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Explore Wikipedia's New Look

wikimediafoundation.org

61–70 of 288 posts

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#61
My personal problem with it: the sidebar became wider. Now I have to disable it, but when I disable it, it disappears and makes the text lines much wider than what I'm used to. I'm one of those few people who don't maximize the browser to get a good acceptable line width. Wikipedia simply broke this :(

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#62
post #16

Oh, it's still hideous. Years ago I used to have a Safari extension that made Wikipedia look absolutely beautiful, with vastly improved readability. Such was the shock when that extension finally stopped working that I can still remember where I was when I suddenly saw the full horror of its regular design.

I would be curious to know what your beautiful version looked like. I find Wikipedia's styling so inoffensive that I don't understand how you could consider it "hideous." It's pretty much just black text on a white background. What about that causes such a strong reaction from you?

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#63
post #52

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.

Mac OS (and some linux desktops) seems to really expect you to manage windows by having them always be full screen and swiping between desktops. Which makes changing browser window geometry sub-optimal.

Even on desktops where it's reasonably easy, it's pretty annoying to have to resize the window when you go to different sites to get them to format properly.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#64

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 usually use my adblocker to simply remove fixed headers. Hopefully there isn't anything critically important in that thing, because whatever's up there just isn't going to be seen. They're far too distracting.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#65

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…

Yeah, I don't like it either, and I don't see a way to disable this apart from user's defined bookmark script, like kill sticky[0]:

    javascript:(function()%7Bdocument.querySelectorAll(%22body%20*%22).forEach(function(node)%7Bif(%5B%22fixed%22%2C%22sticky%22%5D.includes(getComputedStyle(node).position))%7Bnode.parentNode.removeChild(node)%7D%7D)%3Bdocument.querySelectorAll(%22html%20*%22).forEach(function(node)%7Bvar%20s%3DgetComputedStyle(node)%3Bif(%22hidden%22%3D%3D%3Ds%5B%22overflow%22%5D)%7Bnode.style%5B%22overflow%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7Dif(%22hidden%22%3D%3D%3Ds%5B%22overflow-x%22%5D)%7Bnode.style%5B%22overflow-x%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7Dif(%22hidden%22%3D%3D%3Ds%5B%22overflow-y%22%5D)%7Bnode.style%5B%22overflow-y%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7D%7D)%3Bvar%20htmlNode%3Ddocument.querySelector(%22html%22)%3BhtmlNode.style%5B%22overflow%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%3BhtmlNode.style%5B%22overflow-x%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%3BhtmlNode.style%5B%22overflow-y%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7D)()%3B%0A
But unfortunately, it renders the header useless in this case.

[0]: https://github.com/t-mart/kill-sticky

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#68
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')`

> - Wasted screen space

Don't worry, it will soon be filled with solicitations for donations.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#69
I sense part of what drove this redesign is the fact that 4K and Ultrawide monitors are now common enough that designing to accommodate them cannot be ignored. That being said, I much prefer left-justification instead of centering the content and having massive whitespace islands to either side. I wish there was an option to left justify.
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