As multilingual content grows, interlanguage links become longer on
Wikipedia articles. Articles such as "Barak Obama" or "Sun" have more than
200 links, and that becomes a problem for users that often switch among
several languages.
As part of the future plans for the Universal Language Selector, we were
considering to:
- Show only a short list of the relevant languages for the user based on
geo-IP, previous choices and browser settings of the current user. The
language the users are looking for will be there most of the times.
- Include a "more" option to access the rest of the languages for which
the content exists with an indicator of the number of languages.
- Provide a list of the rest of the languages that users can easily scan
(grouped by script and region ao that alphabetical ordering is possible),
and search (allowing users to search a language name in another language,
using ISO codes or even making typos).
I have created a prototype <http://pauginer.github.io/prototype-uls/#lisa> to
illustrate the idea. Since this is not connected to the MediaWiki backend,
it lacks the advanced capabilities commented above but you can get the idea.
If you are interested in the missing parts, you can check the flexible
search and the list of likely languages ("common languages" section) on the
language selector used at http://translatewiki.net/ which is connected to
MediaWiki backend.
As part of the testing process for the ULS language settings, I included a
task to test also the compact interlanguage designs. Users seem to
understand their use (view
recording<https://www.usertesting.com/highlight_reels/qPYxPW1aRi1UazTMFreR>),
but I wanted to get some feedback for changes affecting such an important
element.
Please let me know if you see any possible concern with this approach.
Thanks
--
Pau Giner
Interaction Designer
Wikimedia Foundation
http://ee-prototype.wmflabs.org is for now the Velvet Revolver of UX
changes, where you can see how they play together. As the main page says
before spammers get hold of it:
MediaWiki core on this server has UX patches that change the appearance of
the site:
- *Trevor!* I63e073b4 <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/52169/> "Add
Agora mw-ui-button classes to various buttons"
- *Jon Robson! *Ica0b69ad
<https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/79948/>"Apply mobile typography
lessons to Vector on desktop"
- *Mark Holmquist! *Ia215c587
<https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/74662/>"Implement agora-style
checkboxes experimentally"
- - - -
Try logging in at http://ee-prototype.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:UserLogin to
see all three jamming. Try editing a random page to see an edit (source)
form with Agora buttons.
I hope to soon have the *Jorm! *Agora Flow prototype on it, though until
someone merge its CSS into mediawiki-ui it'll be a solo project.
(Naming the patches is not to ignore the contributions of many other
people.)
Rock on,
--
=S Page Feeetures supporting engineer
Matmarex has submitted a patch set to remove the font stack that is used
in certain parts of the interface (e.g. login, signup, post-edit feedback).
This triggered a re-opening of discussion at
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44394 , which had been
dormant for a while.
To summarize:
There are basically two reasonable directions:
1. Pull out the custom stack used in these isolated parts of the
interface. Matmarex and Ori favor this approach.
2. Do a global Vector font stack. Initially, I would recommend we just
use the body stack (which is really the subject of the bug), and
consider the heading later.
I think #2 is the right direction, and I recommend we get serious about
it. But if people don't think we can do #2 in a reasonable period of
time, we should do #1.
Please reply at the bug
(https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44394)
Matt Flaschen
Hi design folks,
At some point during the Wikimania DevDays, Benoît and I teamed up to
imagine & try a few quick tweaks to Wikimedia Commons interface.
What we achieved in the end is a big “Upload a file” (« Importer un fichier
» in French) button on the French-language main page. [1] [2] Our rationale
was that it is unreasonable to have people look for the tiny link in the
left menu bar.
Any thoughts on this? Good, bad, ugly?
I will probably suggest on the Village Pump in the next few days to have it
on the English-language Main Page too (though the discussion will probably
drift in the necessity of redesigning completely said main page and ending
up nowhere in the end, or that we need a Guided Tour for that, or etc. ;-þ)
[1] <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Accueil>
[2] Diff <
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AAccueil%2FEnt%C3…
>
Cheers,
--
Jean-Frédéric
