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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

#121

Post by amatecha »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #95
myself248 wrote: post #31

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…

I just used win+ arrow keys, never missed the resizing.

Whoa, I had no clue about these key-combos. So handy! Thanks!!

For anyone curious, MS has a useful summary of how this works here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/snap-your-window...

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

#122

Post by sjdz »

azinman2 wrote: post #68

I want to use this. Looks really nice. I know there are people here who are crying for information density, but I’m not one of them. The majority of people will be happier when there’s room for content to breathe. My one sadness— no Safari support! Safari has gotten better with its extensions API support.. is it just the the store that’s preventing you?

Yeah Safari support is definitely on the TODO, but the requirement for an App Store account made me put that on the backburner for now.

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

#123

Post by dsizzle »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #62
0des wrote: post #6

OP, thanks for making this, I bet it was fun to build. That being said, I want someone to do the opposite of what this does. Less chrome, less bytes over the wire, less predictive search, less "flatness?", less timely, more timeless .

Got you, fam. https://encyclopedia.marginalia.nu/wiki-start.html (I built this mostly for myself, because I find it incredibly difficult to read text that has hyperlinks and images in the text)

I'm with you on links being distracting, but it seems you... nuked them entirely, which maybe goes too far haha? I guess you can always go back to source if you want that.

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

#125

Post by epivosism »

I installed an extension that auto-redirects me from Wikipedia pages to Wikiwand and I love it.

Things I like about it: * always-visible TOC * it's much easier to parse visually - smaller footnote numbers and many similar small adjustments to font, alignment, etc.

Things I don't mind actually * fixed (smaller) width

Either way, this is the spirit of the web - everyone can remix and format as they like.

compare: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hacker_News https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News?oldformat=true

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wikiwand-wiki...

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

#126

Post by marginalia_nu »

dsizzle wrote: post #123
marginalia_nu wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got you, fam. https://encyclopedia.marginalia.nu/wiki-start.html (I built this mostly for myself, because I find it incredibly difficult to read text that has hyperlinks and images in the text)

I'm with you on links being distracting, but it seems you... nuked them entirely, which maybe goes too far haha? I guess you can always go back to source if you want that.

I just moved them to the bottom of the article.

In part this is because I feel inline links on wikipedia often lets you overestimate how well you comprehend a subject. It's as though the fact that there is a link over a word makes you think you could go check what that is, and therefore that you probably understand the word.

Actually looking up some term mid sentence is also probably not particularly helpful for understanding the text either.

I concede that this is a somewhat unusual decision, but I designed the pages for the singular purpose of reading and comprehending the article. Everything else is secondary. It's a bit of a design experiment, but I think it's worked out pretty well. I don't fall into skim-reading these articles like I must admit I often do with regular Wikipedia articles.

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

#127

Post by shoto_io »

myself248 wrote: post #31
0des wrote: post #6

OP, thanks for making this, I bet it was fun to build. That being said, I want someone to do the opposite of what this does. Less chrome, less bytes over the wire, less predictive search, less "flatness?", less timely, more timeless .

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…

Why not use Reader Mode? I love it and use it as often as I can

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

#128

Post by sjdz »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #97

Please never ever use system-ui in your CSS. A classic article about why: https://infinnie.github.io/blog/2017/systemui.html In this particular case, it totally ruined the fonts of Wikipedia for East-Asian (CJK) Windows users. Just in case the article itself isn't convincing enough, below is a list of some websites that have tried "system-ui" and then reverted it semi-immediately: Facebook/bootstrap, GitHub, Twitter,…

Interesting, thanks for that. I was under the impression that using "system-ui" was the way to go! I do plan to add font choice as a setting in a future version, so that will solve this.

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

#129

Post by mattl »

sjdz wrote: post #8
haolez wrote: post #3

Looks good, but I think the adjective "modern" to be overly aggressive towards other design trends. From what I saw, the design trend here is for a flat and rounded interface with dynamic searches.

Thanks, glad you like it :) With the name, I was just thinking more in terms of "modernized"... as in, something more modern than the current Wikipedia design... but I get your point! I'll have a think about it.

The name should reflect Wikipedia, not all wikis.
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