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/wikipedia apps-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/wikipedia apps-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

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