more convenient, and where just a few lines of code is concerned, it is pointless having to navigate to a completely separate page just to edit the short description that explains what that code does. There are benefits in using both methods, but on-page documentation is more efficient when involving basic templates, which are far more common.