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604 discussions

fancy custom context menu on mdn
by Max 23 Mar '14

23 Mar '14

hey everyone, I just came across this cute little thing the folks on mozilla developer network are doing: They include links to their history and edit pages in the browser's context menu. https://www.dropbox.com/s/7xctszwdjvtui79/Screenshot%202014-03-22%2015.35.3… Thought I'd share this. best, max @awesomephant

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Fwd: Three GSoC proposals about skins
by Quim Gil 22 Mar '14

22 Mar '14

fyi ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: *Quim Gil* <qgil(a)wikimedia.org> Date: Saturday, March 22, 2014 Subject: Three GSoC proposals about skins To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Let me draw your attention to three GSoC proposals trying to improve the current situation with MediaWiki skins. They didn't come from our list of featured projects,but they point to problems the community has acknowledged, and so far they are responding well to feedback. Your attention and help is welcome. Sorted by date: A modern, scalable and attractive skin for MediaWiki, by Jack Phoenix https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Jack_Phoenix/A_modern,_scalable_and_att… Isarra and Emufarmers are volunteering as mentors. All the basics seem to be in place, more scrutiny is welcomed. Separating skins from core MediaWiki, by Bartosz Dziewoński https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Matma_Rex/Separating_skins_from_core_Me… No mentors assigned yet, Jon Robson is volunteering. More than classical mentors, this proposal needs explicit community consensus, and a clear backing from MatmaRex's fellow Vector maintaners: Trevor Parscal, Roan Kattouw, Timo Tijhof. In fact, one of these (or someone else with +2 amb familiarity with skins) should be a co-mentor to offer a third pair of eyes to the plans and the code reviews. Frontend for Vector skin CSS customizations, by Ioannis Protonotarios https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Protnet/Frontend_for_Vector_skin_CSS_cu… No mentors assigned, and nobody is volunteering so far. The proposal is receiving good feedback from known experts in that area. While the previous two candidates are already maintainers in the areas they are proposing to work, and while Ioannis provides details about his experience, he needs mentors happy to evaluate him with microtasks and tough questions. -- Quim Gil Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil -- Quim Gil Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

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Comments requested: linking to another wiki's help page on login form
by Steven Walling 21 Mar '14

21 Mar '14

Hey all, I'd like some wider opinions, particularly from UX designers, on the following issue: in MediaWiki's login form on desktop, there is a link to a login help page. By default it links to "Help:Logging in", which exists on most Wikimedia wikis but which is likely not existing in a brand new MediaWiki installation. I was comfortable including this link by default because I think it's reasonable to ask wiki administrators to either create a login help page or link to one they like. However, some people find this unacceptable, and would prefer to link by default to the help page on MediaWiki.org. I think this is not so bad, and there are drawbacks to both. However, I think it's better to not link to a help page on a completely different site. Users, especially casual non-technical users, won't understand what "MediaWiki" is or why they were sent there instead of to a help page on their wiki. This seems likely to confuse, and we should put more of the burden on site admins to deal with the link as they see fit. The relevant patch is https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/83220/ and the bug to comment on is https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53888 if anyone can chime in. -- Steven Walling, Product Manager https://wikimediafoundation.org/

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Mentor required for GSoC proposal : MassMessage page input list improvements
by Tina Johnson 20 Mar '14

20 Mar '14

Hello all, I'm Tina Johnson. I'm planning to work on GSoC project: MassMessage page input list improvements. My proposal is :MassMessage page input list improvements<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MassMessage/Input_List_Improvements>. Kunal Mehta ( Legoktm ) has agreed to mentor me ( mostly the coding part ). But I'm in need of a mentor who could help me with the UI design of the improved extension. Can anyone help me with this as I need two mentors to get started with my project. Regards, Tina.

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Winter User Test Results, Tests Three and Four
by Brandon Harris 19 Mar '14

