Mobile-l January 2015

mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org

30 participants
21 discussions

[Apps] Using Swift for new feature development on iOS
by Dan Garry 11 Apr '15

11 Apr '15

*tl;dr: The programming language used to develop new features by our iOS app engineering team is changing from Objective C to Swift at some point in the near future.* When making a native app, the language you have to implement the app in is chosen by the third party responsible for the platform. For iOS apps, Apple chose Objective C to be the language the app is written in. Objective C is a... very strange language. It has a lot of quirks that slow down development. To solve the above problem, you can now write apps in a new language called Swift. Notably, Swift has features that make it less error prone and more concise than Objective C, which should increase our velocity of feature development. Swift is also much more readable and in-line with other languages, which lowers the barrier of entry (which is currently very high with Objective C). Importantly, Objective C and Swift can live alongside each other. So, when we "switch to Swift" we do not need to rewrite all of our existing code from Objective C to Swift. Instead, we can just start developing new features using Swift, and slowly rewrite the old code from Objective C into Swift as time allows. On the downsides, Swift is only supported on iOS 7 and above. iOS 6 only represents around 5% of our user base, and we can pin iOS 6 users to the last version of the app we released before we used Swift. We need to decide what the last set of features we're want in that build are before we switch. Here are our next steps: - Evaluate more concretely whether Swift actually fits our needs or not. [Engineering] - Decide last set of features for our iOS 6 build. [Product/Design] Thanks, Dan -- Dan Garry Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [WikimediaMobile] [Apps] Wikipedia Lite app?
by Florian Schmidt 03 Mar '15

03 Mar '15

+1 for this idea. I still have an Android 2.3 device, but the Wikipedia app (and others too) is very slow and becomes more and more unusable, while it's agreat user experience on my Android 4.4 device. If dropping 2.3 support means a faster development of the main Wikipedia app and the <2.3 users still have access to Wikipedia through a lite app (which will be faster and more usable) i would say: do it, it has advantages for both sides :) Florian Gesendet mit meinem HTC ----- Reply message ----- Von: "Dan Garry" <dgarry(a)wikimedia.org> An: "mobile-l" <mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, "Carolynne Schloeder" <cschloeder(a)wikimedia.org>, "Toby Negrin" <tnegrin(a)wikimedia.org>, "Lila Tretikov" <lila(a)wikimedia.org> Betreff: [WikimediaMobile] [Apps] Wikipedia Lite app? Datum: Sa., Jan. 31, 2015 06:45 Hi everyone, Those of you who were at the Mobile quarterly review heard me mention Facebook Lite, an app that's designed especially for the developing world. Notably, their app has a lot of optimisations which make it good for users in developing world: It's only 252kB, good for limited data plans.It supports down to Android 2.2, good for older devices.It's data-efficient, good for 2G connections and for people on limited data plans. From a development perspective, some advantages are: You no longer have to support older versions of Android in your main app. You can tailor the performance of the lite app to the older devices so it's faster.You can tailor the features of the lite app to the developing market.So obviously there are a lot of advantages for our users if we do this. And, selfishly, I can't stress enough how much dropping Android 2.3 from our current app would speed up development. As an example, almost all of the edge cases with lead images occurred on 2.3 devices, and they required quite a lot of investigation and hacking to fix them up. Obviously we've not dropped 2.3 so far because it's a very strategically important part of our user base, which I'm sure Carolynne can attest to! I'd say that we should put some serious thought into whether we'd prefer to have a Wikipedia Lite app for the developing world, rather than our current "one app to rule them all". Comments? Questions? Dan -- Dan GarryAssociate Product Manager, Mobile Apps Wikimedia Foundation

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Increasing mobile beta audience
by Jon Robson 07 Feb '15

07 Feb '15

One of the frustrations I have heard so far is that the audience there is too small to get meaningful data around various experiments. Currently people have to opt in by going to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileOptions which is hidden away in the mobile interface. They can do this whilst anonymous or logged in. Have we thought about automatically opting people into beta mode e.g. a sample of our users in a certain geographic region / certain zero enabled area/ all users in a certain bucket based on their user id ? How many users could beta actually handle? Is this technically possible? If someone was bucketed into beta would they be able to opt out into stable again under any of the above situations? Jon

