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Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia

modernwiki.app

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Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia

#241
post #59

Wikipedia itself is also working on a new UI: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improveme... The English Wikipedia isn't one of the "early adopter wikis" but if you visit, say, the French-language Wikipedia you can see the changes (e.g., different width to improve readability).

Every time I get to a French article somehow, I'm reminded that I should be dreading the day this gets merged into master. It's like this half-baked cards feature: whenever you search on the page and hit a link, that card will stay open indefinitely. You can't hit escape to close it, you can't hit tab to move off the link because then you'll just get another card for the next link, you have to go for the mouse. It was supposed to be an onhover feature for when you're using the mouse in the first place, instead it obscures text all the time. Luckily, cards are something you can turn off; with the narrow new style I doubt we'll have such luck. Language switching also became a mouse-requiring operation in the new design (or much more involved), other than that and the squished text I don't actually see any attempt at making it look modern.

Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh dang, yeah. An extension that makes the whole web look and work like the default Mediawiki skin would be glorious. And _fast_. I miss windows having borders. Just dug up a registry hack (obscene that such a thing was needed) to force win10 to have window borders again, because I keep ending up in situations where I honestly couldn't tell where one ends and the other begins. They spent decades researching and build…

That, and the density. I like desktop UIs to be dense. They don't have to be sparse with ample padding like on mobile devices since you don't poke your fingers into your monitor. Yet somehow, people keep designing desktop UIs as if there's a touchscreen or something.

It's basic typographic design philosophy around whitespace - your eye needs somewhere to rest, and narrow columns of text are just easier to read. I personally like ample padding and whitespace, and don't want wall to wall content that just looks like a jumbled mess.

Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That extension doesn't change how the web is. The web is still the same whether you use client side CSS override or not. This is exactly how CSS and HTML were intended to operate and the kind of results to be expected. > But i am sure there are people who will appreciate your effort. Thank you for your work. How is that called ? A complimentsult ?

Not at all a complimensult. I can appreciate the work of someone, if even I won't use it. I don't know how to put it otherwise.

You just say thanks for sharing and drop the other bit.

Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do a lot of these design experiments. I have an idea such as "what if wikipedia was designed only with reading comprehension in mind" and then I see what taking it to the most ridiculous extreme does. Sometimes it pans out, like I'm fairly happy with this wikipedia mirror, sometimes it doesn't--like I have no logos or branding anywhere on my sites, that turned out to be a bit confusing. My mirror clocks in at 21 Gb…

Interesting. What are the bandwidth considerations for this? I had the impression that many ISPs make self-hosting impractical on normal household plans, but then I've never looked into it seriously.

Dunno, I have unlimited uploads and downloads @ 100 mbit, and I host both this Wikipedia mirror as well as a search engine and some other stuff.

The bandwidth usage is pretty inconsequential since most of my pages clock in at just a few kilobytes.

Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia

#245
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you except the one pain point that Wikipedia still continues to use "m.*" sub-domains for displaying mobile content. I know most people exclusively use mobile these days but I use desktop browsers for reading more than 60% of the time and its really annoying to click on a Wikipedia link on HN/Reddit and having it open the mobile site on desktop. It's OK to use m.* subdomains instead of reactive design bu…

> It's OK to use m.* subdomains instead of reactive design but there should at least be redirects to the correct subdomains. I agree, although in the case of Wikipedia the "mobile" design is actually the one that is responsive. I want the "mobile" design on all browsers including my desktop. I believe you can actually set your default theme if you're logged into Wikipedia, but I don't know if their cookies eventually…

Yes, I only use Wikipedia on a desktop and I exclusively use the m. site.

Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia

#246
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bothers me most about this is that if you go to www on a mobile device, it redirects you to m - that's great, and probably the "right" thing to do. There is probably a "View Desktop Version" link on the mobile page, somewhere. But if you go to the m subdomain on a desktop device, there's no easy way to get to the desktop version without manually changing the URL. If you can redirect from www to m, surely you can…

I feel like there's the issue on Reddit

I feel like this is the least of the issues of Reddit(’s mobile version, social ones excluded for lack of knowledge).

Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia

#247
post #12

Why you need this permission "Read your browsing history"? I think you only need access to: "*://*.wikipedia.org/*"

I've just looked into this, it seems Chrome displays that because of the "tabs" permission: > "Technically this permission allows observing the history via chrome.tabs.onUpdated, but not read the previously existing history, so the phrasing is not entirely correct, strictly speaking." https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64063754/chrome-extensio... To be clear, the extension doesn't access your browsing history at all…

Note that you could also make it a bookmarklet which requires no permissions and only accesses the current tab when the user clicks it. Would be nice for trying out how it looks, given how little it changes I was expecting this would be a little bookmarklet and was a bit disappointed I had to add an extension to my browser for trying the look.

Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia

#248

I recently discovered that if you're logged into Wikipedia, you can customize the UI completely. You can, of course, choose different themes. But you can also upload custom CSS and Javascript! Link to image of preferences page - https://ibb.co/Kbfh1QQ

Yeah I’m not actually sure why more people don’t know this.

Because most people don't have a Wikipedia account, nor would they benefit from having one these days.

Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia

#249
post #74

I am one of those people who actually like Wikipedia the way it is. It's what I hoped the web to become. But i am sure there are people who will appreciate your effort. Thank you for your work.

I agree with you except the one pain point that Wikipedia still continues to use "m.*" sub-domains for displaying mobile content. I know most people exclusively use mobile these days but I use desktop browsers for reading more than 60% of the time and its really annoying to click on a Wikipedia link on HN/Reddit and having it open the mobile site on desktop. It's OK to use m.* subdomains instead of reactive design bu…

Counterpoint to this:

I’m career military and the fact that Wikipedia (and Facebook) have low bandwidth m.* redirects made life immensely easier on the limited internet in far off places. We really appreciated it being available.

Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those releases have been EOL for 10+ and 5+ years respectively. There are a number of free options. I don't see any reason to make any effort to support those folks, especially when the font is merely ugly in a cosmetic sense, and not unreadable.

This problem isn't limited to Windows 7/2008 or XP. It affects Win10 too. >especially when the font is merely ugly in a cosmetic sense, and not unreadable Eh, you won't go very far with this attitude in any design team. Also, anyone who tried to manually craft font-family fallback path are already making effort . You can literally choose to not assign any font. Actually, it probably works better: most of browsers hav…

Win 10 is a different story, what an embarrassment.
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