On Tue, 25 Aug 2020 at 22:36, Strainu <strainu10(a)gmail.com> wrote:
1. Why bundle the changes? The collapsible toolbar
could be a useful
feature in itself, even for those who are firmly against the
narrow-down content area. It could also be the basis for more radical
changes, such as a "no distraction mode".
Do you mean these should be individual opt-in options, so every editor can
customize their preferred version?
I like that idea, I think it would make community acceptance much easier.
However, for readers (unregistered users) the developer team has
difficulties enabling to customize their experience, so the majority of the
users (readers) would probably see a default version, bringing us back to
the question: what that default should be.
2. Why change Vector rather than creating a new skin or starting from
a 3-column skin such as Timeless? I assume it has more
to do with
community dynamics than technical reasons...
I've had the same two questions before the project started (Build upon
Timeless
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Archive1#Build_upon_Timeless_skin>
).
The technical reason would be that Timeless isn't targeting old browsers
that's supported by the WMF and accessibility is not a primary concern.
Both of these could be rectified easily, however.
The actual reason seems to be that Timeless was never considered, as that
is a "volunteer" skin, not an official one. This strict distinction between
official and volunteer solutions is a cultural constraint that makes it
impossible to fully realize the developer community's potential IMHO.
The reason to not create a new skin is not documented. The few comments
suggest the developers felt this will be easier to manage and to keep the
common parts in sync. Initially that was true, but by now Vector became two
skins in one, a significant part of the code being duplicated. Furthermore,
this complicates the task of gadget and user style creators, which was not
taken into consideration. In any case, either making a new skin or making
two skins in one has their own, different difficulties that would be close
in a comparison, but in the long run it would be cleaner to have them
separately.
On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 at 14:00, Galder Gonzalez LarraƱaga <
galder158(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
Indeed! The FINAL stage of the changes is deeply
conservative and not a
change at all. It's a small lifting, but not a real change. We are now 10
years old, and with the new changes we will be 8 years old in a year,
instead of being 11 years old.
I'd say the final stage will be 5 years old, other than that our estimates
are quite close :-D
Still, it's a very much needed facelift and the design is a good balance
IMHO.
Aron (Demian)
http://demian-demo.epizy.com/wiki/Desktop_Improvements_volunteer_demo -
most of the project implemented