Chemistry Template‑class

This template is within the scope of WikiProject Chemistry, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of chemistry on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChemistryWikipedia:WikiProject ChemistryTemplate:WikiProject ChemistryChemistry Template This template does not require a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

This current discussion is about format, layout, content (parameters), and application howto of the Chemical infoboxes. Discussion older than several months, and now outdated, are archived. Planning and progress of implementation of these infoboxes to the numerous articles is discussed and (where possible) organized in the Chemicals WikiProject, part of the Chemistry WikiProject.

I have a few thoughts on editing the template, but I don't want to upset people by editing first and asking questions later. Also see my comments in the previous section on a short form.

1. A lot of thermodynamic properties are included, yet many other things are not. Is this by choice, or is it just an accident of evolution? I would definitely like to include coordination geometry for metal compounds, and possibly include a section on hydrates too. I think there should also be a link to related compounds, as they do with chemical elements- thus the page on NaCl would link to NaF, NaBr, NaI, LiCl and KCl. There are quite a few other pieces of data omitted from the template, such as dielectric constant, molar conductivity, dipole moment, viscosity, vapour pressure at STP or SATP, refractive index, lambda-max and extinction coefficient, major IR bands, 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR chemical shifts (for organics), mass spectrum information, magnetic susceptibility, magnetic moment (where appropriate), symmetry point group, basic chemical properties (besides the acidity currently included)- and these are just a few things that spring to mind! The NMR, IR and possibly MS could be links to scans of the spectra. Many of these are properties I would consider to be more important than those currently in the template- but if we put EVERYTHING in, it may be quite overwhelming- so do we need to limit what is included? If so, what goes in and what stays out?

2. Isn't specific gravity rather redundant when density is included?

3. Don't the Safety and Precautions sections really belong in an MSDS rather than here? We include a link to an MSDS in the template box, so anyone wanting serious safety information will look there (or at an external link if provided). It seems silly to clutter up much of this box with a repetition of the MSDS information. The purpose of a page on a chemical compound is to provide a summary of properties, uses, etc. of that compound, it should not try to be a watered-down MSDS. I would suggest a simple summary term like "Hazards"- and then put in simple words such as Irritant, Carcinogen, Toxic, along the lines of the Aldrich catalogue. If someone wants the full MSDS sheet they click on the link.

4. Should things like density and phase be given for STP, or should we use SATP? I think of benzene as a liquid, not a solid! I think many density values are given at temperatures other than 0 °C. Also, shouldn't the default for temperature be °C rather than K? Other than NIST, I don't know of any chemists who routinely use anything other than °C to report the majority of their information on chemical compounds- but then I am an organic chemist rather than a physical chemist!

Walkerma 20:15, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I raised some of these questions some time ago, when I was quite new to Wikipedia. I still think most of the above comments apply. Now we have more chemists active on Wikipedia, it may be time to revamp the main template- which I suspect had a lot of input from non-chemists, so it comes across to me as unusually skewed towards certain data. Can I solicit comments here? Once we have resolved the List of compounds split I would like to start wholesale editing of this main compound template. Walkerma 22:11, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Looking at the template that we are currently developing/using- Wikipedia:Chemical_infobox

I am concerned that it may be far too detailed for less common materials. For example, it may be perfect for methanol or sodium chloride, but the types of thing I have been submitting (such as cerium(III) chloride) frequently do not have detailed thermodynamic properties available- and even if such data are available, I may want to get a page up in a reasonable amount of time which is not filled with question marks. Bearing in mind that even some quite simple compounds such as calcium chloride do not currently have basic information, I think it would be better to get a large number of compounds entered in with reasonable pages, rather than having only a couple of dozen compounds covered in excruciating detail.

Another point on this- there are still many details omitted from the Wikipedia:Chemical_infobox template, such as dielectric constant, molar conductivity, dipole moment, viscosity, vapour pressure at STP or NTP, refractive index, lambda-max and extinction coefficient, major IR bands, 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR chemical shifts (for organics), magnetic susceptibility, magnetic moment (where appropriate), symmetry point group, basic chemical properties (besides the acidity currently included)- and these are just a few things that spring to mind! Many of these are properties I would consider to be more important than those currently in the template- but if we put EVERYTHING in, it may be quite overwhelming!

