FWIW, Monobook remains my preferred Wikipedia UI, and perhaps my favorite UI design period. A true marriage of form and function.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&useskin...
Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia
351–360 of 426 posts
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The end user is not asking for https whatever, they’re asking to see the same Wikipedia page their friend saw, adapted to their screen. This is already the behavior of Wikipedia mobile pages. > I guess the best way to do it would be to redirect the user to the correct domain based on agent, if they haven’t already chosen an override? This, on the other hand, is already the behavior of Wikipedia's normal pages. The…
> This is already the behavior of Wikipedia mobile pages. No, it's not. The behavior of the mobile pages is always mobile-optimized no matter what .
Yes. "Always the same no matter what" is what was described. If your friend is looking at a mobile wikipedia page, and sends you the URL for that page, then you too will see the same mobile wikipedia page when you follow the link. That's the whole concept of being "the same".
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think proper media queries breakpoints solve this
This is hard and often done wrong- mobile phones are usually high dpi and have gotten quite large, so it can be hard to distinguish between a large phone and half a desktop screen. Some people get quite annoyed by being bumped into a mobile experience when you resize your window from fullscreen on a laptop.
I also get annoyed when I get bumped to the "mobile" "experience" even when I'm on a smartphone. With reactive design, "request desktop site" generally doesn't work, either.
I really, REALLY prefer desktop mode for almost everything, relying on pinch to zoom.
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I agree with these typography principles when they are applied to things that should be read from top to bottom and the entirety of the content actually consumed as a whole. There's just many circumstances that it is not appropriate and I would say an encyclopedia entry is not one of them. I want to be able to scan a lot of content without having to change pages to find where I want to start reading from. That and pe…
[deleted]
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia
#355Kudos to @sjdz for this. Really like the aesthetics. The ability to change formatting elements for ease of reading is bang on.
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia
#356I 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…
Just a small nitpick: you mean _responsive_ design (_reactive_ means something else)
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia
#357my main problem with wikipedia is reading math. I hate the font they use, which makes everything seem way more complicated than it really is.
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What is typographic around buttons, toolbars and other panes?
your eye needs somewhere to rest
There is a big difference between newspaper columns and web whitespace. The former are more or less uniform and easily seen (I’ve also read newspapers with explicit delineation of separate articles, and it was even better experience). The latter is just chaotic blobs of whitespace, which doesn’t usually even delineate or makes your eyes rest, it makes them lost instead. You can’t see structure, because it is so blobby. Whitespace should only surround the elements which are much more dense and “thicker” than it. Otherwise it will blend into them dissolving any structure.
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia
#359Looks nice, but when the Contents column is folded, there's a huge white margin on the left even when the contents on the right don't fit into the page widths, as for example with a big table like here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He....
Re: Show HN: I made a modern web UI for Wikipedia
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
They don't need to force you to migrate, the new site pushes people into mindless meme sharing only, and completely altered the contents of the site already.
I agree, and I have already left using reddit. What's the alternative to some random content consumption (like reddit)? Like hacker news but for non-technology topics. I can suggest wiby.me 's random button to discover new sites with modern opinions.
There's various Lemmy [1] instances. Maybe one of them works for you?