Template talk:Nanotechnology

This is a navbox for use in articles relating to Nanotechnology. The other nanotech navboxes are Template:Nanomat and Template:MolecNano. Antony-22 17:34, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

There is now a footer alternative to this sidebar, Template:Nanotech2. The sidebar should be used for direct subarticles of the main Nanotechnology article; for other articles either the sidebar or footer may be used. Antony-22 09:44, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

For a complete list of nanotech navboxes, see User:Antony-22/Navboxes. Antony-22 08:03, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Design change
This navbox had become quite cluttered and somewhat drab... I would like to replace it with the navbox at left. I think it would help to only list the top few articles in each subfield, and bring back the individual navboxes for each subfield. LEt me know what you think. Antony-22 (talk) 01:06, 24 November 2007 (UTC)


 * It's been about a week, so I will make the change shortly. Antony-22 18:06, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

The inherent direction of nanoscience and nanotechnology (nanoionics) was introduced. (Despotuli (talk) 07:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC))

With the recent publication of the Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems, it makes sense to add "productive nanosystems" as a sub-topic under Molecular Nanotechnology. -- WillWare (talk) 16:09, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Recent move/update
Per the note at the top of the template page, I hope today's update isn't considered "major"! Sardanaphalus (talk) 23:22, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

PS For the record, the color lightness/contrast for the backgrounds used in this and similar templates in Category:Nanotechnology templates doesn't work too well here; the text can be difficult to read.

Colour update
The template said to make a note here before making changes, so here it is. I've modified the colours just a little bit, hope you guys don't mind. The previous darker green colour made the blue links hard to read for people with certain visual impairments. I've just lightened it up a little. TIM KLOSKE 22:51, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Double column render
Please stop putting 2 of style="background:" at the beginning. This is causing double rendering problem which is not necessary. --75.154.186.241 (talk) 21:13, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

New Design
Hi All I've done this new design and hoping to replace the old one. Please have your say.. Në&#359;&#924;&#466;&#324;&#287;er Peace Talks 13:24, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I've made some edits - the direct subarticles belong at the top, and I've made the links black instead of grey so that they don't seem washed-out against the dark green. I think the color scheme still needs some work; the white boxes in the dark green is a bit too stark a contrast.  I also think that reducing the text size makes it harder to read and it should be increased back to what it is in the current navbox.


 * Lastly, and this is not something I'm an expert on, I notice you've constructed this as a table rather than starting from the generic navbox template. I'm not sure if this is an issue but you might want to look into the guidelines on that.


 * Antony-22 (talk) 02:17, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. Any particular reason why the subarticles belong in the top? I have no issues with it but like to know why top :-). I've seen few navboxes which are developed like this. I think this method is better as we dont have to depend on another template and should render much faster (anyway speed is insignificant and did not influence my decision). I've reduced the text size slightly so that it blends in with the articles without making the navbox so prominent. And also I have followed the font sizes on some of the more widely used navboxes and it is almost the size of the text on the article so I dont think that this is a issue. Since you seem to be the only person editing these articles these days I am going ahead with the change. Please feel free to discuss any changes required. Thanks again Në&#359;&#924;&#466;&#324;&#287;er  Peace Talks 11:11, 11 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I've made some more tweaks and I think the new design has come out quite well. For consistency we should also redo the other nanotech navboxes (Template:ImpNano, Template:Nanomat, Template:Nanoelec, Template:MolecNano) to conform with the new design.  It should be easy - we just need to take this navbox and change the colors and the text.  Do you want to split up those navboxes so that each of us works on two?  Thanks!  Antony-22 (talk) 22:04, 25 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I have some specimens here for your review. Antony-22 (talk) 04:41, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi Antony sorry for not responding to your earlier request.. I never looked at this talk page after the last entry. Anyway the changes you have done look great. Në&#359;&#924;&#466;&#324;&#287;er  Peace Talks 19:31, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Footer template
As a result of discussion in a semi-related thread at WT:PHYS, I've put together a footer-style navigation template containing the same links as this template (template:nanotech footer). If you feel it would be useful, by all means use it. If not, don't. I'm not attempting to step on anyone's toes; just offering it as an additional tool. I've pointed the WT:PHYS crowd here for discussion re. templates; alternatively, nanotechnology editors can feel free to start a thread over there (or anywhere else appropriate; just leave a link so that interested editors can find it). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 07:56, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I just became aware of this recently. There was actually a footer template made a long time ago at Template:Nanotechnology subfields, as a result of this discussion.  I rather like the new version, though, so I've redirected the old version to the new one.  Antony-22 (talk) 04:40, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Font Change
The Serif Font on the table didn't fit with the traditional Wikipedia template. I used "Arial" as a replacement for the Palatino font. Questions and Concerns can be posted on my talk page. Rifasj123 (talk) 03:13, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Template colors
(copied from User talk:Antony-22) ...Your rationale in this revert was "It's important to have distinctive, aesthetically pleasing boxes to aid navigation". Why is this important? The trend for years, ever since sidebar was formalised, has been to move away from custom styling except where it provides some tangible benefit to the reader. Here, your chosen stying is arbitrary (there is nothing in the chosen colour scheme which relates any particular field of nanotech to its colour), distracting (the colours are bold and clash with the article body) and potentially damaging to article accessibility (whether by the letter of WP:ACCESS it is prohibited to change the colour of links or not, it is plainly not appropriate to do so on a whim). Lastly, "aesthetically pleasing" is in the eye of the beholder, and the general move to vanilla styling on sidebar templates strongly suggests that the defaults are aesthetically pleasing to a majority of editors. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 17:12, 15 August 2012 (UTC)


