Talk:Developers
- IMHO, this page/namespace is terribly named ("Development and Hacking" or just "Development" would be better),
No Dev is better, shorter is better, this page should have a less strict corset.
- and frankly I think that this subpage is superfluous.
It is still a stub, but it is requested
- Why not just move these menu items to the front page?
IT WAS THAT WAY.
- I moved it because this section will grow and not all of it can fit on the front page. --hao2lian
Actually, maybe I'll do it myself. Heh. Adam Conover 17:08, 16 Feb 2004 (PST)
The reason this page exists is because it was requested in this way. Obviously lots of stuff can go in here. Obviously you can't at all times flood the frontpage with the stuff that goes here. Obviously you have to give it some time to develop.
This page should have a less strict corset. Heroist
Of course you have to give pages time to develop. My problem was that the name "Dev" with the subtitle "Hackers go here" was hardly descriptive, and made the information hard to get at. There's no "corset" -- I'm just giving my opinion on what setup I think would be best. That's how wiki works, after all. That said, I'm relatively happy with the current arrangement, since at least the page is titled "Developers". (And by the way, hao2lian, putting your message in the middle of mine is a little rude. It would better if you left an original copy of my post, then copied another one to make comments to. No offense or anything.) Adam Conover 11:19, 19 Feb 2004 (PST)
i want to move the dom inspector info i have on the theme page to its own page - it started to get too big for its britches. i figure it should go in this section, but what would be the proper title/address for it? i was thinking:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?title=Dev_:_Tools_:_DOM_Inspector
any thots/objections?
-Miahz 21:33, 24 Feb 2004 (PST)
Yes please do Heroist
i don't see why the links have to be in question form. what's wrong with the straight title forms: "Theme Developement"? if you want to use a "faq" style for the list, you might as well use common english: "How do I... make a theme?" i personally think the former is stronger, since the primary descriptive word is first, and easier to scan from a list. with the latter, the key words are buried a word or two deep.
-Miahz 00:32, 4 Mar 2004 (PST)
wouldn't the "correct" thing to do, instead of bolding the section titles, be to use
headings
? that would also create a table of contents.
-Miahz 15:52, 5 Mar 2004 (PST)
Look it is nice that pages are moved out of their category, it solves the long url problem, but this way you can't do breadcrumd navigation, nah mean? See to do list kerz Heroist
- i tend to side with you on this, heroist, but it is possible to do it "manually." for example: Dev/Theme Development/Theme Bugs if you read some of the articles skyfaller has linked to, one of the main arguements is that categories are somewhat arbitrary. "Theme Dev" could go in "Dev," "Themes," "XUL," "Customizations," etc. "loose" category-less articles allow things to be linked to build references and structure. i guess i see some of the benefits of skyfaller's proposal, but i'm not fully convinced yet.
-Miahz 18:08, 6 Mar 2004 (PST)
offcourse that can be done, but we need structure. Since themes and dom inspector etc. are meant for developers they go in dev. You could link to those pages from other ones but I doubt there is any benefit. (don't mention them at all). Please put back all dev category articles in the dev category. If they are not dev specific, consider an other place, if nescessary create a new category. I just say they should be in SOME category. Make choices. Stick to them. Heroist
- No, locking future users into the decisions that you have made in the past is bad. Don't make a choice if people in the future are going to locked in to your decision. That's why rigid hierarchies are bad, it's a Herculean task to change anything about them. -- Nelson Pavlosky 09:59, 7 Mar 2004 (PST)
- right. that's why we need to make sure we have the best solution before we set anything in stone. i also think there need to be more heads involved in this process than the few who currently appear to be interested. it's apparent that the initial implementation had some problems, so changes are necessary. this will affect everyone, so it's imperative that we get it right from here on out to avoid having to "start over" again.
-Miahz 18:04, 7 Mar 2004 (PST)
- right. that's why we need to make sure we have the best solution before we set anything in stone. i also think there need to be more heads involved in this process than the few who currently appear to be interested. it's apparent that the initial implementation had some problems, so changes are necessary. this will affect everyone, so it's imperative that we get it right from here on out to avoid having to "start over" again.
