Thanks for the comments!
Characters Portal:
121.54.58.246 wrote: You really don't have none JC Staff sameface artwork for Uiharu and Yomikawa?
Believe me, I tried. Its not that there aren't colour images to work with its just that none of them looked good. Turns out those two characters are rarely drawn by Haimura in colour. The only decent image of Uiharu is in OT8, and I felt that the style that her face is drawn in is out of date. Same for Railgun Volume 2-3 covers. Yomikawa is just as tricky. Her design in OT6 wasn't up to scratch and her OT12 picture had her without clothes! I had to settle with anime character designs. Aleister is in the same boat.
Saten was a tricky one as well. The current image is the only recent one drawn by Haimura; but it also had Misaka in it. I had to edit Misaka out and put a background behind her. Kazakiri's pic is also an old one from OT6 but it still looks relatively okay compared to Uiharu and Yomikawa's pics.
Introduction Template:
Herald of Meridian wrote: The Introduction template looks good, although I don't like the original calligraphy design for the title of Index, as well as the gigantic Magic and Science symbols. The symbols are much better as "buttons" somewhere else in the template. I'm gonna handle the slider images myself. As for the choice of color, shouldn't we stick to one color instead? I think even at a low saturation, colors will stand out in the blue color scheme.
Sxerks wrote: The introduction template pushes content down the page too much, and it isn't something readers are going to be looking for primarily. The slider is OK though.
One thing at a time then.
1. Choice of Logo. I used the calligraphy logo because it the style and colour is the very same used by Dengeki to advertise the light novels thus the most appropriate; no other complicated reasons. Before that, I just had the Wiki-wordmark image there as a placeholder. I didn't like the fact that it was already in the Navbar. Any other suggestions?
2. Size of Symbols. We can always reduce the size. They are currently at the same size of the logo in the midde as a default choice by me. But I can see why you might not like the size of them.
3. Colour. Herald, can you elaborate on what you are referring to? Is it the use of different colours for different sections?
4. Pushing down content? Depends on what the cause of it is. Sxerks, most of the pushing down of content comes from the Slider which you have already said is OK. The other thing pushing content down is the Index logo at the top. Assuming that the logo stays the same size, I actually don't think content will be pushed down. The reason being that the introduction template accounts for things already on the front page. In particular, the Helping Out section has been squeezed below the Slider and the Anime Overview template has been made useless (will be removed) due to there already being a link in the Slider to the Anime page.
Not only that, I've made other suggestions in the Improvements section of Sandbox2 that if implemented should make the front page easier to navigate. The big ones being: reducing the size of the Featured Article section to only include the first paragraph; cleaning up the News section by keeping the latest entry and removing the rest (only due to it currently being a period of slow news; we can add more to it later even if it is just a new volume). We have entries going back to October last year when even NT12's release is old news! I'll also move the Franchise Overview section upwards above featured media (maybe above featured article as well? things need to be reorganized regardless).
More questions, insights and criticisms are welcome!