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Luis van Ahn/crowdsourcing
by Toby Negrin 07 Feb '15

07 Feb '15

Some interesting links from one of the early crowdsourcing people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_von_Ahn http://www.ted.com/talks/luis_von_ahn_massive_scale_online_collaboration?la… His current gig: https://www.duolingo.com/ -Toby

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Visual Editor / Mobile
by Jon Robson 04 Feb '15

04 Feb '15

Ed Sanders, Trevor and I had an in real life conversation, last Friday, where we spoke about the VisualEditor tablet (and future mobile) offering. We've had a bunch of issues with it so far breaking and a lot of this is due to two conflicting technologies. We're keen to bring VE code and mobile code closer together with the ultimate goal to get a good VisualEditor mobile experience going. Since Damon has asked us all to get VisualEditor released this quarter, between us we think mobile VE will become a high priority soon. We'd thus like to spend this quarter making the VisualEditorOverlay [1] more OOJS UI like. Ideally all the existing code should live in VisualEditor and be based on OOJS UI. In the future we could also imagine the wikitext editor in mobile becoming part of the VisualEditor tool itself. At a bare minimum this could be rewritten as an OOJS UI dialog [2] and would require us looking at the mobile overlay manager and seeing if it can be consolidated with VisualEditor's seemingly similar window manager [3] which I do not believe has any support for storing state via the hash fragment [citation needed, please correct me] As a result of this work, the mobile frontend code and VisualEditor's front end code should naturally become more aligned. Ed, Trevor anything you would like to add to the above? Any corrections to my interpretation of this chat? [1] https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-MobileFrontend/blob/maste… [2] https://doc.wikimedia.org/oojs-ui/master/#!/api/OO.ui.Dialog [3] https://doc.wikimedia.org/oojs-ui/master/#!/api/OO.ui.WindowManager

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Hooking into Google Now's Cards
by Yuvi Panda 03 Feb '15

03 Feb '15

http://insidesearch.blogspot.in/2015/01/google-app-update-get-now-cards-fro… Suggestions for articles to edit / read / follow / whatever, and plenty of other things to do! :) -- Yuvi Panda T http://yuvi.in/blog

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wikimedia - build problems with mediaWiki's android platform - Stack Overflow
by cxyshine＠yeah.net 02 Feb '15

02 Feb '15

i'm a novice of wikimedia_android app, and i got problems when i tried to build and run the project in andorid studio 1.0.1. i need some help ,see this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28248801/build-problems-with-mediawikis-… . besides ,this is my first time send email to mobile-l ,is there something i need to pay attention to . thanks a lot . cxyshine(a)yeah.net

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Re: [WikimediaMobile] [Wikimedia-l] Quarterly reviews of high priority WMF initiatives
by Tilman Bayer 31 Jan '15

