As folks may be aware, over in the Wikimedia Mobile Apps team we're
starting a refresh of the Wikipedia mobile apps for Android and iOS, which
have not been updated in a while and are now wayyy behind the mobile web in
features and UI awesomeness.
The new apps are using native UI around the content web view, which lets us
integrate with the system better than the old PhoneGap-based HTML app, and
provide long-desired features like pinch-to-zoom in the article view.
Our first 2-week work sprint is finishing up, and builds of current state
are available:
* Android:
http://dumps.wikimedia.org/android/apps-android-wikipedia-dev-sprint1.apk
* iOS: on testflightapp.com (email notifications sent to our recently
trimmed beta list)
Both versions are pretty bare-bones, so don't be surprised by missing
icons, toolbar buttons that don't work, or incomplete design. :)
This first feature sprint concentrated on getting search & basic content
loading working. You can type into the search box, the search results
include thumbnails, and you can select a search result to load the article.
You can also click on internal links in both iOS and Android versions,
though they get a little flaky from there out. :) Back/forward is not yet
implemented on iOS; back works on Android but there's no forward.
Note also the pretty animation when following links on Android -- neat!
Next sprint's release should look more polished, as we'll have some more
navigation working, and the first sprint stuff prettied up to better match
design:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Search-overlay-01.png
For in-progress design & UX ideas for the new app, see
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_App_Design
Note that you may or may not need to manually uninstall the old app if it's
present first.
If you want to try the iOS version and aren't on the beta list you'll have
to build it yourself on a Mac with XCode 5, and then you can only install
it on your device if you are a registered iOS developer (thank Apple's
restrictions on third-party app installations!):
$ git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/apps/ios/wikipediaapps-ios-wikipedia
(Unfortunately we cannot add new people to the iOS beta list until Apple
clears out old entries from our 100-max device database, either at the end
of the calendar year or in February when our membership rolls over. Yeah,
I'm serious...)
And of course you can build the Android version too, and run it with no
restrictions:
$ git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/apps/android/wikipediaapps-android-wikipedia
Note that there's separate work going to revitalize the Wikipedia app for
Firefox OS, which will remain HTML5-based as that's how native Firefox apps
work! That's being spearheaded by the Wikimedia Mobile Partnerships &
Wikipedia Zero team.
-- brion
hi, sorry for crossposting this, but i am a little lost whom to ask.
erik mentioned some time ago how important zim support is in
collections, and mentioned that there are barely downloads. very
rarely i get my hands on a new enought android version where kiwix
runs. and i tried to (1) create a book, and (2) download a book. both
failed.
1. create a book
the mobile skin is lacking the "book" or "add page to book" link.
calling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Book does not help
either, there is no obvious way to add pages to a book.
2. download a book
go to a book like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Books/Derivatives. the mobile
skin again is broken and the download link is crippled. if one is
lucky to hit the zim download link anyway, it switches over to a
non-mobile link to generate the book. it really seems to generate the
book, and displays a link. clicking it then downloads a 6.5 mb big
"index.php" and says "failed".
you have any idea what i do wrong?
rupert.
Adam Baso and I experimented yesterday with creating a single standalone
Special page that could act as a single page web application for mobile web
that could in future be used to package Firefox OS and Chrome store apps as
well as provide the basis for an offline version of Wikipedia.
For the initial proof of concept it simply allows a reading and searching
experience that uses JavaScript. The left menu currently has one item due
to the lack of a way to do login via JavaScript.
I've just finished the changes required on the MobileFrontend side:
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/100919
It also requires a core change to allow skins to add attributes to the HTML
tag
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/100920
This patch also provides manifest.php which could be packaged in core or
inside MobileFrontend.
Adam and I have been backing and forthing with manifest.php but a gist of
my current version [1] can be found below which is compatible with the
MobileFrontend change (Adam please make note of how I do cache control in
the manifest and how $styleModules now works and incorporate these changes
into your version)
To do:
1) We need to generate a cache manifest version which reflects the current
state of the skin and the resource loader modules - startup and styles so
that it updates when changes have been made.
2) For this to completely work offline we need to find a way to cache the
request for mediawiki and jQuery that the startup module RL module fires
off (sample url [2]). Once we find a way of doing this, the great work Ori
has been doing with localStorage to cache resource loader modules will mean
that the entire page will work without JavaScript (exciting stuff)
Would be interested in any help moving this along - I think this is a great
opportunity for innovation in Wikipedia's mobile offerings!
[1] https://gist.github.com/jdlrobson/7921828
[2]
/w/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki&only=scripts&skin=vector&version=20131212T200640Z
load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&skin=mobile&target=mobile&*:17
