Hi everyone,
In the last few weeks, we've been rolling out the ability of our Android app to connect to the Mobile Content Service[0], built on RESTBase[1], for retrieving article content, and the rollout is now complete. Over the course of the next day or so, the app installed on your device should seamlessly switch over to using MCS instead of the MediaWiki (mobileview) API.[2]
While this change won't affect your day-to-day browsing, it does mean that several additional features that were dependent on the content service will now become enabled in the app! These include:
- Definitions of words from Wiktionary. Tap-and-hold any word in an article to highlight it, then tap the "Define" button to see a popup definition of the highlighted word. (Note: this is currently enabled only for English Wikipedia articles)
- If an article has a recorded audio pronunciation of its title included in it, the app will display an "audio" button next to the article title. Tap the button to play back the pronunciation.
- If an article has geo coordinates associated with it, the app will display a "pin" button below the article title. Tapping this button will open the default maps app on your device, and navigate to the coordinates of the article.
Many thanks to the Services team for helping us reach this important milestone, and props to our own Bernd and Michael for their efforts to get this done. This will enable us to build future service-based features much more easily, and it's our hope that the content service will be adopted by many other consumers, not just the Android app.
[2] This is done within the app itself, and does not require an update from the Play store.
Cheers,
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