 * The color scheme is not something that is done on a whim or for arbitrary reasons. The styling of the templates was specifically thought out to provide tangible benefits: the common visual layout ties all the nanotechnology templates together, and the differing colors for each topic makes a visual distinction between them.  Imposing a commons style on all navboxes would be damaging to the encyclopedia because it would deny the reader a visual cue as to how different articles relate to each other.  Also, I disagree that there has been a move towards the vanilla sidebars in general; in fact, most of the sidebars I see around Wikipedia do have custom color schemes, and I don't recall seeing a whole lot of vanilla ones.  Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 17:34, 15 August 2012 (UTC)


 * And I also want to say, I fully support the change from a table to a sidebar. I would have done it myself eventually, and I thank you for putting in the time to reformat it, colors or no.  Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 17:36, 15 August 2012 (UTC)


 * All of the physics sidebars migrated to the vanilla colour scheme at least a year ago. The computing ones moved several years ago. In fact, within the general field of technology-related templates, these are the only ones I recall which use such a scheme (or at least such a very bold styling). All I can say to your rebuttal is that I don't think it's a strong enough answer to the three issues described in the initial post. At this point, at least two editors disagree with the colouring, and I've yet to see anyone else support it. I think it's time that it were dropped. AFAICS that means nanoelectronics, nanomaterials and nanotechnology implications should be reverted. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 06:35, 16 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Two in favor and one opposed to a change doesn't quite constitute a consensus. (You are proposing a change rather than a revert, since the navboxes originally had the current colors.)
 * If you're reacting to the bold colors themselves, than please feel free to suggest an alternative design that has the same benefits that I describe above. I'm not opposed to a change, I just think that the lack of any color removes visual aids that are useful to the reader.  The current template designs came about at the suggestion of another user who proposed them to replace my own original designs.  Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 09:20, 16 August 2012 (UTC)


 * There is no "visual aid" here. The colours and styling have nothing to do with the subject matter, and it is entirely theoretical that anyone sees this styling and thinks "ooh, a nanotech article" (especially considering that the majority of these articles and templates have the word "nanotechnology" prominently displayed somewhere at the top anyway). The current template designs are over three years old and stem from a point well before the general standardisation effort for sidebars had taken off. This is not simply "one versus two": there were three points in my initial post, which together form a stronger argument IMO than the single point used to rebut (that "the common visual layout ties all the nanotechnology templates together", which is still the case if they use the same styles as the majority of modern sidebars). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:53, 16 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Again, I'm not opposed to a redesign; I think that the completely plain version that you made lacks qualities that make for a good navbox, but I think we can come up with a design that satisfies both of our criteria. I have noticed that navboxes today tend to use overview images rather than color as their distinguishing feature, and perhaps this can be used to reduce the reliance on color in this set of navboxes.  Again, if you would like to make a new design, please do so and we can collaborate on making it mutually acceptable.  I'd be happy to propose a new design myself, but I'm currently traveling and it will be a couple of weeks before I can sit down and deeply think about it.
 * As an aside, I meant two people versus one, and that doesn't count the other editor who actually designed the current navbox style. Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 11:49, 16 August 2012 (UTC)


 * It's been two and a half weeks; just to be clear, do you want to continue pursuing this? I do have other tasks to attend to that don't involve the color of navboxes, so I'm only going to spend time on this if you really feel it's necessary and are willing to come to some agreement on a new design.  Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 00:46, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the current version looks fine, but I would be happy to entertain alternatives. Frietjes (talk) 17:52, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Proposal
I've made this new design to deal with the issues in the discussion above. This design replaces the bold colors of the old design with a much more subtle color scheme, since the aesthetic has changed in the three years since the old design was made. The design will also still be recognizable across the five or so nanotechnology navboxes, with the color usage distinguishing them. Hopefully this design will satisfy everybody's concerns. Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 19:03, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
 * this is fine with me, although I would say you could just use the standard border color "#aaa". Frietjes (talk) 19:15, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
 * the use of black links is problematic per Help:Link color and per WP:COLOR. Frietjes (talk) 20:07, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The guideline is that "Links should clearly be identifiable as links to readers", which they are here because they're clearly in a navbox, and black on white is already optimal for contrast. Black is also a more neutral color; the default blue could potentially make it seem overcolored. Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 20:25, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
 * That's just the first nine words of the sentence. In full it's
 * Links should clearly be identifiable as links to readers, so don't try to disguise a link as regular text or use a strange color on a link for no good reason.
 * note in particular the remainder of the sentence which you partially quoted. Regular text in Wikipedia is universally black: use of black for links therefore disguises the links as regular text. The neutrality of black is immaterial: the use of blue for links is so widespread that anybody who has difficulty picking out blue will probably have means for compensating. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:33, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, this is what it looks like with blue links. I still think that black links are clearly identifiable as links, regardless of color, because they're in a navbox; regular text is never in navboxes.  If you really feel strongly about blue links, though, I suppose I can live with that.  Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 01:50, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * that is a perfectly acceptable solution for me (I updated the live template). I made one minor change in the sandbox to show the current version with the default #aaa border coloring, but I really don't have any strong opinion about this aspect, just that it is one fewer deviation from the default (per wp:deviations). Frietjes (talk) 16:04, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * This one does have regular text: right at the top I see "Part of a series of articles on" which is not linked. Anyway, regarding the green headings: in Vector skin, the contrast ratio for is 8.06 according to this tool; Monobook users get a slightly deeper blue - the contrast ratio for  is 9.74. In both cases, the text is WCAG 2.0 AAA compliant. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:06, 19 September 2012 (UTC)