Developing a better way to generate interactive HTML with consistent UX is important. I support this work, along with < https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/HTML_templating_library%.... But...
On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 11:53 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
This proposal will only address parts of UX standardization. It does not currently focus on look and feel itself, though it would lay the groundwork for more CSS standardization as well.
No it won't (!), at least not for year or two. We already have the under-resourced haphazard efforts to apply and refine a consistent UX ("Agora") to the HTML generated by random PHP, special pages, HTMLForm, jQuery UI, various templating systems, and OOjs UI. This proposal adds another, better, approach to generating that HTML, but until we drop the other approaches it's increased the work (cue https://xkcd.com/927/ :) ).
2) The proposal on the table is to implement this new skin framework, port
existing skins in MW core, and port it to "mobile as a skin"
Which is good but doesn't help other projects and their inconsistent UX. The supposition is that because this new framework is in core it'll be a tool available to all developers that will deliver UX consistency. I propose a simple use case to prove that supposition:
* Extensions and core right now need a replacement for jquery.dialog() that will render a modal dialog with Agora styling.
If this effort produces such a dialog with the requisite browser support (a thorny issue as Erik says) and doesn't require rewriting the rest of the extension's UX code, we'll know this is on the right track for more than just skins and a mobile convergence. And there will be much rejoicing :)
(Maybe OOjs UI already provides that dialog, I think MultimediaViewer's share dialog uses it.)
Regards,