Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Explore Wikipedia's New Look

wikimediafoundation.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 288 posts

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#41

Post by liberia »

I browse with Safari on iOS with JS disabled by default. I do this for privacy and accessibility reasons (gotta stop those annoying popup modals, trackers and other annoyances).

One thing I noticed with Wikipedia with JS /enabled/, all the sub-categories of a topic are by default, closed.

But when I browse with JS disabled, all the sub-categories are /opened/ and I have the full article.

Since most people browse with JS enabled, this means they have to make additional clicks just to read the sub-categories.

Which leads me to question: which version is better? The JS where you have to make additional clicks, or the no-js version where you get the full article?

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#42

Post by coldpie »

ketzu wrote: post #32
coldpie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you are logged in to Wikipedia, the updated header will move with you as you scroll We need to stage some kind of intervention with web designers. There can't be a single person on the planet who actually likes this anti-feature. Why on Earth do they keep doing it?

Could you explain to me why this is an anti feature? It seems harmless at worst and useful at best to me, e.g., having access to the search feature and lagnuage select during scroll here. (Serious question, I feel like I am missing something after reading this thread.) I guess I dislike it on mobile when it takes up too much space.

> it takes up too much space

Mostly this. I visit a website to view its content, not its header. I don't need to waste 10% of the screen on something I will almost never use. On Desktop, I can press "Home" to get to the header in the rare instances I want to. On Mobile, screen space is even more valuable, so it's even more annoying to have to waste screen space on the stupid header (and no, web designers, the style that pops up and covers up the content you are trying to read when you scroll up one pixel is not a solution).

I'm here to read. Stop interfering with that.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#45

Post by coldpie »

cecilpl2 wrote: post #36
coldpie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you are logged in to Wikipedia, the updated header will move with you as you scroll We need to stage some kind of intervention with web designers. There can't be a single person on the planet who actually likes this anti-feature. Why on Earth do they keep doing it?

Because most people like it and it improves metrics. From the discussion on sticky header [0], > Our preliminary results show that an overwhelming majority of test participants reported positive experience with a sticky header. Participants mentioned they enjoyed the ability to access important functionality from any part of the page. > Overall, there was an average 15% decrease in scrolls per session by logged-in us…

It might improve stats for people who use the header, but I'm pretty sure that's a tiny fraction of users. I just want the screen space and consistent scrolling behavior, not a header popping in and out as you scroll around or reach the top of the page.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#46

Post by gpm »

karaterobot wrote: post #20

I don't need a header to follow me down the page, in fact I'd prefer it not to. On the very rare occasion when I need to scroll all the way to the top of the page, I have no problem figuring out how to do that. Feels like they're introducing a persistent UI element without a benefit. Benefit to me, anyway. Maybe they heard from a lot of users who were having trouble remembering where the header was, I can't say. I do…

I don't need a header either, but I suppose for people editing wikipedia it might be pretty useful. It probably makes sense for wikipedia to optimize for the people providing the free labour slightly more than they optimize for the readers.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#47

Post by askvictor »

psacawa wrote: post #6

Good: - Sidebar for navigation Bad: - Wasted screen space - Other languages are not available as a simple anchor tag anymore. They are hidden behind elements. It's annoying for readers who consult their own language and en.wikipedia.org in the same session. It breaks my bookmarklet to change languages, which depended on something like `document.querySelectorAll('a')`

Humans read best when a line is around 10 words long. Longer, and it's easy to lose which line you're on when you go to the next one. The sidebar collapses if you resize to a narrower window, so I wouldn't call it wasted.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#49

Post by ssalka »

Looks nice on desktop, have yet to see how mobile has changed. Oddly, I find that it still shows the old UI on certain pages? Eg:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Does_not_compute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_Diffusion

And I guess my one complaint is, it now takes 2 clicks to iterate through random articles.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#50

Post by nsajko »

gpm wrote: post #46
karaterobot wrote: post #20

I don't need a header to follow me down the page, in fact I'd prefer it not to. On the very rare occasion when I need to scroll all the way to the top of the page, I have no problem figuring out how to do that. Feels like they're introducing a persistent UI element without a benefit. Benefit to me, anyway. Maybe they heard from a lot of users who were having trouble remembering where the header was, I can't say. I do…

I don't need a header either, but I suppose for people editing wikipedia it might be pretty useful. It probably makes sense for wikipedia to optimize for the people providing the free labour slightly more than they optimize for the readers.

You suppose wrong.
Post reply on HN