Thanks Rob and Jim for your replies. I know a lot of WikiMedia is customisable via stylesheets and through the Special Pages and I've been advised to only touch the source code if I have to... However, in this instance I can probably justify a little bit of hacking!
Chris
-----Original Message----- From: wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of wikitech-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: 06 March 2007 03:51 To: wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Wikitech-l Digest, Vol 44, Issue 9
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Today's Topics:
1. Reordering Navigation, Search and Toolbox in Wiki Skin (Kutler, Christopher) 2. Re: Reordering Navigation, Search and Toolbox in Wiki Skin (Rob Church) 3. Re: Reordering Navigation, Search and Toolbox in Wiki Skin (Jim Wilson) 4. Re: "Planet" feed aggregators (Jim Hu) 5. AJAX and .aspx as technologies for MediaWiki? (Virgil Ierubino) 6. Re: AJAX and .aspx as technologies for MediaWiki? (Kasimir Gabert) 7. Re: AJAX and .aspx as technologies for MediaWiki? (Rob Church) 8. Re: AJAX and .aspx as technologies for MediaWiki? (Simetrical) 9. Re: "Planet" feed aggregators (Nick Jenkins)
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Message: 1 Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 18:44:37 -0000 From: "Kutler, Christopher" Christopher.Kutler@nationalarchives.gov.uk Subject: [Wikitech-l] Reordering Navigation, Search and Toolbox in Wiki Skin To: wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: 88A6AFA61447AC4AB9F280FC6747F908032E1EEF@na-exch1.in.tna.local Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
At the risk of receiving RTFMs, does anyone know if there is a way of changing the order of the Navigation, Search and Toolbox in Wiki Skin so that the Search box comes first, followed by the Nav box then the Toolbox. I was going to just change the order of the code in MonoBook.php, but I'm wondering whether this can be done via one of the stylesheets or something like that.
Any advice would be greatfully appreciated.
Thanks
Chris
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Message: 2 Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 18:51:52 +0000 From: "Rob Church" robchur@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Reordering Navigation, Search and Toolbox in Wiki Skin To: "Wikimedia developers" wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: e92136380703051051q614f06dfi8b5f02a640bd4591@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
On 05/03/07, Kutler, Christopher Christopher.Kutler@nationalarchives.gov.uk wrote:
At the risk of receiving RTFMs, does anyone know if there is a way of changing the order of the Navigation, Search and Toolbox in Wiki Skin so that the Search box comes first, followed by the Nav box then the Toolbox. I was going to just change the order of the code in MonoBook.php, but I'm wondering whether this can be done via one of the stylesheets or something like that.
Nope, that's more or less the correct method.
Rob Church
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Message: 3 Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 12:53:55 -0600 From: "Jim Wilson" wilson.jim.r@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Reordering Navigation, Search and Toolbox in Wiki Skin To: "Wikimedia developers" wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: ac08e8d0703051053i4f9eab03t321af72a412ca469@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
It may or may not be possible to do this via CSS - but if you're comfortable with PHP, hacking the skin is probably the best option.
I'd suggest that you probably make a duplicate skin ("MyMonoBook" or similar) and then hack that one instead. This will make future upgrades easier.
-- Jim R. Wilson (jimbojw)
On 3/5/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/03/07, Kutler, Christopher Christopher.Kutler@nationalarchives.gov.uk wrote:
At the risk of receiving RTFMs, does anyone know if there is a way of
changing the order of the Navigation, Search and Toolbox in Wiki Skin so that the Search box comes first, followed by the Nav box then the Toolbox. I was going to just change the order of the code in MonoBook.php, but I'm wondering whether this can be done via one of the stylesheets or something like that.
Nope, that's more or less the correct method.
Rob Church
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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Message: 4 Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 13:55:17 -0500 From: Jim Hu jimhu@tamu.edu Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] "Planet" feed aggregators To: Wikimedia developers wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: E7B9B125-4F0B-4BD0-AB6A-EE2A55705023@tamu.edu Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
On Mar 5, 2007, at 1:10 PM, Rob Church wrote:
On 05/03/07, Simetrical Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/5/07, Jim Wilson wilson.jim.r@gmail.com wrote:
I doubt most Wikimedians even know that the inclusion of new extensions would be considered. I certainly didn't - until you just said something.