I have also added a couple of extra comments on this at Wikipedia_talk:Chemical_infobox.

I would also like to suggest that we have some suggested section headings, such as "Chemical properties," "Uses," etc.

To that end, I have taken the liberty of putting up a short form of the template written as a regular page, called inorganic_stylesheet1. If this should be called something else, please feel free to rename it and the related image file. It was created by taking the Wikipedia:Chemical_infobox template, chopping it down and editing it mercilessly. It will allow us to upload a lot of pages without having to spend hours tracking down molar entropy for gaseous samarium chloride. The table includes what I would consider only the bare essentials, nothing more. The idea is that in the future someone could (if they wish) upgrade this more basic page to the more detailed version. However, in most cases, most people would be delighted to find even the short form information in Wikipedia- for the majority of compounds I think it would be entirely sufficient. I have also put up a typical example, samarium(III) chloride so you can see how a typical compound might look.

Please give feedback! If people like this format, I would like to get a basic set of compounds done in this format.

Walkerma 19:42, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

UPDATE: I have put up some pages in this format, please take a look, give comments. See lithium chloride, potassium chloride, magnesium chloride and a new page, aluminium chloride. I plan to do a few more chlorides in coming weeks as time allows.

Feb 2005- See discussion on Walkerma's page.

Hi, Martin, as the infobox is now up at this project page itself (after much moving around of both the box and the discussion about it), I took the liberty to strike out the misdirecting information from your text here.

Importantly, I'd like to fully agree with your remark that the short version of the inorganic table is by far not short enough. I'd rather like the shortiness of the organic table. Could you reduce the inorg one as much as the org one? Wim van Dorst 22:19, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC).

Thanks for the reorganisation, Wim- I know things had kind of evolved, and needed some tidying up. I like the way you've set up the talk pages (even though it looks from the above like I'm repeating myself- yes, I admit I did cut & paste some things!). I had the impression when I started that some people worked in one corner and others in another corner, with the left hand not knowing what the right was doing. I hope that the changes help to reduce this problem. I like the disclaimer text too- unobtrusive, but we're nicely covered.

As for the inorganics table, I've been very happy with it, and it only takes me about 20 minutes to fill it out, but that's because I have all of the books laid out in my home office. I can certainly come up with a very basic one, and I'll call it "simple" so it can be seen to be comparable to the organic one. I'll try to do that soon. I'd also like to make some changes to the so-called "main" template- which I don't think has been used by anyone here in over a year as far as I can tell- though the Germans seem to be using a simpler version of it. See my comments above on this page. I took a very close look at the history of the current version, and it seemed that lots of people added things to it, but no one took things away. I would like to remove much of the safety information, and replace that with a link. My impression is that I have never actually seen the current version of the "standard table" used in full by anyone (though ammonia is close)- having created a time-consuming "monster" table, this table was then abandoned by its creators! Earlier versions of the table were much more reasonable, and these are the versions you see actually in use more. I may even add one or two things- I really like the "related compounds" idea- but rest assured it should be a lot sharper overall. So unless anyone objects strongly to my suggestions here, I will start to edit the "standard" table in 2-4 weeks time, as time allows. Walkerma 03:28, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Martin, don't wait another fortnight for improvements. You have good ideas: go for it! I recommend to reduce the short inorg template by moving that related-compounds part to the big chembox template. That'll be a good step. And then I would like to propose to further reduce by moving the structure details too: that are rather difficult data to find (for people without big books on their desks. And what about moving the product name to the header field, Wim van Dorst 20:26, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC).

In my opinion the parameter "odor" should be removed, as the previous "psychological" classification of smell sensations has been shown to be obsolete and inaccurate. Also the number of primary odors is not at all clear. It can vary from at least 100 to perhaps more than 1,000. Discrete odor blindnesses have been proved to exist for many of these. For more info, see Guyton:Textbook of medical physiology, ISBN 072168677X. --Eleassar777 11:32, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think that's a fair point. I will be doing a major revamp of this template soon, I will take out that section. There's also the safety issue- we discourage people from sniffing things too much unless we know they're safe. I think the odour issue is best handled in the introductory paragraph in cases (like limonene) where it's appropriate, but for many things it's irrelevant anyway. Walkerma 14:58, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Good point. Odor is out of the template. Wim van Dorst 20:00, 2005 May 4 (UTC).

