(replying to foundation-l post on wikitech-l)
On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org wrote:
So far this is the best way to provide a dynamic notice to the majority of our visitors without causing problems for others. If you have technical suggestions for alternate implementations, they're welcome in a more relevant channel such as wikitech-l.
The only non-script solution that seems like it would work well is <iframe seamless> from HTML5:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/embedded-content-0.html#attr-iframe-seamless
This solves the current problem that <iframe>s must have a prespecified height, which is why we can't use them now. Of course, <iframe> isn't necessarily terribly well supported in weird browsers, but it would be better than JavaScript.
One possible way we might have more graceful fallback now is to have some <noscript> content. One possibility would be an <iframe> containing the content (which might be the wrong height, but oh well); another would be to have a message pointing to the announcements. Of course, it would be non-dismissible without JavaScript, so it would be best to keep it less obtrusive if possible. So the message seems like a better idea.
One possible way we might have more graceful fallback now is to have some <noscript> content.
It's a deal. If there was a "For the latest announcements, see ......" or "Site announcements" (hyperlink), or just "Announcements" (hyperlink) still visible for us text browser users, I would let you off the legal hook of cheating users with disabilities. But it would have to be at the same spot in the page where you show other users the message, not just in the sidebar or something.
That way the caches would not be disturbed all year, and you could show one thing to Google, and something else to most users, if you insist.
I could then put that hyperlink on my WWWOFFLE list of pages to monitor... indeed maybe users could put it on their watchlists, if it is a regular page.
I don't know about the frames stuff, but it doesn't sound like it would work on the large range of devices, which is actually what I'm concerned about, and not users with disabilities, who in fact I've hardly ever met, (except me: Limited Edition brain :-))
OK, I have reverse engineered the site notice. A non-Javascript user must apparently do the following to see it, else a better method would be mentioned in a <noscript>. ------ $ w3m -dump_source \ http://upload.wikimedia.org/centralnotice/wikipedia/en/centralnotice.js?207x... | ascii2uni -qa 7 | perl -pwle 's/\n/\n/g' | perl -nlwe 'next unless /^<table/../^</table>/;print' | w3m -dump -T text/html
Please participate in a vote to determine the future copyright [Hide] terms of Wikimedia projects (vote ends May 3, 2009). Vote now! [Help us with translations!]
Please participate in a vote to determine the future copyright [Hide] terms of Wikimedia projects (vote ends May 3, 2009). Vote now! [Help us with Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2009 are now open. translations!] Apply now! ------ Maybe monitoring the URL of the source file, if any, would be less painful. Is there a general pattern for where it is kept for all the WMF sites?
On Sat, May 2, 2009 at 3:18 PM, jidanni@jidanni.org wrote:
OK, I have reverse engineered the site notice. A non-Javascript user must apparently do the following to see it, else a better method would be mentioned in a <noscript>.
$ w3m -dump_source \ http://upload.wikimedia.org/centralnotice/wikipedia/en/centralnotice.js?207x... | ascii2uni -qa 7 | perl -pwle 's/\n/\n/g' | perl -nlwe 'next unless /^<table/../^</table>/;print' | w3m -dump -T text/html
Please participate in a vote to determine the future copyright [Hide] terms of Wikimedia projects (vote ends May 3, 2009). Vote now! [Help us with translations!]
Please participate in a vote to determine the future copyright [Hide] terms of Wikimedia projects (vote ends May 3, 2009). Vote now! [Help us with Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2009 are now open. translations!] Apply now!
Maybe monitoring the URL of the source file, if any, would be less painful. Is there a general pattern for where it is kept for all the WMF sites?
Actually, I think there is a seed a good idea here. It should be straightforward to create a special page that showed all current site notices without using javascript. That could then be linked to, via noscript or similar option, to provide people lacking javascript support with a place to be able to read the notices.
To partially answer your question, central notices are managed through [1]. It isn't the world's most useful interface if all you want to do is read notices, but it is probably better than parsing the javascript.
-Robert Rohde
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