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Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia

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

#151

Post by carabiner »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #105
aerovistae wrote: post #75

I hate to be the contrarian, but I'm confused by the positive remarks here. I find the interface looks like it was trying to force mobile design principles onto a desktop view. A lot of space seems wasted here and I can view less content at once. I don't find this useful personally.

One unique UI feature of Wikipedia is that it has tons of tables that are super wide. They look fine on a monitor with 1080p+ resolution, but reading such articles on mobile has always been horrible experience. Unfortunately, this "modern" UI (larger font, narrow width) causes the exactly same problem on desktop.

God yes this is annoying. TV episode summaries are in wide tables too and it's excruciating to read on mobile. These are mostly freeflowing text, not statistics, and there's no benefit to being put in a table. What is with the over-tabulation on Wikipedia?

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

#152

Post by Findecanor »

Some criticism:

It is fine for reading, but by hiding the tabs for "edit this page", "history" etc. it does not invite editing as much as the current Wikipedia/MediaWiki does.

And in this particular case, I don't see much purpose of having the toolbar being a fixed element that does not scroll with the rest of the page. Apart from the Font size/Dark mode controls, the links there are for leaving the page, and if I want to leave the page, there is nothing stopping me from first scrolling to the top of the page. Most keyboards have a Home key that does that. There is also the "Scroll to the top" arrow button that pops up in the lower right corner (obscuring the text beneath it, BTW).

Something I do think would be useful, in terms of scrolling on Wikipedia/MediaWiki would be to go between Editing, Preview and Changes and keep about the same position on the page when doing so. As it is now, long articles could be disorienting and I would have to spend some time looking for the editing position when previewing my edits.

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

#153

Post by matsemann »

aerovistae wrote: post #75

I hate to be the contrarian, but I'm confused by the positive remarks here. I find the interface looks like it was trying to force mobile design principles onto a desktop view. A lot of space seems wasted here and I can view less content at once. I don't find this useful personally.

> A lot of space seems wasted here and I can view less content at once.

More space makes thing easier to read, though. You could have font size 8 and a couple hundred chars long lines on your 4k monitor. Would see lots of content, but would be unreadable.

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

#154

Post by tshaddox »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #135
tshaddox wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I would say that it's the HN commenters being incredibly obnoxious, not wikipedia being wrong for giving you the mobile site when you specifically ask for it. But it's kinda crazy that if I'm on my phone I can't just share a URL to a page with someone who happens to be using a desktop. While I'm not sure if this is made explicit in any of the RFCs or standard docs, in my view a URL should be a locator for a res…

> But it's kinda crazy that if I'm on my phone I can't just share a URL to a page with someone who happens to be using a desktop. > in my view a URL should be a locator for a resource that is agnostic of the user agent. You're not making sense. The mobile page has a dedicated URL. If you're browsing it, then sharing the URL will send anyone else to the same resource you're browsing, regardless of their user agent. Ev…

You're mistaken. Wikipedia automatically redirects you to the m. website if you type "en.wikipedia.org" into your phone browser. The same is true even if you explicitly type an article's URL into your phone browser, like "en.wikipedia.org/London". Google and Bing will also show mobile URLs in search results (although DuckDuckGo does not). The only way to see the actual desktop version is to click on the "Desktop" link at the very bottom of a mobile page, and even that just sets a cookie to prevent redirection back to the mobile site, so it doesn't work across multiple devices or private browsing sessions.

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

#155

Post by muhammadusman »

I've been looking for something like this. My only feedback is that the default style looks a bit too narrow (width and line-height wise). Also, the scale/range for changing the width jumps a lot between the middle and to the right, I wish there was a bit more control over that. Why not attach the value of the slider to the width percentage?

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

#156

Post by GhettoComputers »

jyrkesh wrote: post #114
GhettoComputers wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is really annoying to be shown the new site so I just use mobile apps to read it now.

I love my mobile app as well (RIF), but do you know about old.reddit.com? Still works great with RES, I couldn't imagine Reddit on the desktop any other way

Yup still do that on desktop, I have it automatically redirect me, I would hate to lose it!

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

#157

Post by mixmastamyk »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #136
arcbyte wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isnt the right answer for Microsoft or users to fix their system font? Why would east Asian users have a crappy system font selected in their OS?

This feels like a failing on Microsoft’s part, at least for current versions of Windows. The bar for a viable system font has been raised and it’s their responsibility as an OS vendor to ensure the bar is met across localizations. As for old versions of Windows… well, one should probably look at their target market/user base. If your demographic is firmly Roman western use of system-ui is probably fine — as far as I’…

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.

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

#158

Post by GhettoComputers »

dheera wrote: post #144
GhettoComputers wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is really annoying to be shown the new site so I just use mobile apps to read it now.

> so I just use mobile apps That might have been their goal? Although I detest having to use apps for every site. The Reddit app is also super buggy.

I use Sync for Reddit on Android and Apollo on iOS.

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

#159

Post by GhettoComputers »

amatecha wrote: post #121
GhettoComputers wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

No problem, I did it by accident, and you can also drag the windows to the corners and overshoot to have them, top is full, left and right is half that side, the link you posted mentions that, I am actually surprised you never accidentally discovered either. I have that in KDE as well.

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

#160

Post by alexchamberlain »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #147
dorianmariefr wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think proper media queries breakpoints solve this

No, it won't. There is no clear distinction between mobile and tablet first of all.

Orientation and width not enough?
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