[Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia redefined -- typography and UX and such

[Risker]

On 17 August 2012 10:47, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 3:08 PM, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > On 8/17/12 12:02 PM, Magnus Manske wrote:
> >>
> >> http://toolserver.org/~magnus/redefined/?page=Pyramid
> >
> >
> > This is quite nice, especially on a larger screen! Our current layout,
> which
> > uses the full browser width for text, makes articles hard to read and
> > cluttered-looking on larger screens. The text column with images and ToC
> in
> > the sidebar is a nice change. Though on the other hand, I do like flowing
> > text around images below some with threshold. When reading on a smaller
> > screen, with this layout you can end up with a very narrow text column
> down
> > the middle. But overall I like it. The only thing I'd really want is some
> > way to get to more of the functionality. For example, I can't find how to
> > view edit history.
>
> Thanks! This is just a demo, most functionality is missing; no point
> in implementing all of it unless there's a potential long-term user
> and developer base :-)
>
> That said, it uses only the MediaWiki API, so it can run anywhere,
> even on a blank page served by Wikipedia, in the far future, when
> there is no more server-side full-page rendering...
>
> It's pretty useless on mobile devices, but then we have a nice mobile
> interface; this whole auto-collapse-on-mobile thing only goes so far,
> IMHO.
>
> Upshot: Unless I get at least, say, five people who'd help debug it,
> and at least one person who'd help coding, I'm not going to add more
> functions to it. Also, the "redefined" people might sue me for
> stealing their layout proposal ;-)
>
>

It looks pretty clean and less cluttered.  It also draws attention to some
of our internal issues, such as massive listing of references at the bottom
of the page, and all those templates linking groups of articles together;
between these two, they're taking up nearly a quarter of the 'space'.
They're both important issues, although separate ones.

I'm looking at this from a fairly small screen, and I wonder how wide the
"text" will be when the left-side links are added in, or if your proposal
is to drop that entirely. As it is, the text is a bit narrow now, leading
to a very long article, but I think that balances out with the increased
white space and different font, both of which make the article easier on
the eyes.

Risker/Anne