May I ask why it is still present in the infobox of e.g. the article hydrochloric acid? Does it have to be removed manually from all the articles the part of which it is? --Eleassar777 20:30, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• yes: all the infoboxes in all wikipages are fixed into the text. The template is only useful for starting a new infobox. If you want to replace an outdated one, you'll have to do the whole laborious work of substituting the (empty) new infobox into that wikipage, copy/re-keying/moving all numbers into the new table and finally deleting the old table. Wim van Dorst 21:35, 2005 May 4 (UTC).

Hi, all. I have applied the new colour scheme ClockWorkSoul, which is generally chosen for the page-wide banner templates, to all four of the chemical infoboxes. Actually, I'm a sucker for standards, but this time I see that the dividing horizontal lines on my Unix-box come out very poorly. What do you think? Wim van Dorst 22:40, 2005 May 2 (UTC). I used the lithium aluminium hydride and dimethylsulfone as examples. Wim van Dorst 22:49, 2005 May 2 (UTC)

I think that scheme is fine for the inorganic pages, the colour change is fairly small. (Is it usual to take out the dividing line between the two columns? If that's the norm, I'm OK with it.) However I think it's good to distinguish organics from inorganics, so I really like Cacycle's grey-blue version, which has become a "standard" for most organics. I'll go with the group's overall opinion, though. Walkerma 00:13, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you're right, it is not good to completely loose the dividing lines. They are not in the colour scheme per se, but a result of using styles (as per the scheme). I have added to the styles to see several important dividing lines again. Example is up at hydrochloric acid. Comments? Wim van Dorst 22:03, 2005 May 3 (UTC).

I'm pleased that you like my ClockworkSoul's Coffee Roll color scheme. Let me know if there's anything I can do to adjust or improve upon it for you. – ClockworkSoul 17:43, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is a good chembox template now, that really always should be considered for a Chemicals WikiPage. Then there are two nice and handy simple chemboxes for organic compounds and for inorganic compounds, which are for less known chemicals or for Chemicals wikipages still in a stub phase. Can we declate that enough? I'd rather remove the short inorganic for the Chemical infobox wikipage (Sorry Martin), and start using the other three for real. We can elaborate this recommendation in the text and in the wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals activities much better too. Wim van Dorst 05:31, 2005 May 4 (UTC).

By the way, can someone remove odor? See discussion above. --Eleassar777 13:19, 4 May 2005 (UTC). Done. WvD.[reply]

I have been very busy with exams looming, but I will endeavour to rewrite the main template by Friday May 6th. I disagree that the template is good at present, there are important things missing and some silly things (like odor!) included (see #Suggestions for the template). I don't know of any new pages that have used in the last year. If the consensus is against the rewritten version, we can always revert it. I like the way User:Cacycle rewrote my original "short form" so as to be flexible- you omit things that are irrelevent. For a "standard" template this is essential, but it's not set up that way at present- I will try to make it adaptable for covalent inorganics, covalent organics, ionic inorganics, etc. If we have something like that then I have less attachment to the short form inorganic template. However we may decide that having an intermediate between a 5 minute table and a one hour table is a good idea- what do others think? Walkerma 15:16, 4 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Martin, to have one really good chembox template, covering everything that is necessary but in a flexible way is IMHO the target. That is then the way to go for the FA-quality chemicals wikipages. No discounting on that: if it takes an hour to do it well, so be it. It's a joint effort of thousands, so all together we can spend some time on it. And only for all the other chemicals wikipages we offer two minimal infoboxes, sort of step up to the big thing. I guess, that is what we would call a minimum below which we're talking stub-quality. No half-baked infobox suggesting that a good job is done when it isn't, really. Wim van Dorst 20:26, 2005 May 4 (UTC).

I did a little bit of housekeeping (archiving old discussions about things that have been already done) in this page, leaving open all discussions about the content of the {{tl:chembox}} template. On the projectpage itself I did similar housekeeping, e.g., included the FAQ about How to use templates. To not push you too hard, I refrained from putting your May 6 target for the Chembox update on that page too, but of course you're free to add it as a personal reminder. ;-). I'm looking forward to the update, which I hope will spur things on quite a bit. Wim van Dorst 13:01, 2005 May 5 (UTC).

