I've been experimenting with the api that Max Semenik has been working
on and the html5 history interface [1] to add javascript to the
MobileFrontend extension so that any searches, link to other articles
and section expansions go via the api. It's something I'm very
interested to do both from a usability and site performance
perspective. The best example of what I'm trying to do can be seen on
http://github.com . It's worth pointing out that this is not currently
on the roadmap but it is something I'm very interested in us doing.
The resulting prototype [2] has a few quirks (and a few things I
haven't paid attention to e.g. page titles do not change) but I think
is interesting as it is noticeably faster (please bear in mind this is
a slow server) and reduces the load on the server in that any page
loads after the first load will go via the api. Note devices which do
not support the history api or jQuery are not effected by this code.
It throws up some interesting challenges.
1) It enables sub section expansion for which the existing design
doesn't really seem to work. Also it means pages like History of China
[3] look different when viewed normally to when retrieved via the api
(the normal version only has expansion on the top level sections)
2) Also the back button (at the moment) has no memory of which
sections were opened/closed and instead goes back to the last loaded
page.
3) The first page is still wastefully loaded. It would be good if we
could load all sections dynamically on the first page whilst not give
a crummy experience to non-javascript users.
4) Some sections just contain sub sections. So if I click a section
with heading 'Section 1' that only contains 'Section 1.1' and 'Section
1.2' there is a brief flash whilst it tries to load any text for
section 1 (Please load-> empty string). To see what I mean load the
Japan page [4], load History of China via the link 'Chinese history
texts' and click 'Prehistory' (observe 'loading content'). I guess it
would be useful if the api let me know beforehand if a section was
empty of any text so I didn't try to retrieve it.
5) The api returns the heading in the text. For example in [5] the
line Prehistory includes the heading in the text. This is unnecessary
as I can determine this from toclevel and line. In my code I'm
currently scrubbing this out every time I load.
Feel free to have a play [6] locally as the mobile-geo server is very
very slow and improve on it.
Let me know if this interests anyone other than me :-)
~Jon
[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/history.html#the-history-interface
[2] http://mobile-geo.wmflabs.org/w/index.php/Millet
[3] http://mobile-geo.wmflabs.org/w/index.php/History_of_China
[4] http://mobile-geo.wmflabs.org/w/index.php/Japan
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=mobileview&page=History+of+China&f…
[6] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#change,3894
Playing with the beta (which is great).
It looks like the spacing between paragraphs is gone:
http://tinypic.com/r/199poi/5
Is this the intended behavior? IMO it negatively affects readability.
Cheers,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
It looks like the problem started 3/21, see attached image. I'm about to
head to the airport for ~20 hours of travel so can't investigate further,
but may be related to parser changes made that day which line up with the
second bigger spike.
- 05:23 logmsgbot: tstarling synchronized
php-1.19/includes/parser/CoreParserFunctions.php
- 05:23 logmsgbot: tstarling synchronized
php-1.19/includes/parser/Parser.php
- 05:23 logmsgbot: tstarling synchronized
php-1.19/includes/parser/StripState.php
- 05:22 logmsgbot: tstarling synchronized
php-1.19/tests/parser/parserTests.txt
There was also a the release of a majorly changed MobileFrontend earlier
that day / prior night that line up with the first spike. The MF rewrite
doesn't perform well - MobileFrontend::DOMParse avg time went from 15ms to
150ms (~500ms at 99th) and it wouldn't be impossible for it to also impact
non-mobile performance.
DB, ES, and memcache latency look steady, so I suspect it's all application
side.
-Asher
On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 10:00 PM, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote:
> Hi.
>
> There are over a dozen reports of general slowness with the English
> Wikipedia:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=483631204#is_it_me_or_is_wiki_ver
> y_slow.3F
>
> As I browsed and edited the site today, I experienced similar issues
> (painful slowness on intermittent page loads, loading half a page and then
> stalling, etc.).
>
> Is anyone from ops or engineering looking into this? I've filed a bug about
> this as well: <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35448>.
>
> It may be that this is a known issue (due to schema changes or whatever
> else), but I don't think anyone from ops or engineering has commented on
> the
> village pump (or elsewhere?). Can someone please take a look at what's
> going
> on?
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
Hello everyone!
This is our first (and hopefully last!) release candidate for the
Wikipedia App (v1.1 for Android and v3.1 for iOS). This build will be
released for distribution if no major bugs are found. So please hammer
it to shake out any bugs. People who find blocker bugs will have the
honor of pointing and laughing at me while I cut another RC :)
You can download the RCs from here:
Android: http://dumps.wikimedia.org/android/Wikipedia-v1.1RC1.apk
(http://bit.ly/wpandroid11rc1)
Open the .apk in your device and install.
iOS: http://dumps.wikimedia.org/iOS/Wikipedia-V3.1RC1.ipa
(http://bit.ly/GHQ7k4 )
Download the ipa, drag it into iTunes, and sync!
NOTE 1: If you haven't given us your UDID then this IPA will NOT work
for you. We need to have your IPA before we build a new version in
order for it to work. If your try the IPA and find that it wont
install then follow these instructions and then send us your UDID
(http://www.innerfence.com/howto/find-iphone-unique-device-identifier-udid)
NOTE 2: If you tested our beta2/beta1 on iOS, please uninstall the previous
beta from the device before installing this one.
Load it up on your Android/iOS Devices (Phones & Tablets) and give it
a spin. Use it as you normally would, and tell us where it goes wrong.
You can leave feedback at the following Wiki pages:
iOS: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects/WikipediaMobileiOSFeedback#V…
Android: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects/WikipediaMobileAndroidFeedba…
The biggest change for iOS are addition of Sharing options (Twitter,
Facebook and ReadItLater), while for Android it was minor fixes for
ICS and Honeycomb.
Changes since the previous beta are:
## Android v1.1RC1 & iOS v3.1RC1 ##
## Common ##
- Added CREDITS for all libraries used + appropriate licensing
- Updated AUTHORS list
- Fixed RTL bug in Settings Page
- Fixed bug with confusion over Hebrew language code
- Fix issue with scrolling when tapping references
## Android specific ##
- Fixed clipping of text in About page
- Fix scrolling bugs in ICS
## iOS specific ##
- Added Share via Twitter
- Added Save to Read It Later
- Added Share via Facebook
- Added a few more Higher resolution icons
Full CHANGELOG is available
here:https://github.com/wikimedia/WikipediaMobile/blob/master/CHANGELOG
For a more complete list of features, check our previous beta
announcements: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mobile-l/2012-March/005436.html
We do have a *lot* of features, so do test them all out!
And just to re-itreate, you can leave feedback at the following URLs:
iOS: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects/WikipediaMobileiOSFeedback#V…
Android: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects/WikipediaMobileAndroidFeedba…
You can also come catch us on #wikimedia-mobile on IRC.
--
Yuvi Panda T
http://yuvi.in/blog
Hi mobile team,
Not sure you've seen this:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WIWOSM
Essentially, this is an effort to annotate larger shapes/geometric
objects in OpenStreetMap with Wikipedia articles. It can be seen on
the German Wikipedia on some articles (which uses the toolserver-based
OSM integration), e.g.:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkeisenbahn_Chemnitz (click the "Karte"
link in the top right corner to open the link and note the geometric
shape which indicates the exact location of the railway).
This might be interesting as a next gen feature for mobile to do even
better highlighting of objects on a map.
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate