Reading/Web/Projects/Mobile PDFs

Introduction and Research

Over 2016 and 2017, the New Readers team performed research on the needs and interests of readers currently exploring Wikimedia sites, in particular studying readers in Mexico, Nigeria, and India. One of the main conclusions of the generative research performed was that people are increasingly getting information online, then consuming and sharing it offline. (Finding 20). In collaboration with New Readers, the Reading Web team developed and tested a number of prototypes that explored providing offline options.

Prototype evaluation was done via on-site evaluative testing as well as receiving and analyzing feedback on the project talk page on metawiki. The wikilater prototype, which performed well during user testing and received positive feedback from our communities, was selected for production development. The prototype was the basis for the Mobile PDF feature, which the Readers Web Team will be launching across the mobile website on all Wikipedias.

Functionality

Google Chrome Browsers, Firefox browsers - Android

The article namespace for all Wikipedias will include a download button. Selecting the button will launch the print dialog for the browser, from which a user will select to save the article as a PDF. The article will be saved in the device's downloads folder. Due to the lazily loading of images on the mobile website, this functionality, the initial deployment will only include the images the user has already viewed on the page. We will be updating the functionality to include all images by the end of November 2017.

Other browsers - Android

The article namespace for all Wikipedias will include a download button. Selecting the button will trigger server-side PDF rendering. The article will be saved in the device's downloads folder. We will be testing on the following browsers:

Opera, Opera Mini
Dolphin
UCBrowser
Maxthon

iOS

We are currently only considering this feature for Android devices. We will explore iOS options in the future

Styles

PDFs created via this functionality will be delivered with the mobile print styles designed for improved readability on smaller screens.

Testing and deployment

Development and testing - October 2017
Deployment to Google Chrome on Android - November 2017 - Announcement
Updates on initial deployment - December 2017
Deployment to other Android browsers - tbd