I have put up my draft version on my user page, please take a look. Walkerma 21:10, 5 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Working on the main template, I came up with an solution to the problem of having a huge table (for completeness). This is the same solution used in the chemical literature, and indeed it is Wikipedia official policy- namely, if it is getting too long, start a new page. 98% of people accessing a page on hydrochloric acid or methanol want to know basic information, not standard molar entropy etc. Let's keep obscure information out of important pages. Therefore I suggest that the table should include the main things that will satisfy 98% of users, but include links from the table to an MSDS and to a supplementary page. This supplementary page would include thermodynamic data and spectral information useful to experienced chemists, without filling up bandwidth for thousands of schoolkids etc. I am writing the table in this way- I hope to post it by this evening (USA EStime) but would like feedback on this. Walkerma 15:59, 5 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• Excellent idea! This is indeed a break-through idea! I really like to see this in effect. Are you thinking about adding a link in the bottom of the infobox to a detailed infobox on a separate page? Sounds good to me. Thinking on, this means that ultimately, we'll only have ONE simple chembox, with a link to some larger table (on a separate page) if necessary. Wim van Dorst 19:16, 2005 May 5 (UTC).

I'd like to direct comments on the new chembox here. There is a draft version for people to look at. It attempts the impossible- to be compact & easy to use, yet suitable for any chemical compound. It uses the supplement idea (see above); detailed safety data are on an MSDS page (which might just be an external link), and thermodynamic & spectral data on the supplement page. As well as general feedback, I'd like people's specific thoughts- please vote for in the main table or in the supplement: Walkerma 21:56, 5 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

1. Refractive index Aldrich etc put this in all their catalogue entries, but is it widely used these days?

supplement: not widely used. Wim van Dorst.

1. Viscosity I put in as "liquids only, optional", but should it still be in the supplement?

main table: especially with the remark Liquid only. Wim van Dorst.

1. Dielectric constant I put in as "solvents & dielectrics only". I like to use it as rough guide to solvent polarity, but am I alone in this?

supplement: not widely used. Wim van Dorst.

1. Dipole moment

main table: but only when the structure section is applied (which should be optional). Wim van Dorst.

For the rest I think we should make recommendations about the the Supplement page, e.g., specific names of section titles so that in the chembox you can directly link to that particular section. Notably, I strongly recommend to make only one supplement page and not several for the various sections. Wim van Dorst 08:36, 2005 May 6 (UTC).

• Update comment: I really like the way the new chembox is developing. Excellent progress. Even the lines.... Wim van Dorst 20:01, 2005 May 11 (UTC).

• My update comment- Thanks for updating the lines/colour, Wim. I think we can make the switch to this being the official version of the infobox on Monday May 16th. Ideally I'd like to hear comments from User:Cacycle before setting things in stone, as I'd hate to change it again too soon- one problem in the past has been the use of 73 different "standard" tables. To encourage standardisation we may need to spend some time converting some pages to the new style. A couple of unresolved issues:

1. Will the colour for the organics still be blue as it is (in practice at least) currently? I would favour this, though it does make the standard table a little more complicated.
2. The supplement page needs to be standardised. Wim, would you be able to take the three tables and make one big table out of it? Instead of the present |S&P| |Spectral| |Thermo| going across the page, I'd like to see one combined |S&P|Spectral|Thermo| or similar. I don't think I can do this- Wim, can you do this? Then we can create a supplement template. Walkerma 21:51, 11 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• • We're working now on one chembox, which has one proper colour scheme. Personally I like it when (in the end) the two simple chembox variant have exactly the same layout (colours, lines, wikilinks) albeit in shorter form. But let's discuss that later, if necessary.
  • I see now three tables which fold on the page. If the page is narrow (or the font large), it winds up as just one long table (with extra footers), If the page is wide (or the font tiny), there are three tables next to eachother. Where do you want it differently? Just one long long table? That's easy, but is is nice? Wim van Dorst 23:08, 2005 May 11 (UTC).
    • I already did the two simple chemboxes. Wim van Dorst 14:35, 2005 May 12 (UTC). And the supplement too. Is this what you have in mind (normal wiki-layout), or might perhaps just one longer (combined) be better (like the chembox itself)? Wim van Dorst 15:27, 2005 May 12 (UTC).

