On 07/01/07, Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com wrote:
My point in its simplest form was that there ARE ways of doing VERY funky stuff. And I don't mean flashing animations, I mean stuff that actually makes MediaWiki run better, be easier to use, attract more users, etc.
Nobody is adverse to implementing any AJAX in MediaWiki where it will be genuinely useful. As an example, Simetrical recently committed some code adapted from a patch which makes it possible to watch/unwatch pages using AJAX. It's very neat, works superbly and is a nice little time-saver. Pending some minor tweaking, it will probably make it live.
Compatibility isn't that much of an issue because:
Compatibility is always an issue. Absolutely always.
If lack of developers and money is the only problem then why not be more WIKI about it?
It's not a lack of developers or a lack of cash, although more of both is always better.
Money pays for servers. Developers work for nothing.
We have two paid developers.
Call to the Wikimedian community for volunteer coders to help improve MediaWiki. Of course this is a lot more complex than I make it sound, but the point is that somewhere out there will be a professional AJAX coder willing to code free for Wikimedia. I know that if I knew the language, I'd do it.
There is an established process for improving MediaWiki. We also have most of the AJAX framework in place.
Rob Church