31 Jan '15

Minutes and slides from four recent quarterly reviews are now available: Team Practices Group: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarter… Engineering Commmunity Team: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarter… Release Engineering and QA (Quality Assurance) team: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarter… Mobile Partnerships (Wikipedia Zero) team: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarter… On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 6:49 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > Hi folks, > > to increase accountability and create more opportunities for course > corrections and resourcing adjustments as necessary, Sue's asked me > and Howie Fung to set up a quarterly project evaluation process, > starting with our highest priority initiatives. These are, according > to Sue's narrowing focus recommendations which were approved by the > Board [1]: > > - Visual Editor > - Mobile (mobile contributions + Wikipedia Zero) > - Editor Engagement (also known as the E2 and E3 teams) > - Funds Dissemination Committe and expanded grant-making capacity > > I'm proposing the following initial schedule: > > January: > - Editor Engagement Experiments > > February: > - Visual Editor > - Mobile (Contribs + Zero) > > March: > - Editor Engagement Features (Echo, Flow projects) > - Funds Dissemination Committee > > We’ll try doing this on the same day or adjacent to the monthly > metrics meetings [2], since the team(s) will give a presentation on > their recent progress, which will help set some context that would > otherwise need to be covered in the quarterly review itself. This will > also create open opportunities for feedback and questions. > > My goal is to do this in a manner where even though the quarterly > review meetings themselves are internal, the outcomes are captured as > meeting minutes and shared publicly, which is why I'm starting this > discussion on a public list as well. I've created a wiki page here > which we can use to discuss the concept further: > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/Quarterly_r… > > The internal review will, at minimum, include: > > Sue Gardner > myself > Howie Fung > Team members and relevant director(s) > Designated minute-taker > > So for example, for Visual Editor, the review team would be the Visual > Editor / Parsoid teams, Sue, me, Howie, Terry, and a minute-taker. > > I imagine the structure of the review roughly as follows, with a > duration of about 2 1/2 hours divided into 25-30 minute blocks: > > - Brief team intro and recap of team's activities through the quarter, > compared with goals > - Drill into goals and targets: Did we achieve what we said we would? > - Review of challenges, blockers and successes > - Discussion of proposed changes (e.g. resourcing, targets) and other > action items > - Buffer time, debriefing > > Once again, the primary purpose of these reviews is to create improved > structures for internal accountability, escalation points in cases > where serious changes are necessary, and transparency to the world. > > In addition to these priority initiatives, my recommendation would be > to conduct quarterly reviews for any activity that requires more than > a set amount of resources (people/dollars). These additional reviews > may however be conducted in a more lightweight manner and internally > to the departments. We’re slowly getting into that habit in > engineering. > > As we pilot this process, the format of the high priority reviews can > help inform and support reviews across the organization. > > Feedback and questions are appreciated. > > All best, > Erik > > [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus > [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings > -- > Erik Möller > VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation > > Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list > Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Tilman Bayer Senior Analyst Wikimedia Foundation IRC (Freenode): HaeB

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[Apps] Wikipedia Lite app?
by Dan Garry 31 Jan '15

31 Jan '15

Hi everyone, Those of you who were at the Mobile quarterly review heard me mention Facebook Lite, an app that's designed especially for the developing world. Notably, their app has a lot of optimisations which make it good for users in developing world: - It's only 252kB, good for limited data plans. - It supports down to Android 2.2, good for older devices. - It's data-efficient, good for 2G connections and for people on limited data plans. >From a development perspective, some advantages are: - You no longer have to support older versions of Android in your main app. - You can tailor the performance of the lite app to the older devices so it's faster. - You can tailor the features of the lite app to the developing market. So obviously there are a lot of advantages for our users if we do this. And, selfishly, I can't stress enough how much dropping Android 2.3 from our current app would speed up development. As an example, almost all of the edge cases with lead images occurred on 2.3 devices, and they required quite a lot of investigation and hacking to fix them up. Obviously we've not dropped 2.3 so far because it's a very strategically important part of our user base, which I'm sure Carolynne can attest to! I'd say that we should put some serious thought into whether we'd prefer to have a Wikipedia Lite app for the developing world, rather than our current "one app to rule them all". Comments? Questions? Dan -- Dan Garry Associate Product Manager, Mobile Apps Wikimedia Foundation

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Florian for +2 on MobileFrontend?
by Jon Robson 31 Jan '15

31 Jan '15

I've proposed that Florian gets +2 on the MobileFrontend repository. Florian has been an extremely active MobileFrontend developer (he is our 5th most active contributor). It would be great to have him helping out with merging patches. He also is based in Europe so it would strengthen our ability to get regressions fixed on different timezones quicker! You can support this by voting using the {{support}} template on: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Gerrit/Project_ownership#.2B2_for_Florian_Sc… Please show your {{support}} on the wiki page to make this happen! (In the words of Spiderman with great power comes great reponsibility)

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Mobile-l January 2015