New subject: Phase IV concept demo

20 Jul 2003


      I am starting to work on designing (and creating) a completely new, 
professional layout engine for all wikimedia websites that should be 
launched with phase IV of the software.
First, from what I understand, the main idea for phase IV is that all 
wikipedias sit on a single software installation (and that's great!), I 
will add: (Just to give the general direction to tease you up)
* Layout should be separated completely from the PHP code. I will check 
out a template engine like smarty (http://smarty.php.net/) to see how to
do that effectively.
* Site look will be redesigned to fit the 21st century (new "kick-ass" 
look, yes that's its name :) ). The main problem with all current 
designs is that they basically still think in terms of "UseModWiki". ie. 
sooooo 95' single content HTML with no color, dynamics, and no usability 
features and even GodDamnHorribleCamelCase.
I think more in terms of making a Content Management System, dynamic 
content type layout, which means:
* Boxes, structure and order. Everything on the page is structured 
dynamically. (every editable box can have a cute "edit" and "print" 
button on the top right corner, for example)
* Graphics, color, icons, friendliness, [put a cool thing here], ... (of 
course not too much stickyness .. :-))
* A page can present more than just the article. Additional content may 
be: TOC on the side box. Previous versions. Recent changes, 
announcements, news, etc. (whatever we'll choose, or the user will 
customize)
* No more dedicated stand-alone "special pages". These are important 
features that deserve to be integrated (somehow) into the engine itself. 
ie. forget those yellow backgrounds etc. etc.
* Discussions can be integrated into the layout. ie. they may sit after 
the article itself like blogs do, and may or may not be a wiki. (just an 
idea)
* Interface can change to whatever language the user specifies in their 
preferences. A side effect of the single installation, a user will able 
to work, say on an article in Swedish with the English interface.. 
(don't flame me for this, I don't know if technically it would be 
viable, just giving a direction...)
* W3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional/CSS. A really basic one for a modern site 
(I even use the strict XHTML 1.1 on my site). And yes, I will make sure 
it uses features that are compatible with browsers from IE 4.0+ and 
Netscape 6. See http://www.w3.org/ and http://www.w3schools.com/
* etc. etc. etc..
See http://www22.brinkster.com/rotemdan/Wikipedia-Vorbis-site-rip.html 
for a little inspiration of what I'm talking about. (I basically ripped 
the vorbis site, pasted the seinfeld article and made some changes to 
the text, there's still junk on the bottom and side).
This is an enormous task. But I really think this encyclopedia deserves 
to look like a modern site. I predict it will take about 2-3 months to 
formulate the main targets and to understand what I'm dealing with. (and
to have a small working version of the engine)
I have enough PHP skills (but not too much free time as I'm a full-time 
student) to make a basic version of a content system. I was employed for
about about a year in a software company (a couple of years ago) and 
worked with ASP and SQL a lot so I know a bit about dynamic content. (I 
think I'm getting the PHP thing..)
If anyone is interested in working on this or a similar project, please
let me know. Also, please give me a complete list of the Phase IV design 
targets so I can generally understand how exactly the new website would 
be formed.
Cheers,
Rotem
P.S: please don't start coming with specific suggestions on how this and 
that feature should/shouldn't be/look/behave. The time spent on 
discussions should be put in actually writing the PHP/XML code (and 
applying some common sense). Replying to long messages on mailing lists 
is really time consuming for me. I would just rather work on a preview 
version/design etc. get feedback, work, get feedback etc..

Phase IV layout engine based on a new CMS