On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 2:19 AM, Patrick Reilly preilly@wikimedia.org wrote:

You need to set an xdevice header. We do that in our varnish caching layer.

You can modify the code to set it based on WURFL detection. I'll send you the modifications on Monday... if that is okay.

It is of course ok, and Tuesday too. You can take me as a benchmark for the hobbyist webmaster willing to do something actually simple with MediaWiki, taking 10% of the possibilities but expecting to get that basic 10% decently documented.

For instance yesterday it took me a while to realize why my homepage was almost blank, but I found the instructions and linked them from http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MobileFrontend#Homepage

As a hobbyist mediawiki sysadmin I'm getting so much with this extension that I'm happy compromising anything (e.g. wikipediaisms) as long as I can get it working. I also understand this is an experimental version under development so not really complaining about scarce docs - and as always I'm willing to learn. To give you an idea, I have no clue what "set an xdevice header" means.

Thank you for your patience!

-- Quim

Do you have memcached installed?

— Patrick

On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 1:21 AM, Quim Gil quimgil@gmail.com wrote:

The Mobile Frontend extension brought my site down after using it as is. I have got +50Mb of error logs but basically it looks like the Apache ACP collapsed.

I guess this problem has the same root as the lack of autodetection in my faulty implmentation? Below you have excerpts from the logs just in case they are useful.

Extracted from logs/php/www-error.log:

[07-Jan-2012 17:02:51] PHP Notice:  Undefined index: host in /path/to/file/extensions/MobileFrontend/MobileFrontend.php on line 622 [07-Jan-2012 17:02:51] PHP Stack trace: ... [07-Jan-2012 17:02:51] PHP   9. ExtMobileFrontend->beforePageDisplayHTML() /includes/Hooks.php:0 [07-Jan-2012 17:02:51] PHP  10. ExtMobileFrontend->getMsg() /extensions/MobileFrontend/MobileFrontend.php:547 [07-Jan-2012 17:02:51] PHP  11. ExtMobileFrontend->getRelativeURL() /extensions/MobileFrontend/MobileFrontend.php:342

...

[07-Jan-2012 18:21:02] PHP Warning:  apc_store(): Unable to allocate memory for pool. in includes/objectcache/APCBagOStuff.php on line 20 [07-Jan-2012 18:21:02] PHP Stack trace: ... [07-Jan-2012 18:21:02] PHP   9. ExtMobileFrontend->beforePageDisplayHTML() includes/Hooks.php:0 [07-Jan-2012 18:21:02] PHP  10. WURFL_WURFLManagerFactory->create() /extensions/MobileFrontend/MobileFrontend.php:375 [07-Jan-2012 18:21:02] PHP  11. WURFL_WURFLManagerFactory->init() /extensions/MobileFrontend/library/WURFL/WURFLManagerFactory.php:66 [07-Jan-2012 18:21:02] PHP  12. WURFL_WURFLManagerFactory->deviceRepository() /extensions/MobileFrontend/library/WURFL/WURFLManagerFactory.php:127 [07-Jan-2012 18:21:02] PHP  13. WURFL_DeviceRepositoryBuilder->build() /extensions/MobileFrontend/library/WURFL/WURFLManagerFactory.php:164 [07-Jan-2012 18:21:02] PHP  14. WURFL_DeviceRepositoryBuilder->buildRepository() /extensions/MobileFrontend/library/WURFL/DeviceRepositoryBuilder.php:86 [07-Jan-2012 18:21:02] PHP  15. WURFL_DeviceRepositoryBuilder->process() /extensions/MobileFrontend/library/WURFL/DeviceRepositoryBuilder.php:107 [07-Jan-2012 18:21:02] PHP  16. WURFL_DeviceRepositoryBuilder->classifyAndPersistDevice() extensions/MobileFrontend/library/WURFL/DeviceRepositoryBuilder.php:188 [07-Jan-2012 18:21:02] PHP  17. WURFL_Storage_Mwmemcache->save() /extensions/MobileFrontend/library/WURFL/DeviceRepositoryBuilder.php:211 [07-Jan-2012 18:21:02] PHP  18. APCBagOStuff->set() /extensions/MobileFrontend/library/WURFL/Storage/Mwmemcache.php:41 [07-Jan-2012 18:21:02] PHP  19. apc_store() includes/objectcache/APCBagOStuff.php:20

...

[08-Jan-2012 01:45:08] PHP Warning:  require(): c cache entry '/includes/parser/CoreParserFunctions.php' (dev=2097211 ino=1668) was on gc-list for 2643 seconds in /srv/data/web/vhosts/espiral.org/htdocs/includes/AutoLoader.php on line 918 [08-Jan-2012 01:45:08] PHP Stack trace: [08-Jan-2012 01:45:08] PHP   1. {main}() index.php:0 [08-Jan-2012 01:45:08] PHP   2. MediaWiki->run() index.php:57 [08-Jan-2012 01:45:08] PHP   3. MediaWiki->main() includes/Wiki.php:533 [08-Jan-2012 01:45:08] PHP   4. MediaWiki->performRequest() includes/Wiki.php:626 [08-Jan-2012 01:45:08] PHP   5. MediaWiki->initializeArticle() /includes/Wiki.php:230 [08-Jan-2012 01:45:08] PHP   6. Article::newFromTitle() includes/Wiki.php:318 [08-Jan-2012 01:45:08] PHP   7. AutoLoader::autoload() includes/AutoLoader.php:0