- The thing is that I'm worried that if we wait too long to make a change, we'll be stuck with the current hierarchical system, which is badly thought out in many ways. Every time someone adds an article to the existing structure, the longer it will take to dismantle it. If these were flat article names connected by link pages, it would be simple to move things around by changing what pages link where. However, because the context is in the actual name of the page, in order to rearrange anything you must change the page name, i.e. you must move the page and fix all of the links to the old page. If we wait too much longer, we'll need the entire staff of Wikipedia to change things. Failing to make a decision as to how we should change things may be a decision in itself, to stick with the current system. -- Nelson Pavlosky 20:23, 7 Mar 2004 (PST)
- You all think too much from the wikipedia standpoint. An encyclopedia is MUCH more complex and has WAY MORE dependencies between articles than a webbrowser info page. This because a webbrowser is way better structured than the world :). So please don't use abstract findings for a general context in a specific context. I see no problem at all here, I just see people moving stuff around for weak reasons. It is better to state orthogonal categories to solve the dependancy problem then to ban categories. Somewhat exagerated, but the way you view things, you are saying mozilla should be an operating system instead of a webbrowser, because future users are then not so locked into usage descisions. Heroist
- Actually Heroist, there is a problem with creating orthogonal categories: it kind of sucks having all of these long URLs floating around, it makes Accidental Linking impossible, or at least very difficult. However, there may be an argument for having a "short link" to a page without categories and a "long link" nested deep inside a hierarchy of subpages.
- Your argument "Don't take general findings and apply them to a specific context" is in itself an application of a general principle to a specific context ;-)
- Although Mozilla is a webbrowser, the XUL technology and all of the plugins and extensions and the different programs that are built off of Mozilla technology make it much more than a webbrowser. Although it is not an operating system, calling Mozilla simply a webbrowser is certainly oversimplifying things. If there were an article on every plugin, this would be a very extensive Wiki, and I think that it would in fact be desirable to have articles on everything. Wiki is not paper, we have the space.
- Finally, I would like to ask you to consider your words more carefully when you write on this wiki, you may not be aware that you may be hurting people's feelings. I find your tone of voice in the above post to be somewhat insulting: "I just see people moving stuff around for weak reasons." Calling my arguments weak doesn't make them weak, it just does harm to the sense of community that we should be cultivating. If I thought my arguments were weak, I wouldn't be promoting them, and it is not immediately obvious that I am wrong. I do not get the impression that you have considered my arguments very carefully, and I think that you ought to before denigrating them. -- Nelson Pavlosky 08:05, 8 Mar 2004 (PST)
- I'm coming to this late, but I support Nelson and Miahz completely. Heroist has always behaved poorly around here, as far as I can tell, and we're much better fixing this system instead of giving in to his snide refusals. Frankly, Heroist and hao2lian are the reason I stopped editing this wiki. Adam Conover 18:07, 23 Mar 2004 (PST)
I've made some formatting changes that I feel help readability and semantics. I hope I haven't stepped on anyone's toes but if so I apologize. -- Mattmoyer 18:58, 17 Mar 2004 (PST)
Given the above disagreement, my suggestion is controversial! Dare I suggest that it is time to retire this page? There have been good arguments presented for and against having this "central" page for the Development section. Two important reasons against are:
1) One does not generally expect a high-level heading (such as 'Development') on the main page to be a hyperlink, so I would hazard a guess that few people visit it.
2) There is a danger that links under the Development heading on the main page end up pointing to "new" articles which duplicate information linked to on this "central" page, which then get out of sync. This has already happened once, with the Mirrors article.
I think either all links should be on the main page, or all links should be on this page. At the moment, there are not enough links to worry about overfilling the main page, and so for consistency with the other areas on the main page it makes sense to put all links there.
If at some stage the main page becomes overfull, all links should be factored out into a page similar to this. In this case, it should be made clear on the main page that such a page exists (using a sentence saying as much, rather than just turning the heading into a hyperlink), and that any other links on the main page are just a "selection of popular articles". Mozcerize 17:00, 12 Nov 2004 (PST)
Asqueella has noted that "Someone has to make this page more readable." Unfortunately, she chose to do so on the page, so that note has been removed. Superm401 13:45, 6 Feb 2005 (PST)
- I did that on purpose. I'm not going to re-add the notice there, though. I'm he btw :) --asqueella 16:23, 20 Feb 2005 (PST)
