Site improvements

Comment here!

Over the past few months - actually since the beginning of the year and then some - we've been working on making improvements to the site. Some it is for aesthetics while others are for ease of use and greater functionality. Read on for a more detailed listing of what we've worked on!

Maps

Perhaps the biggest and most complicated project was working out how maps work on the site. Working heavily with code-wiz Pecoes, we mapped out how we wanted things to function and came up with some nice shiny tools that readers should find useful.

Map notes

Class and profession trainers

Shops and other areas of note

Click on the above maps to expand them into their own lightbox. The maps and legend respond to screen size. You can look via the legend or on the map itself; either way you'll get the location you need. You can also locate coordinates yourself by passing the mouse over the map. The symbols on the map are now standardized, so going from page to page you should be able to recognize at a glance those things most important to you.

This functionality also allows us to size the maps however we need on the page.

Map Coordinates

We figured it was hard using the coordinates template at times to see exactly what location was being pinpointed due to the size of the hover map. Now, when you click on the coordinates shown on a page, the same new map lightbox will open and the exact coordinate will show on the map.

Here's an example:

^{[70, 58]}

Notice the map hover functionality is still maintained.

The golden color also matches another template devised that works directly with map images:

Dalaran

Table of Contents

Sometimes our table of contents can be rather large, or maybe they just look out of place on some screens. Even then, for really long pages, you'd have to either scroll through to where you want to continue reading or go back to the TOC at the top.

Here's what we did (you can test it with this page's TOC!):

• Clicking on the small square icon within the TOC will detach the table. You can move this anywhere on the page you want, and the content shifts to accommodate the empty space.
  • Clicking the arrow button will return you to the top of the page.
  • Clicking the reset button will return the box to its original detached position.
  • Clicking the "x" will reattach the TOC as it would normally appear, docked, on the page.
• When scrolling through the page, the box stays fixed, meaning no matter where you are, you'll always have it at your fingertips. This way you can click on any of the TOC links at any time, without having to scroll all the way back up to the top.
• What if you don't want it detached? Well, click on the small icon immediately to the left of the edit link on any header and you'll be sent right back to the TOC.

Class pages

We've had an enormous revamp of the class pages. Readers no longer have to go to a handful of pages to get the information they need. Instead, each class page will have the following information at minimum: Background/Introduction, Races, Specializations, Stats, Skills (Core abilities and talents), and Glyphs.

Other classes, such as pet classes, will have additional information. Some even have extended information, TCG images, racial advantages, etc.

Aesthetics

Reward sections

As of now, this is still a work in progress, but the end result is that hopefully every page will eventually have the rewards (armor/weapons/items) presented like this:

This item is a reward for the following class/spec:

Druid	Monk	Priest

This makes it easy to tell at a glance what class and spec the item is intended for.

Search bar

Up in the top right of the site is the search bar. Now we have an image placed within that will reflect either the current expansion (so Mists of Pandaria for now) or the current in-game holiday. This dovetails nicely with the change in wordmark that occurs with each holiday.

Past changes

Just in case you missed it, here are some other changes we worked into the site:

• Adding 3d model viewing support, partnering with wowhead
• Greatly enhanced blogs that are featured on the main page
• At-a-glance improvements to infoboxes to show normal, elite, rare, and rare elite
• Incorporating TCG image parameters into templates; creating a TCG box for pages where this was not possible.

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If I've missed something, it's because we're busy working on things almost all the time. We've got some plans for future tweaks that we hope you'll find useful!