From logs/php/fpm.log:

[07-Jan-2012 18:22:56] WARNING: [pool www] child 2872, script 'index.php' (request: "GET /index.php") execution timed out (121.002992 sec), terminating [07-Jan-2012 18:22:56] WARNING: [pool www] child 2872 exited on signal 15 (SIGTERM) after 37757.970325 seconds from start

From logs/apache/error.log

[Sat Jan 07 18:22:56.648588 2012] [:error] [pid 4056:tid 3814288475904] (104)Connection reset by peer: [client 89.246.16.155:59643] FastCGI: failed to read from backend server

Without ssh access to this server, now I can't restart ACP or Apache. I have contact the ISP but as usual these things always happen on a weekend. No big deal, I'm still building the site.

-- Quim

On Jan 7, 2012, at 2:21 AM, "Daniel Friesen" lists@nadir-seen-fire.com wrote:

On Sat, 07 Jan 2012 01:18:20 -0800, Quim Gil quimgil@gmail.com wrote:

...

Hi, I have installed the Mobile Frontend extension in my pet project at http://espiral.org

I only get to the mobile view manually, through the link at the footer. Autodetection of mobile browsers doesn't seem to work or I have done / missed something in my installation. I have got feedback from a bunch of users with a bunch of devices, nobody got the mobile view by default and all of them get it when visiting http://en.wikipedia.org

Something that looks different in my installation compared to Wikipedia's is the lack of a redirect to a ".m." URL. I'm actually a bit confused about this. It is mentioned briefly at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MobileFrontend but it is not clear to me whether this is something supposed to work automagically when installing the extension or whether there is something I need to do with the WURFL database, the LocalSettings.php, the web server...

Other than this the extension works great presenting the mobile view of pages. Thank you very much for your work!

I've been examining the MobileFrontend code myself since I too wanted to use it on a wiki. The MobileFrontend code is written 'very' WMF centric and uses a large number of hacks (which imho aren't acceptable of an extension purporting to be usable outside of WMF). It's a long way away from being usable on a normal wiki.

How so? What would you change?

-- ~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://daniel.friesen.name]

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Quick questions:

* Does anybody actually want to use MobileFrontend to implement a feature-phone gateway on other sites?

If so, it may be worth doing some of that cleanup to make things more portable.

Note that I'd also love to kill the "m." stuff as it's problematic in a number of ways, so I wouldn't worry too much about stuff related to mobile-specific URLs.

* Do people intend primarily to make the wiki's user interface more friendly to modern smartphones, without caring about feature phones?

If so, then moving to the next generation beyond our current MobileFrontend is probably a better use of energy. MobileFrontend's architecture is keyed on basically being like a proxy, so it can produce output tuned to phones with very limited capabilities without the rest of MediaWiki needing to worry about how those things work.

This isn't really what we want for smartphones and tablets in the future; they should instead get the same interface and capabilities as the desktop provides, but the interface should tune itself for small or large screens, touch-centric or mouse-centric layouts. In the future this won't involve the MobileFrontend extension at all, it'll just be in our core CSS & JS code's behavior.

-- brion

Hi Brion,

Short term:

I believe a lot of MediaWiki based sites would welcome a simple way to present their content in mobile interfaces. A combo of browser autodetection and mobile friendly skin would do the trick (this is how the Wordpress community is addressing the problem). Is Mobile Frontend extension is what we have here and now then this is better then nothing.

Longer term:

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 11:03 AM, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:

• Does anybody actually want to use MobileFrontend to implement a

feature-phone gateway on other sites?

(...)

• Do people intend primarily to make the wiki's user interface more

friendly to modern smartphones, without caring about feature phones?

If so, then moving to the next generation

I'm not aware of the next generation plans you are referring to, but you also need to take into account the "next generation" context for smartphone vs feature-phone - which is precisely about the blurring of that division. Cheaper devices with internet capabilities, bigger/full screen and even touch are reaching more geographies. Pretty fast, for phones and tablets.

If you want to set a division then maybe you want to set it not between "dumb" and "smart" devices (meaning cheap and expensive in fact) but between passive and active users:

- A majority will want just to consume content, share it, rate it, perhaps subscribe to it and leave a short comment - regardless of the "smartness" or price of their device.

- A very important minority will want to engage deeper and contribute, also with their mobile devices on the go.

Can we assume that you need an expensive smartphone and Internet plan to be more active in MediaWiki sites? I don't think so, but we should go down to features to see exactly what type pf device requirements are we talking about.

-- Quim

Brion, Patrick and I chatted about this and we have an initial game plan for this. I'll publish the notes on wiki in a couple after we clean them up.

