Is it going to be a single-page app with React, Angular, or similar?
No. This wouldn't be technically feasible at current time even if we wanted to do that.
Wikipedia is getting a new look
71–80 of 529 posts
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#72If someone asked me to critique the UX of Wikipedia, the first two things I’d point out would be that I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) and that when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read (especially when they snake around floated images). Not changing for 10 years, watching as some trends fade and others become law-of-the-land, and then making two changes…
I am constantly juggling between several languages and always preferred the desktop version for this reason.
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#73Try reading a math page on an iPhone with a spotty connection. All the images now only load when tapped. So after the page loads, I've got to scroll down, open each collapsed paragraph, and tap each image separately, before I lose signal on the subway.
Unfortunately certain iPhones do not have MutationObserver support. This is not the case on newer ones.
There's an open bug to allow you to opt out of this however we've been a bit stretched to find the time to work on this.
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#74Just in case someone here is not aware of Wikiwand: https://www.wikiwand.com/ I use it for 2 years now and it works just right.
I disagree, this is worse in every way. Too much white space. Literally every website today needs to reduce the padding and margins by 80% and they could present the same data in dense, single page without scrolling.
Also large fonts need to die. I love HN because I can see so much in one shot, can always increase fonts with Ctrl +
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#75If someone asked me to critique the UX of Wikipedia, the first two things I’d point out would be that I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) and that when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read (especially when they snake around floated images). Not changing for 10 years, watching as some trends fade and others become law-of-the-land, and then making two changes…
I think the only times I use it is to go to random articles, which can be quite fun if you're in the mood to discover new things. However,I couldn't tell you a single other function they have on that side bar even with a gun to my head. Just went to check it and apparently they let you print pages out as PDF, news to me. Wikipedia really doesn't advertise its features much.
Ooh! I recently discovered the "Print to PDF" feature too. I used it to print out some pages for offline reading when I took the kiddos on an adventure outside cell network range. It worked really well.
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#76A collapsible side bar and max width are hardly big features you need a whole post for.
There are several other features they're planning on adding, linked in the article: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improveme...
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#77If someone asked me to critique the UX of Wikipedia, the first two things I’d point out would be that I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) and that when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read (especially when they snake around floated images). Not changing for 10 years, watching as some trends fade and others become law-of-the-land, and then making two changes…
I agree very much in principle. The wikipedia desktop site is beautiful, functional, fast, and doesn't change every 6 months to chase trends (unlike every god-damn website today it seems). That being said I don't understand why the sidebar should be collapsible (and collapsed by default). It's just an extra click to access functionality with some people rely on (languages, for example, being probably one of the most…
Design should not be trendy. It is not fashion.
I hope we don't bloat up wikipedia pages with too much whitespace. Getting of borders, "minimal" looks bother me so much because they're sacrificing layout for aesthetics. There is a reason why borders exist. It is a line segment that separates logically laid out content into groups.
I want Wikipedia to stay the same even if it is not ideal. There is a lot of legacy and "learned" behavior.
We need to add the familiarization factor to any UI changes. The amount of changes should at the minimum exceed the accrued familiarization of the UI...the longer the design remains the same, the higher this factor. It is crazy to think that we should not make a change if it is for the better, but there are a lot of people ... millions that use this less-than-ideal UI. There is something to be said about that.
Typographically, Wikipedia pages have too wide of a column width. This is a common problem not just with webpages, but with magazines and newspapers. There is a reason why the dimension of a book (such as a novel) is smaller than a magazine and that has to do with how wide of a column is comfortable for reading. We need to look at how magazines and newspapers solve this problem. They use columns. Larger fonts is not the answer nor is excessive whitespace because you're not solving the layout issue. It is just magnification.
If newspapers didn't exist and if web designers today were tasked to design a physical newspaper, it would be bloody 80 pages long and full of massive margins and fonts with no understanding about density of presentation. The web needs to be treated like physical media (yes, I said that, fight me). It is a rectangular 2D space that presents text - no difference to my retina whether it is a magazine, newspaper or LCD monitor in terms of spatial representation (not talking about contrast/backlit aspects). This was different a while ago, but today, the pixel density is great and we can almost treat monitors like paper (again, not talking about backlit issues).
Web designers today won't be able to design a physical telephone book. It would be called "Too overwhelming" for the user and it would be insanely big in 17 volumes.
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#78I have used Wikiwand Extension for the past couple of years and haven’t looked back. Happy to hear about max width change though!
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#79If someone asked me to critique the UX of Wikipedia, the first two things I’d point out would be that I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) and that when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read (especially when they snake around floated images). Not changing for 10 years, watching as some trends fade and others become law-of-the-land, and then making two changes…
I also love the new-ish mouseover previews. That was a great change imo.
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it isn’t. There’s ample research showing that shorter lines are more readable. Check out the sources on this page for more details: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_length
I agree, their line width has been atrocious since the early days. It was as bad in 2005 as it is now. The font size on their primary topic page text on desktop is also too small. Checking a well filled out topic page, something like George Washington, a typical line might be 160-190 or more characters across in the top section. In some places on the page it can reach to 210+ characters across. It isn't a very good r…
In the early days the lines would have wrapped earlier on a 4:3 monitor. Using a vertical tab bar fills in the extra space and improves the readability of most web pages on widescreen.