[Wikipedia-l] Useability

[quiddity]

On Sat, May 31, 2008 at 1:29 AM, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> The menu on the left hand side lists, in this order
>
> Navigation
>        Main Page
>        Contents
>        Featured content
>        Current events
>        Random article
> interaction
>        About Wikipedia
>        Community portal
>        Recent changes
>        Contact Wikipedia
>        Donate to Wikipedia
>        Help
> search
>        search box
>
> ----------
>
> Problem: on small screens, the search box is not visible and readers
> must scroll each time they get to a new page to find it.
> Whether we are happy with this, or would prefer that people navigate
> three featured content or indexes or random article, does not change the
> fact that most poeple actually use search system on internet.
>
> What about changing the search box place ?
> Perhaps under the logo. Or below the Navigation block. Or fully at the
> top of the page ?
>
> Ant
>

We all strongly wanted the search box between the "Navigation" and
"Interaction" boxes. It was in almost all the sidebar-redesign drafts,
including the final consensus proposal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Village_pump_%28proposals%29/Sidebar_redesign
Rob Church even said he would suspend his development break to help
out: [[Wikipedia talk:Village pump (proposals)/Sidebar
redesign/Archive 02#If you actually ask...]]

The last mention I can find now, is this:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7493#c45
"Brion Vibber  2008-03-18 23:34:59 UTC  ------- I'm going to come out
and say we're not going to support customizing the location of the
search box within the side bar; in part because it probably shouldn't
be in the side bar. Long term we'll probably be moving it to a more
consistent location."

So, that's where it currently stands.


(links above kept to a minimum for simplicity, but there are many
related tangents and requests, in the sidebar-redesign archives, and
at [[mediawiki talk:sidebar]])

User:Quiddity

(possibly related,
http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:GP1 covered "a
redesign of the default website interface", does anyone know anything
more about this proposal? is it in active development?)