MobileFrontend/status
This page is obsolete. It is being retained for archival purposes. It may document extensions or features that are obsolete and/or no longer supported. Do not rely on any information on this page. |
Last update on: 2012-05-03 Added to , per Thread:Project:Current issues/Categorize "/status" subpages
2011-03-01 edit
We're still in hiring mode looking for a great developer to lead our efforts. At the same time, we're also putting together a roadmap for our mobile development, and starting to coordinate research and development. We're drafting a survey now.
2011-04-01 edit
With User:Qgil's help, we created a portal on meta for all mobile projects. Alongside our software engineering efforts, a significant significant amount of ground research is being done on mobile strategy. Hiring is now almost done, including for the mobile site rewrite. Volunteer developer Vivek also continued to work on WikiSnaps for Android.
2011-05-01 edit
We made good progress on a PHP MediaWiki extension to replace our Ruby-based mobile gateway. We hope to demo our first all-MediaWiki version, whose appearance is similar to the current gateway, at the Berlin hackathon.
2011-06-01 edit
Patrick Reilly demoed the mobile extension at the Berlin hackathon and answered implementation concerns about a skin vs. extension (see the follow-up discussion on wikitech-l) approach. He also continued to develop the extension, notably by integrating functionality of the WAP platform, and by expanding the device detection list. A prototype will soon be set up, for which we'll need volunteers to help us test the new portal using their mobile devices.
2011-07-01 edit
Tomasz Finc sent a call for testers to help test the prototype in English, Japanese and Hebrew. Feedback is now being addressed by the mobile team, who is tracking fixes and new feature requests in bugzilla. Patrick Reilly and Asher Feldman also worked together to profile the MobileFrontend extension (formerly "PatchOutputMobile") and prep it for deployment. Next steps include its integration with our Varnish and Squid caching architecture, so that we can have the advantages of the WURFL mobile device database with an acceptable performance.
2011-08-01 edit
Patrick Reilly focused on proper caching support, as well as device detection optimization. Mobile device recognition on Wikimedia sites is now done server-side at the squid level, which results in faster redirect for mobile users, and better recognition of devices. A message and feedback page were set up to report false positives.
2011-08-31 edit
Tomasz Finc sent a second call for testers to try out the new mobile platform developed by Patrick Reilly. A dedicated bug triage session was organized; the MediaWiki community also provided code feedback on the wikitech-l list, which was addressed by Patrick. Tomasz called for developers to help fix the last remaining bugs before full deployment, planned for early September. In related news, Tomasz started a discussion about using Phonegap for mobile app development.
2011-09-30 edit
MobileFrontend was deployed in September and is now the default Wikipedia mobile experience. We've reached out to our various communities to create custom main pages, and are rolling out new ways of viewing Wikimedia projects on mobile. We also migrated our old WAP gateway traffic to MobileFrontend, so that we can serve our users from one place. Next we'll be iterating on our roadmap to guide our work.
2011-10-31 edit
The production version of our new Wikimedia mobile platform, launched in September, is no longer considered to be beta. Users can opt-in to the beta program to test new, pre-release features and provide feedback; future features include search suggestions and interwiki links. Phil Chang also set up a mobile features brainstorm page, and started to organize them. In related news, the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for mobile operator partners for its Wikipedia Zero program.
2011-11-30 edit
Phil Chang announced that all Wikimedia wikis would see their mobile version converted to the new mobile platform by the end of November, and explained how to make home pages compatible with it. This prompted a discussion about the design choice to hide any content on the main page that isn't specifically labeled for mobile display. Mobile was also a focus of the India hackathon, during which new features were developed.
2011-12-31 edit
We quietly launched user login alongside better support for tiered JavaScript. We also fixed long-standing issues like the locked viewport, and we updated image description pages. Finally, we deployed HTTPS support on mobile for Wikipedia, with plans to enable it for sister projects soon.
2012-02-29 edit
Patrick Reilly, Jon Robson, Max Semenik, and Arthur Richards all worked on refactoring MobileFrontend to make it less Wikimedia-centric. We also expanded our API to return pages in a mobile-friendly format and cleaned up a lot of our JavaScript and CSS code.
2012-03-09 edit
Arthur Richards pushed out the updated changes for making MobileFrontend less WMF centric
2012-03-15 edit
John Robson started work the newly revised full screen search, footer & the new collapsible sections previously show on our design page. Arthur Richards started work on the new contact us form.
2012-03-16 edit
Bug 35249 was fixed and pushed to production
2012-03-21 edit
Arthur pushed out new persistent cookie support to default and footer, section, full screen search, reference updates to beta. Blog post and mails forthcoming after some fixes. Changelist
2012-03-31 edit
Arthur Richards deployed changes to the MobileFrontend extension to make it less Wikimedia-centric, as well as persistent cookie support for options to beta. Jon Robson started to develop the newly revised full screen search, footer & the new collapsible sections.
2012-04-02 edit
We deployed updated changes to our beta, zero, and infrastructure
2012-04-monthly edit
Patrick Reilly, Arthur Richards and Max Semenik continued work on moving MobileFrontend to MediaWiki core. We've updated its skinning, internals, and general architecture to make it more core-friendly. Patrick also posted a response to a recent news article about Wikipedia mobile's energy consumption.
2012-05-02 edit
We continued to make changes as part of our core migration
2012-05-03 edit
We'll no longer be updating this project as all general work on MobileFrontend is complete. All further activity will be in sub project pages like our core migration