I’ve been making a thing. It’s actually got a code-name now! No more saying “Vector static header and navigation modification”.
LOTS of stuff going on with this update. Notably:
* Now asks for a username on load, so as to set things up
* All pages are loaded from the API via JSON. So it’s not just the single static page.
* Got rid of pretty much every color.
* Article actions now dock in the header as you scroll.
* Table of Contents is now in the header from the beginning
* The sidebar’s border goes away as you scroll past it
* Lots of links/actions do what you think they should. Most do not.
The search prototype is great, and so are the improvements to the toolbar, particularly the relation between the TOC and the way the page actions slide out on scrolldown. I can't wait to see this as a beta feature.
Some very small things:
- I realize the icons are mostly placeholders, but the user contribs one is seriously confusing. It looks like there are two edit buttons when you scroll down.
- I think the main edit button at the top should not be the quiet state from mw-ui. There is very little use of color on the skin now, so it's not like we're overwhelming things. We need to stop being afraid to make a few things LOUDER, particularly since in this prototype we're removing some color (like the Vector borders).
- The line underneath the page title h1 is a different thickness (and color?) than the other borders. It's mildly annoying.
And one bigger thing... The lack of the puzzle globe when scrolling. I know you hate the puzzle globe and so do many of our designers. But it's a key part of our identity, and it's also a really nice large target for "home" on desktop. Thinking of this as a potential future default look, splitting the logo and wordmark on every page like that is a serious change. We should have a larger conversation about it I think internally. Either we do think the globe is an important part of our brand or we don't. If we think it's so unimportant as to remove it on scroll, then that has pretty wide implications for our branding I think.
Winter is coming, (I couldn't resist the Game of Thrones reference.)