Is there a sounding-board somewhere that people can make these suggestions and the community can discuss it?
As far as I've seen, it's mostly harassing Tim and/or Brion until they give you an answer.
You oversimplify too greatly.
A huge proportion of the extensions out there are written by, if I may be frank, amateurs.
Indeed...this describes me pretty well. I believe "rank amateur" comes closer.
They may be quick and dirty solutions to fulfill people's needs at the time. They may not be compatible with the newest versions of MediaWiki, or may use appallingly bad and even unsafe practices to get things done, which may lead to the inclusion of security vulnerabilities; commonly XSS and SQL injection.
For example, I'm pretty sure I used some appalling practices (like saving state by serializing data into the page output itself instead of to a session or cookie) in the Table Edit extension I just wrote...
But then I don't think it should actually be enabled on the Wikimedia cluster. Since extensions like these are being written by us amateurs to get things done on our own wikis, it would be nice to get feedback on which of our appalling practices to look out for. Perhaps someone with more expertise than the likes of me can add some more information to the sections on mediawiki.org about writing extensions and special pages.
But I'm NOT expecting the main devs to have the time to do that.
Jim
If we're to enable an extension on the Wikimedia cluster, then we have to be reasonably sure that we can trust the code. This means we have to review it for security and for sanity, and for performance. This takes time. Time which we don't have, on the whole.
Some of this can be skipped when the extension is written by an experienced and trusted developer and uses appropriate techniques to do things, although there is still a phase of review which (rightly) needs to take place, so it's still not instantaneous.
Another big problem is that people request the installation of the most ridiculous and pointless little extensions. There are vast arguments over how complex wiki text should be, and internally there is a ripple of discontent over how complex it has become. A lot of the community's thirst for nonsense was slaked in an efficient and effective manner by Tim Starling with the introduction of ParserFunctions. Unfortunately, now they want more. Variables. Arrays. All sorts of nonsense which, frankly, they *do not need* to write an encyclopaedia.
The community frequently bitches at the development and system administration teams to do things faster, but it is the development and system administration teams which have a responsibility to keep the sites alive, and which will take the flak - oh yes, there's a lot of flak to come from all our users - when the shit hits the fan, as it might do without the proper processes.
Rob Church
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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Message: 5 Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 02:55:23 +0000 From: "Virgil Ierubino" virgil.ierubino@gmail.com Subject: [Wikitech-l] AJAX and .aspx as technologies for MediaWiki? To: wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org, mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: 24dce9db0703051855r5eeb1b09he2dc5c5b6fa8f801@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
A quick development question.
If an AJAX-enabled, or "next-gen" MediaWiki were to be built, would it be acceptable for it to have been made in a format such as .aspx (i.e. built using Microsoft Visual Web Developer)? I was wondering if this might have some kind of clash with GFDL/Copyleft principles, or accessibility or compatibility. Would web pages in the .aspx format be acceptable as the output of the software that Wikipedia runs on?
Thanks.
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Message: 6 Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 20:04:34 -0700 From: "Kasimir Gabert" kasimir.g@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] AJAX and .aspx as technologies for MediaWiki? To: "Wikimedia developers" wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: 52836a540703051904p648e723fvc9dc2770e236c813@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Hello Virgil,
Most web servers that run wikis are run using open source technology. ASP.NET is closed source and run by Microsoft, and so I doubt that it would get far in this community. The two main languages that you want to build it in would be PHP or Perl (Python, Ruby, etc, as well).
Kasimir
On 3/5/07, Virgil Ierubino virgil.ierubino@gmail.com wrote:
A quick development question.
If an AJAX-enabled, or "next-gen" MediaWiki were to be built, would it be acceptable for it to have been made in a format such as .aspx (i.e. built using Microsoft Visual Web Developer)? I was wondering if this might have some kind of clash with GFDL/Copyleft principles, or accessibility or compatibility. Would web pages in the .aspx format be acceptable as the output of the software that Wikipedia runs on?
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