Template:FixBunching

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This template employs intricate features of template syntax.

You are encouraged to familiarise yourself with its setup and parser functions before editing the template. If your edit causes unexpected problems, please undo it quickly, as this template may appear on a large number of pages.

Remember that you can conduct experiments, and should test all improvements, in either the general Template sandbox or your user space before changing anything here.

[edit]

Template documentation

This documentation is transcluded from Template:FixBunching/doc. (edit | history)

Note: The original name of this template was {{FixHTML}} which was moved and so that name is now a redirect template still doing the same task. The two names are interchangeable and entirely equivalent.

Purpose: This template is used to make right floating elements behave with others on the right margin.

The two most common wikimarkup symptoms that occur indicating this should be used ASAP, are:
1. bunched up and dislocated section edit links (normally some of these will be displaced down the page—frequently well down the page— and several will occur on the same line.)
2. Box structures such as combinations of infoboxes with another or an image, where corners are offset so the right top margin of one HTML element is dislocated left of the left bottom corner of the preceding (in page text order) HTML box element. (i.e. These occurrences are not obvious in edit changes in any one given browser, but even new browsers such as IE7 can display one thing, and other modern browsers display some other look... as a problem for other readers.)
See Wikipedia:How to fix bunched-up edit links, whose advice and techniques the template systematizes using the table elements method. (The div method fails in many cases on Microsoft browsers, in particular).

Parameters

The template has been written to "be obvious" so it won't be deleted by accident by an editor ignorant of the benefits. It takes three simple arguments (variable names controlling output modes) beg(in), mid(dle), and end. If placed between right floating image elements, the mid call may be omitted safely.

It will take an optional parameter 'left', which if defined (e.g. "|left=1|beg") will float the enclosed elements left instead of the normal right.
Procedure is easy as 1, 2, 3...
1. Place {{FixBunching|beg}} above the top image, infobox or other right floating HTML element.
2. Place {{FixBunching|mid}} above the next image, infobox or other right floating HTML element. And the next ... And the next ... And the next ... And the next, as needed. Do not forget to do this! If this step is forgotten, then introductory text layout becomes seriously broken (the text is shoved to the left side of the screen, with a lot of whitespace in the middle) in some browsers, such as Opera.
3. Place {{FixBunching|end}} BELOW the last (Bottom) image, infobox or other right floating HTML element.
- When used as a left margin encapsulation, only the first line needs the left switch parameter ({{FixBunching|beg}})

It overcomes many inconvenient HTML parsing issues (usually a side effect of parsing HTML box elements in different order of display) from different internet browsers—since wikipedia articles of any complexity tend to over populate the right margin with such HTML elements (Pictures, infoboxes, history (reign/dynasty) boxes, etc.)
- Consequently, ... this template can be used as a prophylactic measure to ensure a crowded page does not misbehave, for it was assidiously tested against known problem types on a half-dozen complicated article pages and each "fix" verified versus seven different browsers, including ones on the Macintosh and Unix systems.
When used, the template uses very little extra memory, and only a few tens of bytes of "Prexpansion template memory space", making it superior to Wikimarkup table elements it puts in place. It's very name and size (Comparative to "|-", "{|", or "|}" etc. prevents it being overlooked and misused in practice.

Example using Military Infoboxes

{{FixBunching|begin}}
{{Military conflict infobox
| ... (contents)
}}
{{FixBunching|mid}}
{{Military campaign infobox
| ... (contents)
}}
{{FixBunching|mid}}
[[Image:Boy give finger to Kaiser.png|...]]
{{FixBunching|mid}}
[[Image:Kaiser Moons boy.png|...]
{{FixBunching|end}}