• Yes, it looks great now. I will try to do the details you mention on my talk page. Walkerma 16:11, 12 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• Update: I have put the toluene page into the new style. I don't have time to write the supplement page for it, maybe tomorrow. The table seems rather wider than it should be, and even the draft template has grown an inch or so in the last 24 hours. Is this necessary? I much prefer the skinnier table, it increases space for text and also reduces problems when printing articles. Please check the page and let us know what you think. Walkerma 19:49, 12 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wim van Dorst asked me to comment. What I've seen till now is a great job. I have a few suggestions, although I am not a chemist nor a doctor yet (and I hope I did not say something silly ;). Where I use the word category, I mean a sub-box, a group of lines.

• Correct links - "Ingestion" has been made a redirect to eating; the contents were moved to Wiktionary. This link should be corrected or removed, while other links should be formatted so that they bypass redirects (e.g. molecular formula; I mean put this in: [[chemical formula|molecular formula]]).
• References in the bottom. Do they point to references of the topic described by the article or of the infobox? This should be defined (add e.g. "infobox references" or something).
• Dissociation constants. There are three articles now: dissociation constant, acid dissociation constant, base dissociation constant; and two lines in the infobox. Perhaps the articles should be merged and the lines in the infobox replaced with "Dissociation costants". Besides this, are not K_a and K_b used as dissociation constants instead of their negative logarithms pK_a and pK_b?
• The order of categories. It seems more natural to me to have it in the following order(from top to bottom): image, general, structure, properties, hazards, supplementary data page, related data compounds.
• Related category: what is: "related ?"
• "Chemical data" line in the category "supplementary data page". That sounds somewhat strange as other things in the category also can be considered chemical data. I don't have a suggestion.
• "Related compounds" line in the category "Related molecules". Will it not interfere with "Other cations" and "Other anions"?
• what about the line "Biological significance"? Would it be redundant or unusable? Or perhaps "Occurrence" (where in nature, or is the substance synthetic etc.)

Thanks, happy wiki-ing. --Eleassar777 20:32, 12 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• Correct links: Done. Pfew, there were quite a lot of them.
• References: Done. Good suggestion
• Dissociation constants: For future work.
• order of categories: I mainly agree and therefore move Hazards down.
• Related: This is up to the person who fills the table. He/She is expected to be knowledgable, so no change.
• Chemical data: Agree. The supplements page is still under construction, so no decisive change yet.
• Related compounds: No problem here: the knowledged table filler will be able to make the organic/inorganic distinction to remove either field when inappropriate. no change.
• Biological significance and Occurrence: Interesting. I think I rather want this in the main text.

Overall very good suggestions, most of which I have already implemented. I'm much obliged that you as an experienced non-chemical wikipedian had a fresh view at it. Thanks. Wim van Dorst 09:52, 2005 May 13 (UTC).

Thanks for having a look at my proposals and implementing some of them . May I just point out two things again: a) dissociation constant - that's K<d>, K<a> and K<b>, isn't it? And b) I also don't understand why properties come above structure. --Eleassar777 15:45, 13 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments, Eleassar, they were very helpful & insightful, (for a "non-chemist" you seem to know plenty of chemistry!) Thanks Wim for chasing down the links, something I didn't do before or I'd never have got the draft done! Regarding the remaining loose ends-

Dissociation constants Indeed, the pK_a (or pK_b) is strictly speaking "Minus long to the base ten of the acid (or base) dissociation constant", but that's quite a mouthful to put on a data table. I've looked at a couple of books and they only ever refer to these things in the text as pK_a without using words- though March's voluminous index says "pK_a- see acidity constant." I would propose that we just use the term "acidity (pK_a)" and "basicity (pK_b)" in the table, using links for those unfamiliar with pK_a. I will change the draft table to reflect that. K_a and K_b (the actual acid or base dissociation constant) are rarely thrown about in chemical conversations, I know organic chemists will always say, "That proton's got to be pretty acidic, around 6 (understood as pK_a)." It is used in the same way as pH is used for aqueous solutions. They won't refer to K_a any more than people talk about the hydrogen ion concentration in the river.

