Hi folks,
We're hosting a conversation about standardization and continued development of front-end libraries in MW core on 6/25, 5:30 PM UTC, #wikimedia-office.
This is driven by a recognized need for teams at WMF to work more effectively on user-facing features and reduce duplication of efforts and inconsistencies across extensions. We're willing to take a bit of a hit on the short term velocity of feature development to build a more robust, consistent and developer-friendly platform.
Timo Tijhof, Trevor Parscal and Roan Kattouw have proposed a systematic effort to improve MW core's front-end libraries, building on existing efforts (see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/UX_standardization for a messy but reasonably comprehensive overview of some of the inconsistencies and wheel duplication we need to solve).
This will be done in partnership with other interested front-end engineers across the org and the community.
We'll try to come up with a clear scope of work, such as:
- having Mobile and VisualEditor depend on the same front-end libraries in MW core and use them effectively - eliminating dependencies on jQuery UI from all WMF-deployed code, to be replaced with a MediaWiki-native look and feel - creating a proper living style guide and UX standardization pipeline in partnership with the WMF UX team.
This conversation is just a first step to ensure this effort has visibility from the start, and major architectural changes will go through the usual public conversations.
Thanks,
Erik
Added to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Calendar and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours#Upcoming_office_hours . :)
Sumana
On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 9:33 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi folks,
We're hosting a conversation about standardization and continued development of front-end libraries in MW core on 6/25, 5:30 PM UTC, #wikimedia-office.
This is driven by a recognized need for teams at WMF to work more effectively on user-facing features and reduce duplication of efforts and inconsistencies across extensions. We're willing to take a bit of a hit on the short term velocity of feature development to build a more robust, consistent and developer-friendly platform.
Timo Tijhof, Trevor Parscal and Roan Kattouw have proposed a systematic effort to improve MW core's front-end libraries, building on existing efforts (see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/UX_standardization for a messy but reasonably comprehensive overview of some of the inconsistencies and wheel duplication we need to solve).
This will be done in partnership with other interested front-end engineers across the org and the community.
We'll try to come up with a clear scope of work, such as:
- having Mobile and VisualEditor depend on the same front-end
libraries in MW core and use them effectively
- eliminating dependencies on jQuery UI from all WMF-deployed code, to
be replaced with a MediaWiki-native look and feel
- creating a proper living style guide and UX standardization pipeline
in partnership with the WMF UX team.
This conversation is just a first step to ensure this effort has visibility from the start, and major architectural changes will go through the usual public conversations.
Thanks,
Erik
-- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
As a reminder, this is in 65 minutes.
Erik
Raw logs here: https://tools.wmflabs.org/meetbot/wikimedia-office/2014/wikimedia-office.201...
Next steps:
1) Trevor, Roan, Timo, Kaldari and others will refine the proposal at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Redo_skin_framework as a concrete step to develop a standard UI framework for MediaWiki Core.
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" to ensure that we're developing a multi-device, responsive design framework.
3) We'll reconvene with a dedicated IRC session about the refined RFC, and then seek to create technical alignment and determine the exact allocation of development effort beyond the team above. This will be in about two weeks.
- - - - -
The aforementioned work will be coordinated on-wiki and via Bugzilla.
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. Other aspects - such as more consistent browser support expectations - need to be resolved independently.
Erik
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,
On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 2:53 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Raw logs here:
https://tools.wmflabs.org/meetbot/wikimedia-office/2014/wikimedia-office.201...
Since that link doesn't work anymore: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Sharihareswara_%28WMF%29/2014-06-25_Fron...
Sumana Harihareswara Senior Technical Writer Wikimedia Foundation
Next steps:
- Trevor, Roan, Timo, Kaldari and others will refine the proposal at
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Redo_skin_framework as a concrete step to develop a standard UI framework for MediaWiki Core.
- 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" to ensure that we're developing a multi-device, responsive design framework.
- We'll reconvene with a dedicated IRC session about the refined RFC, and
then seek to create technical alignment and determine the exact allocation of development effort beyond the team above. This will be in about two weeks.
The aforementioned work will be coordinated on-wiki and via Bugzilla.
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. Other aspects - such as more consistent browser support expectations - need to be resolved independently.
Erik
Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org