Timo is spot on, as usual. Everything he said, I am
being completely.
Additionally, the lack of public communication is not an oversight. It's
planned, and we are on schedule. Give it a week. Documentation is already
being moved to the wiki over the next few work days[1], the finishing
touches are waiting to be merged for the PHP implementation[2], the first
interfaces are being converted[3] the template stuff is stalled on the Flow
team conforming their code to upstream light-n-candy[4].
Also, high-level notes about our activities were discussed October's
monthly engineering report[5].
- Trevor
[1]
On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 2:33 AM, Timo Tijhof <ttijhof(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
A few quick thoughts:
* One could argue the mediawiki.ui implementation was never destined to
become a standard/default implementation to begin with. The design is
staying (or that direction at least), but not the implementation. However
that didn't prevent people from using those classes outside the intended
usage area (e.g. selected areas in core and certain extensions that need
the look and feel now, while OOjs UI was being worked on). I warned against
this when it was added to the default page modules, but alas. I guess
people either didn't realise what it meant or are okay with having to
migrate twice (once to mw.ui.less and now to oojs-ui).
* The factor of how easy a class is for a human to grok is mostly
irrelevant. OOjs UI's API isn't single classes. The HTML isn't meant to be
written by hand on a page.[2] To achieve the features we need and, more
importantly, browser support; a single element with some classes doesn't
suffice. The browser's themselves have a lot more than one element, too.
They just hide it via ShadowDOM.[1] Until we can either reliably use CSS3
and CSS4 features or HTML5 Web Components across browsers, we'll need most
widgets to be two or three elements in the public DOM. Another reason for
not maintaining such HTML by hand is because it can change and you'll want
to keep maintenance central and minimal for when that happens. We'll keep
breaking changes to a minimum (especially those requiring html changes),
but expect them to happen (especially in the first year).
* Perhaps we should freeze mediawiki-ui. Then keep around until we're
comfortable removing it. No new features, design syncs or other changes.
Focus efforts on OOjs UI, and slowly migrate towards that. Including OOjs
UI "no-js" entry point where a lighter html footprint is required.
— Timo
[1] Here's an example of Chrome rendering a simple input field with
placeholder and a number input field, exposing the internal elements the
browser utilises to render it:
http://i.imgur.com/CWQ2Htj.png
[2] This is easy for JS and PHP, but for wiki pages the community should
use an abstraction for that html. Templates or Lua modules are the
appropriate venue for that.
On 8 Jan 2015, at 04:18, S Page <spage(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
(I couldn't find a list for "Frontend standards group" and I'm not
sure
if all its engineers are on the design list.)
I congratulated James_F on IRC for VisualEditor/ OOjs UI adopting the
mediawiki.ui style, but then it went topsy-turvy:
*spagewmf* I missed that VisualEditor is now using the mediawiki.ui
style formerly known as "Agora"
*James_F* No, we are not.
Agora and MediaWiki.ui are both previous designs. This one is different,
apparently.
Don't ask me how. :-) It's mostly similar, at least.
It's the MediaWiki Theme for OOjs UI.
*spagewmf* How is WMF keeping the "simple" mw-ui-button
mw-ui-constructive and OOjs UI's more elaborate oo-ui-widget >
oo-ui-buttonElement oo-ui-flaggedElement-constructive CSS in sync? Are
we able to share LESS rules?
*James_F* MW UI isn't being kept in sync with the new design, I
believe. I don't think it's credible to try to marry the technologies
together with shared files – it'd be a huge amount of work for a short-term
hack.
*spagewmf* The mw-ui- classes are a lot easier for humans to
grok/reuse, e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Clickable_button
It could be very cool for pages to have OOjs UI gadgets someday.
*James_F* Well, tough. :-) MW-UI won't be around for much longer.
How soon is "short-term" and "not much longer"? It's less than a
year
since mediawiki.ui.button made it into the default set of page modules and
the Living Style Guide
<http://tools.wmflabs.org/styleguide/desktop/section-2.html> appeared.
Are devs going to continue working on $wgUseMediaWikiUIEverywhere to
deliver UX consistency?
I understand the approach espoused by the Frontend standards group
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Frontend_standards_group> is "use OOjs
UI <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/OOjs_UI> components" and I'm excited
to see Bartosz prototyping the UserLogin form in oojs-ui/php. But it'll be
a long time before the 15 extensions using mediawiki.ui have all
transitioned to OOjs UI.
I look forward to the "Frontend standards" session at the developer
summit. “The future has arrived — it’s just not evenly distributed yet.”
Cheers,
--
=S Page WMF Tech writer
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