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Hi Beth Looks like you're moving right along. A word of caution: using "div"s do give you more control over the layout. You can do some very complex things with them. They're generally compatible with wiki's, but sometimes create problems for you in unexpected ways. On the genealogy Wiki, for example, some folks found that they interfered with TOC layout, particularly if you were trying to force the TOC to appear somewhere other than where the system wanted it. But this is looking good. Q 08:41, 7 June 2008 (EDT) Bill, what is TOC layout? Table of contents? --Beth 09:58, 7 June 2008 (EDT) Yes, Table of Contents the tag __NOTOC__ kills the TOC. adding __TOC__ puts the TOC at the point you place the tag. This is a wiki specific tag. Doesn't have much to do with HTML, except it works with it (if you are on a wiki) here's an example of how it can be used using a small table layout (I've created some subsections on this page to make the TOC appear in the third cell: In this case, I've put the TOC into the last cell at the right.
Suggestions needed here. Some of the categories in my menu should have a subpage with locations in boxes. For instance, I want to enter data in Coleman Land Records for the states of North Carolina and Virginia. So I want boxes with the state names on that page. I would then select the box North Carolina and enter my data. The problem is that I don't want to enter all 50 states and every country in the British Isles. This would waste pages that may never be used. But on the other hand I don't want a potential contributor to have to jump through hoops to enter the data for a different state. I need some help. --Beth 09:27, 7 June 2008 (EDT) This is one of the reasons I backed off using a wiki environment for systematic data entry---to do this right you need a place for everything, and everything in its place. That was a) a lot of work, b) most of the work wasn't likely to be used, c) made for very cluttered pages.
And you'd have to do that for EACH and EVERY distinct data set...Tax records, Land records, census records, etc. ...it just never ended. So I quit doing that, concluding this was for someone who wanted to dedicate their every waking moment to the task. What I think I'd recommend here is that you create the setting to include the locations you are personally interested in, then if someone wants to expand that to include other areas, they can have at it. if you wanted to focus on a specific state (like your Coker in GA project), you might could do a list of each of the counties in that state
Its not HARD, just tedious. See below for a list of states in tablular format. You'll have to figure out what to call each page---e.g, Census records for Coleman in Georgia and add that to each State name. I've added that title format to the first entry in the table. Now, if you want to do this for every Country---you'll need a list of countries...but the concept is the same. Here's a start: Census Records by Country The way HTML tables work is that the size of individual cells expand to meet the space requirements for the content of each cell. It adjusts the overall column width to fit whatever the requirements are for the largest cell in the column. Unless you are trying to force a certain size on a column, this isn't something you have to worry about. It just happens automatically.
[add comment] [edit] FIPS CODES [7 June 2008]if you want to create a page for every county in the United States, you should be looking at the US FIPS Codes. These are standardized numeric codes that the Federal government uses in their data bases to identify counties in each state. Go here: http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/co-codes/states.htm to see a list of states with links to each states list of FIPS codes for each of its counties. Did you know that there are 160 separate counties in the State of Georgia? Multiply that by 50 to get an estimate of the total number of county pages you'll need. Some states have more counties, some less, but that's going to give you a ball park. [add comment] [edit] List of States [11 June 2008]
Hi Bill, This is great. Now I put this on my Coleman Land Records page and bracketed North Carolina and voila I will have a page to enter my records. The page could use some prettying up and I need to add header for the United States. Now if someone wishes to add another state they can bracket that and create the page. Now I can use your state template for other pages that need the template and create one for the census data, etc. Why want this work? It doesn't seem that hard particularly when you did all of the tedious work. <g>--Beth 11:26, 7 June 2008 (EDT) Oh, it will work alright. Just remember how many Countries there are, and how many different Counties/States within each country. There's a place for everything in this system. But "everything" covers a LOT of territory. Its not that this kind of scheme can't do the job, it can. its just not something that I'd personally want to do. But if this is what you want to do, and I think it probably is, then this is one way to go about doing it. Q 11:37, 7 June 2008 (EDT) Thanks Bill, for this great table! I've already put it on my Surname: Jackson page. Previously, I had just a long list of states and this is much better. I'm not sure yet just what all it will link to - I'm just feeling my way; and I understand what you are saying about so much ground to cover. Is there an area we can go to in order to find templates like this? Or are there any more? --Janiejac 11:43, 8 June 2008 (EDT) Glad it was useful. This isn't exactly a template in the wiki sense of the word, but if you look around at USGENWeb, and other places of similar interest, there are lots of tables of states and county lists that can be used as a basis for doing something like this. I usually just make them up as the need arises, but if you want a "ready made", they can be found. Unfortunately, they usually come with a lot of "built in's" that you have to get rid of, which is usually more trouble than its worth---easier to start from scratch. What I do is try and find a good list of the things I want in the table, copy that, and build the table from there. Maybe a "how to" page describing this process would be helpful, but I'm not sure how many folks would really have the need. Q 12:39, 8 June 2008 (EDT)
[add comment] [edit] List of Pensions [10 June 2008]
And you seem to have master the essential elements of table making with HTML. Q 18:31, 8 June 2008 (EDT) Hi Bill, I just copied your format. I learn well by examples. That is the method I have used to know the little bit I do know about WeRelate. I look at the edit page of something I want to duplicate and then I can usually figure it out. Although I don't always retain it in my memory. When I have the time, must cook supper, I will check out another of your tables and find out how to color my borders. I do like colors, probably use the color scheme on the main Coleman page. --Beth 18:50, 8 June 2008 (EDT)
Basically, what I did above was to make the entire table "thistle", then made the individual cells white. The fourth line down I made LOOK like a black border, but actually its a row of cells whose color is black. The "colspan=3" basically merges the three cells together. Its a little tricky to make work right. The XYZ is in there just to force the cell to have some finite width. The "." in the last column is to do the same thing for row height. Without this fiddling your table would look like And with a different background color
And with a different border style
Q 18:57, 8 June 2008 (EDT) [add comment] [edit] List of Census Years for U.S. [16 June 2008]
I created the template Template:USCensusTable.--Beth 22:01, 16 June 2008 (EDT) [add comment] [edit] Templates with Parameters [21 June 2008]Here's a suggestion to make it easier to re-use your templates on other pages: Templates can have parameters. This is an advanced feature, but it allows you to use the same template to display slightly-different text. For example, the following table of Coleman births is generated by {{Template:USStateLinks|Coleman Births}}
Thanks Dallan. There seems to be a combination of square brackets and curly braces in the MediaWiki to meet every problem! I've never gone beyond the single set of curly braces for a template, but its good to know this tool exists. It would have been very cumbersome to have to create separate templates everytime you needed a list of state links for specific data sets. This does save a lot of work. Q 12:37, 10 June 2008 (EDT) Wow, thanks Dallan. Saves a lot of typing.--Beth 13:27, 10 June 2008 (EDT)
Bill and I got this to work. Must have been a mistake I made early on; but all is well now. --Beth 09:48, 21 June 2008 (EDT) [add comment] [edit] Summarize the highlights of this discussion to Help pages? [10 June 2008]This page is probably the best source of information right now on how to create and use templates. Once you're happy with the results, could you please summarize the highlights on Help:Templates, and perhaps also consider creating a Help:Family Exchanges page? It would be nice to show others how this is done. We could even feature this Coleman Family Exchange page along with the help pages.--Dallan 11:52, 10 June 2008 (EDT)
[add comment] [edit] Adjustment of Banner [10 June 2008]Beth, I've adjusted the banner as we disussed. This was done basically by trimming a bit from the left margin (reduced from 20% to 5%), and elongating the image, so that you got a longer image with the same heigth. Works reasonably well, though there is of course, some distortion. The lady in the center is a bit more matronly than she is in the original, but otherwise, this is not really noticeable.
