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Explore Wikipedia's New Look

wikimediafoundation.org

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Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#51

Post by sturob »

kerpotgh wrote: post #22
chazeon wrote: post #9

Have been using this new theme since beta. I love the much cleaner look more than the previous one. One can always tune the CSS yourself at the user's preference near the theme selector. The only thing I need to adjust to my liking is to limit the line width: main#content { max-width: 40em; } For those who hate it: you will always have the option to switch back to the old theme. I really hope any website could be as…

How do you make the max-width apply permanently to a website on chrome?

If you're logged in to wikipedia you can add custom css (and js) in 'Preferences > Appearance'

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#52

Post by nsajko »

ashton314 wrote: post #7

My initial take: I actually like this a lot. The body text is narrower which makes for easier reading. The sidebar with an updating highlight of current place in document is really nice too. I don't mind the "wasted space": Wikipedia is primarily about reading, and any well typeset book or web page should have generous margins so the line length is not too long.

Text width is important, but this is not a solution, zooming and changing browser window geometry is.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#53

Post by yamtaddle »

coldpie wrote: post #42
ketzu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I just gave some thought to why it bothers me and I actually think some of it might be because they trigger a kind of "oh shit a 'search bar' add-on, kill it with fire!" reflex from the bad ol' days of most computers being full of malware and spyware (now the OS and most programs are spyware, so... progress?).

Of course the big ones are simply obnoxious wastes of space, and any that have a drop shadow on the content bother me for what seem like obvious reasons, but even the small ones bug me and I think that might be why.

[EDIT] That's just for the static ones—the ones that pop in and out based on scroll behavior are one of the worst design trends in the entire history of the Web, which is saying something, and are in an angry-making category all their own.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#55

Post by xeyownt »

Wikipedia is really becoming awesome, and for me is really a Wonder of the modern world.

Combined with tools like ChatGPT (or improved variants) for high quality translation of any article in any language, or combining submissions in several languages, or to get summaries or interactive explanations on some subject, this will become the most powerful tool of knowledge in history.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#56

Post by Snitch-Thursday »

slimginz wrote: post #8

For people who don't like the new look, you can go to preferences->Appearance and select 'Vector (Legacy)'. It does require you to login first which is annoying but at least you can easily go back to the old look. Edit: You can also have it take up the entire width by hitting the button in the bottom right. Doesn't seem to remember the change for me though so hopefully they add that in soon.

Thank you! I first went back to vector legacy, but then I saw monobook which is the wikipedia of my memories and have swapped there, so now I'm happy.

Kudos to WM for keeping the option for that theme in MediaWiki. Now I have a reason to browse logged in all the time.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#57

Post by Y_Y »

The Second Law of Interface Thermodynamics means that the software can't get more usable with time, nor can it even retain its previous level of usability.

Everything decays, especially software.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#58

Post by muti »

A max line width is welcome from me, I'll be able to remove my tampermonkey script for wikipedia.

I'll still need to keep the generic one around that I use on demand to fix other unreadable pages though.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#59

Post by ssnistfajen »

xeyownt wrote: post #55

Wikipedia is really becoming awesome, and for me is really a Wonder of the modern world. Combined with tools like ChatGPT (or improved variants) for high quality translation of any article in any language, or combining submissions in several languages, or to get summaries or interactive explanations on some subject, this will become the most powerful tool of knowledge in history.

Lots of Wikipedia articles have become well-cited but that façade begins to break down as we dive into more niche topics. Editor wars are real and impossible to resolve most of the time due to how obsessive the involved parties are. Some of them are rather damaging to what narrative is being shaped on some of these articles. The power to control edit access rests in a small group of administrators/moderators who are relatively anonymous. This has served the site well so far but could be a weak point should something occur in the future that fundamentally challenges the integrity of Wikipedia.
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