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Explore Wikipedia's New Look

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Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#281

Post by jrochkind1 »

rascul wrote: post #249
pdpi wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first take: it’s different so it sucks. The lack of visual separation between the main content and the menu on the left is atrocious. Second take: oh wait, the menu in the left was completely useless and they replaced it with the table of contents for that particular entry. That’s actually a welcome change. I’ll get used to “different so it sucks” soon enough anyway, that’s my fault not theirs. It’s kind of fascin…

I find so much whitespace to the left tries to grab my attention and makes it harder to focus on the content.

It says something about how we've (all) been trained to read the web that you find an empty margin more distracting and grabbing of attention than the previous thing that occupied that area of the screen -- a fairly useless list of wikipeida navigational links we had all learned to ignore.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#282

Post by jrochkind1 »

l- wrote: post #157
dangus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article addresses this by mentioning that they referenced research demonstrating text that is too wide causes people to read less comfortably and retain less information. The page gets much less padded when you reduce the size of the window, because the padding isn't there to make blank space, it's there to enforce a maximum line width.

> text that is too wide causes people to read less comfortably and retain less information. This seems like an excuse to force JS to enable ads & what should be the default that is toggled with the fullscreen button in the bottom right. It does not justify wasted width as the user can more easily set the text to the appropriate zoom than applying some custom CSS: .mw-page-container { max-width: none !important; } .mw…

I don't understand the nature of your suggested link between ideas about maximum comfortable text column width are related to forcing JS. The size of the text column is generally set with CSS and not JS, no?

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#283

Post by jrochkind1 »

l- wrote: post #202
scrollaway wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're seriously expecting Wikipedia users to set up custom css to apply their reading preferences, just so that you personally don't have to deal with a different amount of padding? Do you realize the level of entitlement and absurdity here?

One of the two options has to be chosen for the no JS, no query param / no login default - there is no entitlement and absurdity in that expectation. Using the max-width: none or similar as the default option has the benefit of allowing the user's browser keep the ability to monotonely scale the text density along with size using zoom as the displayed area would be nearly constant. It's rather arrogant & condescendin…

I can zoom in on current wikipedia just fine using browser "zoom in", and the size of the column of text increases accordingly.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#284

Post by kotaru »

nighthawk454 wrote: post #44

This reminds me of the Modern Wiki browser extension, which seems to have a lot of the same things but looks better to me at a glance. Also configurable, dark mode, etc. https://www.modernwiki.app/

Unfortunately the new design seems to break the extension's ToC sidebar

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#287

Post by User912983 »

molticrystal wrote: post #261
trynewideas wrote: post #12

Details on the design process: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improveme... - On Wikipedia, and any MediaWiki installation, you can add the useskin query parameter to the URL to change skins on a page, even when not logged in. Current (vector-2022): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=ve... Previous (vector): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=ve... Olde…

Thanks, used this in conjunction with a url editing add-on [0] Description: Wikipedia Vector Skin Example URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_campbell Include pattern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/* Redirect to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1?useskin=vector Pattern Description: Auto Redirects to vector skin version Advanced Options: Exclude pattern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*?* Feel free to toss a bette…

I've made a Regex Version, which should support international wikipedia articles once the new skin arrives for them too.

   Description: Wikipedia Vector Skin
   Example URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_campbell
   Include pattern: ^(https?://)([a-z0-9-]*\.)wikipedia.org\/wiki/(.*)
   Redirect to: $1$2wikipedia.org/wiki/$3?useskin=vector
   Pattern type: Regular Expression
   Pattern Description: Auto Redirects to vector skin version
   Advanced Options:
       Exclude pattern: ^(https?://)([a-z0-9-]*\.)wikipedia.org\/wiki/(.*)\?

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#288

Post by l- »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #282
l- wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> text that is too wide causes people to read less comfortably and retain less information. This seems like an excuse to force JS to enable ads & what should be the default that is toggled with the fullscreen button in the bottom right. It does not justify wasted width as the user can more easily set the text to the appropriate zoom than applying some custom CSS: .mw-page-container { max-width: none !important; } .mw…

I don't understand the nature of your suggested link between ideas about maximum comfortable text column width are related to forcing JS. The size of the text column is generally set with CSS and not JS, no?

Ideally, CSS and not JS would be used to set the size of column text. But, that is not what Wikipedia is doing by default. Observe the behavior of the table on this page with & without JS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_relation that occurs on not just that page, but all of the Binary relation pages. Note the dangling "in" at the top without JS with limited CSS styles on the table, but with JS the table becomes collapsed by default & the page text does not jump. The other JS only functionality that extends the page width that does not cause the page text to jump when the table is opened is the previously mentioned fullscreen "Toggle limited content width" button in the bottom right. Also, since I cannot edit the original comment here is the previous CSS condensed:

  .mw-page-container,.mw-content-container{max-width:none!important;}
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