Le mercredi 08 octobre 2008 à 20:17 +0000, wikitech-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org a écrit :

From: Huji huji.huji@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] nostalgia skin: gathering ideas for a improved version

There are many other issues with Nostalgia skin too. I never played with it until recently, when I fixed a bug in its printable version.

yeah I remember your fix as I reported that bug, thanks for fixing it so quickly! I immediatelly grabbed your fix from svn for my wikis as I am adventurous enough to run on HEAD :)

I also use Nostalgia on Wikipedia though, and I wonder when your fix will make it there, as I see the Wikimedia wikis are still in 41337. I can't properly print a Wikipedia page without switching skins as it is now :(

Nostalgia should be rewritten some day.

that was my idea also. someday it ought to be rewritten to become more modernised from a coding perspective, and maybe also from a user interface perspective while keeping the same general oldish look.

From: Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] nostalgia skin: gathering ideas for a improved version

Nostalgia roughly replicates the pre-MediaWiki interface of Wikipedia. It's not really meant for usability. ;)

Nostalgic Wikipedians want a usable skin, too! :)

It is not necessary to replicate the old wiki look so much as to make Nostalgia unusable or put its users at a disadvantage compared to the other skins.

I think we can replicate the old look without sacrificing much usability. I think it is important to provide the same functionality to Nostalgia users that users of other skins enjoy, such as user pages links (15868), a search box that can be used with Ajax easily (15902), an upload link that can be middleclicked in a new tab (15903), perhaps even a Discussion link at the top of the page as well (15905).

As I use Nostalgia I may end up improving it a bit, and I will share any improvements as patches on bugzilla.

...

PS: I have put a quick patch (15868) on bugzilla to include user pages in Nostalgia.

Doesn't sound terribly disruptive. Note that preferences and watchlist are already available through the special pages dropdown, though.

I was thinking about this while I was getting the patch ready, and finally decided that the most important user-related pages that are available as links in other skins should also be available as links in Nostalgia as well. This helps users of Nostalgia enjoy the same user experience as users of other skins; for example, I can middleclick and open my watchlist in a new tab or new window with the other skins, but with Nostalgia I wouldn't be able to do this through the dropdown menu.

In fact I now have the same problem with the upload link: in the other skins I was used to middleclicking the upload link so that I could upload using a new tab without replacing the page I was viewing. But with Nostalgia I only get the upload function in the dropdown menu. I will probably submit a small patch to add an upload link soon (15903).

Of course as the number of special pages has increased dramatically since 2002, that drop-down has become rather unwieldy. I'm not sure what's the best way to extend or replace this without dramatically changing the layout.

I am thinking along the same lines, but I am considering whether it is truly desirable to list all special pages in the drop down menu. Maybe just including a menu item leading to the list of all special pages, perhaps together with a small number of other frequently used special pages, would be enough.

I would like to learn what other ideas or perceptions there are about Nostalgia as well. I would also be very interested to collect statistics regarding how many Wikipedia users use Nostalgia as their skin of choice, so I will submit a query request to see generally how much interest there would be for a better Nostalgia.