tldr: Help me find a way forward to get the inadequacies of MediaWiki UI in front of people and get those issues addressed so we have a more consistent MediaWiki;
#### I wrote a patch which applies MediaWiki UI everywhere and got merged [1]. It highlights lots of issues [2] with it in existing form.
I've enabled it by default on MobileFrontend for mobile pages [3], since most pages didn't load any styles by default for desktop special pages.
I'm getting early indication this is a useful technique as already I'm hearing issues about certain pages from Matt Flaschen.
I would thus like to find a way to get this global enabled safely in a desktop environment. My hunch is that if we make these issues more visible to developers, designers and product owners, on the long term we will get much more consistency.
There are 4 ways we can do this desktop enabling: 1) Create a beta feature that turns the styles on. e.g. UI refresh 2) Enable it on betalabs, so we are constantly reminded about the brokenness. e.g. https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/154972 3) Run on a separate test instance. 4) Drop the global and just do it in desktop
My worry about 3 is it won't get used, bugs won't get filed. Nothing will change.
Matt raised a valid concern about 2 in that betalabs should reflect our code going out to production, but I personally think it is the best place to do this and since we are only changing classes I believe disruption will be relatively minimal. 1 has the advantage of getting us feedback from more people and for projects to begin using it on content pages if they so wish. 4 is scary and is likely to be a bumpy ride as there are lots of issues, although on the plus side I imagine would trigger lots of follow up patches. It is not an approach we have ever tried in conservative MediaWiki land :)
[1] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/150635 [2] Issues: * Certain elements have been designed for a specific use case and don't really work outside that use case e.g. the mediawiki ui checkboxes are too big, especially when used alongside others. * The blue bar on the left of input fields sometimes * We've never done an audit of forms to clarify which forms are destructive or constructive. * Some forms have unnecessary buttons e.g. the cancel button in http://en.m.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:ChangeEmail * Some forms have constructive buttons instead of destructive. * Certain elements are not featured in mediawiki ui (select elements and radio inputs most notably) [3] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/150636
On 08/18/2014 08:20 PM, Jon Robson wrote:
- Create a beta feature that turns the styles on. e.g. UI refresh
I have concerns about a BetaFeature for this type of change.
- Enable it on betalabs, so we are constantly reminded about the
brokenness. e.g. https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/154972
Jon summarized my issues with this well.
- Run on a separate test instance.
Done, at http://mwui.wmflabs.org/wiki/Main_Page . Please test (don't worry about breaking the wiki, it's purely a test wiki, so click around and do what you want).
- Drop the global and just do it in desktop
Obviously, we want to do this sooner rather than later. I expect we'll have worked out the most obvious kinks before this, but a couple will slip through and that's life.
- The blue bar on the left of input fields sometimes
What do you mean this is an issue? Are you referring to the WikiEditor bad interaction?
- We've never done an audit of forms to clarify which forms are
destructive or constructive.
We've actually started this (mostly Jared), but it's true most of the pages aren't done.. See https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/MediaWiki_UI_Standardization_hack4. Mostly that's an audit of where MW UI is already used, but you can see earlier efforts to implement a couple pages (e.g. edit).
- Some forms have unnecessary buttons e.g. the cancel button in
http://en.m.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:ChangeEmail
- Some forms have constructive buttons instead of destructive.
We may want to revisit how we're doing defaults, and default to neutral, rather than constructive. Either way, we'll have overrides. The only difference is what happens if we miss one.
- Certain elements are not featured in mediawiki ui (select elements
and radio inputs most notably) [3] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/150636
There are also portions of the spec that aren't implemented, which is problematic in some cases (e.g. the checkboxes are a little green-overwhelming when there's more than one) due to https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69200 .
Matt Flaschen