Hi all!
Over the past few months the Reading Web team has spent a significant
amount of time refactoring the Page Previews feature. Page Previews,
previously called Hovercards, provide a preview of any linked article,
giving readers a quick understanding of a related article without leaving
the current page. [0]
The refactor was focused on creating code that would be easier to maintain
in the future (an update on the technical implementation coming soon from
the Reading Web engineers). We also focused on fixing most outstanding bugs
for the feature in preparation for a major release including:
- Implementing a horizontal gradient to indicate the article continues on a
different page
- Fixing bugs around appearance/disappearance of previews
- Setting up settings and default behaviors for production
- Removing the “last edited” date based on conversations on the hover cards
talk page - we may reconsider this for the future based on recent feedback
- Focusing on performance of the feature
We’re enabling the feature as default for logged-out users in our first
phase of deployments. After consultation with the communities in December,
Page Previews will be enabled on the Catalan, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, and
Russian Wikipedias the week of 13 March.
After that we’ll approach the phase 1 group for discussion. [1]
The updates are now available on all wikis as a Beta feature. [2] Let us
know if you have any questions! [3]
[0]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Hovercards
[1]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Hovercards#Rollout_Plan
[2]
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures
[3]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Beta_Features/Hovercards
Thanks!
Olga
--
Olga Vasileva // Product Manager // Reading Web Team
https://wikimediafoundation.org/