19 Mar '14

I have published the results of two additional tests on Winter. These were competing tests and I expected one to fail fairly strongly (and was not disappointed). The first test was identical to the "Electric Boogaloo" test. However, the Winter interface had been modified thus: * No page-context actions are loaded into the fixed header. * The user tools section does not shrink/collapse (thus always showing the username). This test was a fairly significant success. All testers completed all tasks. Most users quickly pointed out that they knew they were "logged in" because of their username appearing in the corner and noted that they have a set of personal or profile tools there. More than one tester referred to this area as "their profile". No users had difficulty finding their contributions because of this. With one exception, all users found the context action ribbon quickly. The one who did not later was observed using it with proficiency. Many users unconsciously navigated with the context action ribbon afterwards. The search box remains mostly discoverable. Several testers unconsciously used it in the sticky format without scrolling to the top. No one used the table of contents in the header. The second test was the polar opposite. For this test, the in page context actions (the ones below the article title) were removed. The page actions in the header were visible at all times, and the user tools menu did not collapse. Most users encountered signficant icon confusion. In some cases, the confusion was enough to prevent them from accomplishing a task. In other cases, the confusion will obviously be problematic as cental editing themes are confused. The discoverability of the user tools section, when the username is present, is very high and remains so. The discoverability of the page action icons is almost non-existent. Several users expressed a desire for action labels. Many users failed to accomplish tasks that required these icons, or assumed they had achieved success when they did not. It is my belief that at least two testers assumed that the page action icons were just parts of their personal tools, and never looked there for page actions. Over all tests, no one has ever used the in-header Table of Contents. Test videos and more highlights available here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Winter#Harness_Three:_Winter:_No_Header_Icons https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Winter#Harness_Four:_Winter:_Only_Header_Act… Barring additional test desires, I'm going to collate all findings across all tests. My current recommendations are: * The in-header actions are confusing and should be removed. * The user tools menu should not collapse as its discoverability significantly degrades when the user name is not present. * The in-header table of contents has very low discoverability. No one has ever used it, and more than one tester has expressed confusion about it when it was found. We should remove it or explore alternatives. * The search box remains highly discoverable, but it is my belief (backed by some tester statements) that the icon is a large part of this. Changing the text in the box reduces discoverability some but not enough that I would eliminate the behavior. * A link to an article's talk page should be included in the in-page table of contents. Several users seem to want to go there. Please discuss here: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Winter&workflow=rr9fa8q2bb… --- Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Musing about canned edit summaries
by Jon Robson 19 Mar '14

19 Mar '14

The app team showed a demo to the mobile web team today of the latest editing experience for the new Wikipedia app that is being worked on. The mobile app editing experience was very consistent with mobile web which is a great thing, that said it had one significant difference - canned edit summaries. The interface showed various buttons that when clicked would populate the edit summary input. e.g. "Fixed typos/grammar" or "Added links") I wanted to discuss whether this is a good idea? If the goal is to give ideas to users on what they can do to edit, we should be doing that at the start of the workflow in my opinion - tell a new user what they can, give them a better idea using the article issues templates. If the goal is to make the users editing experience easier (which it should be), personally I think it would be more useful to have an autocomplete that allows an editor to recycle older edit summaries. PS. Is there a link to a wiki page for these designs, so other people can see what I'm talking about?

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Typography Refresh becoming default next week?
by Tomasz W. Kozlowski 18 Mar '14

18 Mar '14

Hi! According to the Deployments page on Wikitech, Typography Refresh is scheduled to be enabled for all users of the Vector skin sometime next week <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=105227#Next_month>. As I like my skin the way it is, I have two questions: (1) Can someone from the Design team confirm that the deployment will actually happen next week, and (2) if so, how can I opt-out of the change without having to edit my own common.css (or vector.css) stylesheets? I have very strong negative feelings towards Typography Refresh because of the shade of grey it uses for article text and the way it changes link color from blue to grey, which makes it very hard for me to read the text due to my poor eyesight, and would therefore prefer not to have to use it. Tomasz

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nifty search interface
by Ryan Kaldari 17 Mar '14

17 Mar '14

http://www.travelbelize.org/

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Redesign "Leave feedback about Upload Wizard"
by Gabriel Chi Hong Lee 17 Mar '14

17 Mar '14

Dear all, I plan to redesign it, I will tell you guys the plan and give you the scratch a few days later. But I don't know how to apply the changes, so hope some one may teach me. _________________________________ Gabriel Lee Admin on wy/zh and beta 17/3/2014 #PRAYFORMH370

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Winter User Tests, Round Two (and Two: Electric Boogaloo)
by Brandon Harris 16 Mar '14

16 Mar '14

I have run two sets of user tests with Winter to determine the usability of in-header page action icons and whether or not users can easily recognize their personal tools menu and the search box, especially after scrolling in the page. The results are not encouraging for the in-header icons. Two tests were run because the first test had some possible errors and confusions. The second test (Winter Harness Two Electric Boogaloo) had some modifications to the flow to avoid people getting lost on user talk pages (this was the result of the first version of Harness Two telling them to click on the Speech Bubble icon in the top right if they were lost - but they had scrolled to the top already). H2:EB corrected this by directing them to the context action ribbon. * https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Winter#Harness_Two:_Winter * https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Winter#Harness_Two:_Electric_Boogaloo * Only *one* user out of ten correctly used the in-header page action icons. Further, his language indicated that he had some icon confusion: he thought that only a few icons were added, and that existing ones were moved (e.g., history and edit were new, but the watch list icon was still the same). * Most users were unable to recognize the personal tools section as being "my stuff" unless their username was ''also'' included. Once the username was gone, it was invisible to them (with rare exceptions, and mostly by accident then). * No users had trouble with the search box. At all. * Most users ended up using the context action ribbon and ignored other navigation hints. * The in-header TOC might as well be invisible. * At this point, with 10 testers and a 10% success rate, I'd say that the benefits of putting page icons in the header are outweighed by the negatives of losing the username for discoverability. Discussion here: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Winter&workflow=rr0ke21yl3… --- Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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