Would you like to follow up with Dallan's request to adding a help page for family Exchanges? Q 12:48, 10 June 2008 (EDT)
Also, you asked about the blank spot in the template's bottom right corner---a missing cell when "West" and "Virginia" were combined. Not much we can do about that other than add an empty cell as a place holder. Alternatively, we could kill the "Washington DC" Cell, that would leave us with exactly 50 states that could be arrayed in a 5x10 format. But I think you need DC. Q 12:53, 10 June 2008 (EDT)
[add comment] [edit] Category [22 June 2008]Hi Bill, I created the category special projects because that is what they use on Wikia and one person did not like the idea of categorizing the pages as family exchanges. I did not have any additional input from other users. Adding family exchange to the category is fine with me or we could have the category by that name and delete special projects. I am the only one using the special projects category unless someone has selected the category very recently. --Beth 21:11, 15 June 2008 (EDT)
[add comment] [edit] Surname pages [25 June 2008]Hi Bill, Look at Surname:Jackson; a different approach; but I am not sure that this is the intended use of the surname page; however it is interesting.--Beth 21:14, 15 June 2008 (EDT)
By the way, I played a bit with the help page today. The basic problem is to create something that's easy to duplicate by others. Div's are by definition more difficult than tables, but DIV's probably give a better look. I don't plan on relearning how to use DIV's, so not sure where I'm going with this. Q 21:21, 15 June 2008 (EDT)
The problem with the DIV's is that you need something that can be easily adapted by someone with little understanding of HTML. If your son can do that, please have him take a shot at it. I'll be most interested in seeing what he can do with the problem. Here's the starter page: Help:Family Exchange Pages Q 22:01, 15 June 2008 (EDT)
Beth, FYI, since it appears that you can't exactly "watch" a help page---this is to let you know that I've completed a shot at the Help:Family Exchange Pages. This will at least give you, or your son, a starting point. There are some issues with setting up this help page. I would have liked to have made this so easy that anyone could do it. I don't think I succeeded. Some aspects of this are just going to remain hard, I think, but perhaps someone can improve on this to the point that others will find the explanation "drop dead easy". I've briefly discussed some of the issues on the talk page for the help page. I believe the use of Div's is going to be problematical, but setting it up as a table is also difficult. Also, Creating a "Banner" is going to be a problem for many. This just isn't a skill set that most genealogists normally have in their tool box. Its not that hard, but most folks would never do something like that on their own. They can learn how to do it, but most will never use the skill again. Worse, most will recognize that and say "Why bother". I believe you could create a generic banner that could be used with any surname, and that might be a solution. Q 20:42, 21 June 2008 (EDT)
[add comment] [edit] Adjusting DIV [25 June 2008]Beth i made a couple of small adjustments to the width of the DIV. The purpose was to prevent the display field from overlapping the advertisements on the right. I don't really care that one obscures the other, its just that it looks sloppy. This may look different on different systems using different displays. I don't know how to test for that other than having totally separate systems sitting on my desk. Dallan has multiple systems I believe so you might ask him about the appearance of the display. Q 09:05, 22 June 2008 (EDT) Bill, I don't believe the previous version overlapped the ads on my screen; but if it did on yours then I am happy that you changed it. Hopefully the new version will work for everyone without overlapping the ads.--Beth 11:00, 22 June 2008 (EDT)
[add comment] [edit] More uses for templates [24 June 2008]Beth, I've learned so much following your ideas on the Coleman Family Exchange. I thought you might be interest in what I did to make browsing through the Rumgay Family Exchange pages easier. An example is on the Rumgay Banns and Marriages in Fife page. I took the headings from the Menu and turned them into a Template with the place as the variable. Now someone who is interested in marriages in a certain area can also easily switch over to check out deaths in the same area. --Lauren 10:40, 24 June 2008 (EDT)
Good question! I guess I need a little more thinking and tweaking on the names. If we assume that most of the WeRelate users are American, it's easy to get away with "Rumgay in Alabama", where the Scottish equivalent of "Rumgay in Fife" might be more confusing.--Lauren 11:25, 24 June 2008 (EDT) [add comment] [edit] More parameters [25 June 2008]I made the surname a parameter in the welcome and menu templates. This simplified the instructions on the help page. Feel free to change it back if you don't like it though.--Dallan 13:06, 25 June 2008 (EDT) Also, here's another possibility: create your XXXX family exchange page with just the following text: {{Template:Family Exchange And you'll get the same result as if you copied the Prototype Family Exchange Page. Eventually we can enhance Template:Family Exchange so that if you don't pass in an image name, it skips the image HTML code and doesn't display the image. But it looks like I have to upgrade to a more-recent version of MediaWiki to do that.--Dallan 13:06, 25 June 2008 (EDT) Thanks Dallan. I'll check that over. I noticed some of the tweaks, which are mostly simplifications. I'm all for making things simpler. I'll also check out some of the things you've done to see what neat tricks I can learn today. Q 19:34, 25 June 2008 (EDT) |