Structure vs Properties This in effect mostly means Molecular scale properties vs Bulk properties. IMHO: Most people work with bulk matter and so things like density, BP etc are the main things people need, they should be near the top of the table, right below a drawing of the structure. I accept that the box would "flow" better with structural stuff first, but I think usage in this case trumps that. You should be able to type in "toluene" into Wikipedia and see structure, BP and density without a lot of scrolling. Walkerma 16:48, 13 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Template wikitext vs appearance on page Some of the things you things you mentioned earlier have a lot of guidance in the code to help people through, though of course this doesn't show up on the displayed page. I really like the "related compounds" link, this is one of the strengths of the element tables, but the problem is that toluene has different related compounds than copper(I) chloride. It's fairly open-ended because trying to pin it down to specifics makes it very clumsy. I think anyone proficient enough to be typing up this full length table should EITHER know what is meant for that particular compound, OR be able to work it out from similar pages. To assist things there are comments in the code like for Related compounds it says "A miscellaneous heading- use for covalent inorganics; e.g. for PCl₃ you would list PCl₅, POCl₃, PF₃, PBr₃, NCl₃ and AsCl₃. Please omit if not applicable". Thanks again for your valuable help. Walkerma 16:48, 13 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The new infobox has been really well done and it was an honour for me to have contributed my two cents. Only dissociation constants still need to be replaced with acidity and basicity (or just plain pKa and pKb). Regards. --Eleassar777 07:28, 17 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

As a proud co-developer of this new chembox, today I took a few minutes of a coffeebreak at work to have a look how the new chembox works out, now it is published. At work we have Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0. And it showed the table quite differently from what I expected. (Insert here some expletives not to be written in full). The problem is in the apperent different resolving of table code by the various browsers.

The left version is as shown in Mozilla derived browsers (which is as the table is intended), such as in Mozilla, Firefox, Epiphany, etc. The right hand is as shown in Opera. The table in the MSIE browser looks like the Opera variant, but worse. Now what? Wim van Dorst 20:51, 2005 May 17 (UTC).

I just took a look, as I have IE 6.0 here- I found that in the template the lines disappear in IE where they are present in Mozilla Firefox (my default). Otherwise the differences are largely superficial. However in the toluene and HCl pages the lines are still there. Also, if you go to print the template from IE you get the lines in there. I notice that the resolution of you screen shot is poor- is that just an artifact of the screen shot? My IE page for HCl or toluene looks fine on the screen.

A more serious problem that I noticed is probably a general one on Wikipedia- when you go to print, any external links are written out in full. That has the effect of widening out the table to fill or almost fill the page. The toluene page looks really bad- the text is crammed into about 3 cm on the left hand side. This happens with both Firefox and MSIE. Another related problem that I'd noticed before but never addressed- take a look at phosphorus tribromide, it should look OK. Then do a print preview- and in Mozilla notice how the image goes down past the table, as it has to squeeze the page into a narrower space. Now try the same page in MSIE6.0, you will see that it prints the image right over the top of the table! I think this was in the back of my mind when I said I wanted a skinny table- but this business of the expanded links makes that go out of the window! Where should we go next?

1. Do we lose the lines in IE only in the original template? If I go back through history on my page to the edit that says "uploaded the new template to toluene and hydrochloric acid" the lines are still missing in IE, yet they are there in all versions of the toluene page.

1. Are we using an incorrect format for inserting external links? If so, we need to find the correct format, and rigorously enforce that in the table, to stop the unwanted expansion. If we are already following protocol, then should we just tell people not to put external links in the table?

1. Regarding the table/image conflict, we probably need to be more careful about checking browser and print compatibilities when we first write the pages. We have some old Macs down the hall, I will check IE and Netscape on there. I know I've been bad at doing this...

1. Are there other issues I'm missing with the IE version? If so, please elaborate, Wim. Walkerma 00:54, 18 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• I am for discouraging external links within the table, even if it means that we have to add See also: MSDS to the bottom of every page... Physchim62 06:24, 18 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]