Rough notes are here : http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/MobileFrontendChanges

--tomasz

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 4:20 PM, Gregory Varnum gregory.varnum@gmail.comwrote:

The "this is what we have and it's better than nothing" has generally been my approach - and I've heard that from others as well. I haven't personally worked on any wikis in a few years where mobile use didn't come up (not much talk of it when I was using a Treo). However, I have no idea how widespread or common that may be. :)

Improvements to make this more usable by 3rd party wikis would be fantastic!

-greg aka varnent

On Jan 9, 2012, at 3:00 PM, Quim Gil wrote:

...

Hi Brion,

Short term:

I believe a lot of MediaWiki based sites would welcome a simple way to present their content in mobile interfaces. A combo of browser autodetection and mobile friendly skin would do the trick (this is how the Wordpress community is addressing the problem). Is Mobile Frontend extension is what we have here and now then this is better then nothing.

Longer term:

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 11:03 AM, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:

...

• Does anybody actually want to use MobileFrontend to implement a

feature-phone gateway on other sites?

(...)

...

• Do people intend primarily to make the wiki's user interface more

friendly to modern smartphones, without caring about feature phones?

If so, then moving to the next generation

I'm not aware of the next generation plans you are referring to, but you also need to take into account the "next generation" context for smartphone vs feature-phone - which is precisely about the blurring of that division. Cheaper devices with internet capabilities, bigger/full screen and even touch are reaching more geographies. Pretty fast, for phones and tablets.

If you want to set a division then maybe you want to set it not between "dumb" and "smart" devices (meaning cheap and expensive in fact) but between passive and active users:

• A majority will want just to consume content, share it, rate it,

perhaps subscribe to it and leave a short comment - regardless of the "smartness" or price of their device.

• A very important minority will want to engage deeper and contribute,

also with their mobile devices on the go.

Can we assume that you need an expensive smartphone and Internet plan to be more active in MediaWiki sites? I don't think so, but we should go down to features to see exactly what type pf device requirements are we talking about.

-- Quim

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I, for one, would love to use Mobile Frontend to add mobile functionality on a wiki I run (at least to view, is it possible to add editing?). However, I don't have the option of defining a separate mobile sub-subdomain (my wiki is already on a subdomain) because of limitations set by my web host.

Matthew Bowker

On Jan 9, 2012, at 12:03, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:

Quick questions:

• Does anybody actually want to use MobileFrontend to implement a

feature-phone gateway on other sites?

If so, it may be worth doing some of that cleanup to make things more portable.

Note that I'd also love to kill the "m." stuff as it's problematic in a number of ways, so I wouldn't worry too much about stuff related to mobile-specific URLs.

• Do people intend primarily to make the wiki's user interface more

friendly to modern smartphones, without caring about feature phones?

If so, then moving to the next generation beyond our current MobileFrontend is probably a better use of energy. MobileFrontend's architecture is keyed on basically being like a proxy, so it can produce output tuned to phones with very limited capabilities without the rest of MediaWiki needing to worry about how those things work.

This isn't really what we want for smartphones and tablets in the future; they should instead get the same interface and capabilities as the desktop provides, but the interface should tune itself for small or large screens, touch-centric or mouse-centric layouts. In the future this won't involve the MobileFrontend extension at all, it'll just be in our core CSS & JS code's behavior.

-- brion _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

The following link outlines a way to add the simple device detection to the current Mobile Frontend extension.

https://raw.github.com/gist/1590648/86abdf93a99876c609862b28f8dae1b488bded03...

I'll work on a more complete solution that utilizes WURFL and post that later.

— Patrick

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 11:21 PM, Daniel Friesen lists@nadir-seen-fire.com wrote:

I've heard of some sites using a pattern like /m/ for their mobile site. We can probably support that option as well.

-- ~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://daniel.friesen.name]

On Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:00:45 -0800, User:Matthewrbowker matthewrbowker.wiki@gmail.com wrote:

...

I, for one, would love to use Mobile Frontend to add mobile functionality on a wiki I run (at least to view, is it possible to add editing?).  However, I don't have the option of defining a separate mobile sub-subdomain (my wiki is already on a subdomain) because of limitations set by my web host.

Matthew Bowker

On Jan 9, 2012, at 12:03, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:

...

Quick questions:

• Does anybody actually want to use MobileFrontend to implement a

feature-phone gateway on other sites?

If so, it may be worth doing some of that cleanup to make things more portable.

Note that I'd also love to kill the "m." stuff as it's problematic in a number of ways, so I wouldn't worry too much about stuff related to mobile-specific URLs.

• Do people intend primarily to make the wiki's user interface more

friendly to modern smartphones, without caring about feature phones?

If so, then moving to the next generation beyond our current MobileFrontend is probably a better use of energy. MobileFrontend's architecture is keyed on basically being like a proxy, so it can produce output tuned to phones with very limited capabilities without the rest of MediaWiki needing to worry about how those things work.

This isn't really what we want for smartphones and tablets in the future; they should instead get the same interface and capabilities as the desktop provides, but the interface should tune itself for small or large screens, touch-centric or mouse-centric layouts. In the future this won't involve the MobileFrontend extension at all, it'll just be in our core CSS & JS code's behavior.

-- brion _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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