You mention in the page how this is going to help the large proportion of people worldwide who speak two or more languages. But we currently have nearly 300 language versions of Wikipedia and very few editors will speak as many as 10% of them. Would it be possible to set your user preferences to record multiple language proficiencies as opposed to just one language as at present, and then reflect this information in the prominence you give them. So other versions in languages that you speak would get prominence, other versions in languages that you don't speak are as discreet as today. WereSpielChequers (talk) 08:17, 16 September 2012 (UTC)
Talk:Design/Archive/Athena
The Extension:Translate adds a field to m:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing where we can add a list of "Assistant languages" which we may use when translating pages by its interface. It would be good to have the same (kind of) list used for interwikis. Helder 15:05, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
I think Wikidata have taken care of Interwiki links for multiple languages.. It will be helpful..
No it won't, but this proposal by Pau/the Wikimedia Language engineering team will: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.mediawiki.i18n/662
Hmm.. I see..
Interesting.
Light text on dark background: great for reading on small (mobile) screens and probably important for differentiating navigational elements from content.
Light text on dark background: pretty much horrible for reading on the (desktop/laptop) web.
Discuss.
(All pithy statements aside, I think this is a serious problem. Websites that use light on dark color schemes are in the minority for a reason. Is there a way to retain the structural composition of Athena but have a color scheme that isn't so hard on the eyes?)
Interestingly, research says differently.
Most of the time, users operate in either "scan" or "read" modes. In read mode, usually black-on-white is best, but for scanning (such as looking at website chrome) light on dark is better. UX Movement talks a bit about this very thing, actually.
Many years ago (like, 1995) I read a paper that said that "light grey on black" was the best to reduce eye strain and promote readability. Of course, that was back with old LCD monitors, so things are different now. Your question is good, though, so I went a lookin'.
...and I found a reference to the old paper, but not the paper itself. However, this stackoverflow question actually goes into more depth, and with more research.
What about users like me who usually invert the colors on their desktop computers? I know that this is more of an accessibility concern, but it would probably mess up the entire idea of having the MediaWiki software's color scheme determined by its code, right?
The biggest advantage of OLED displays, which are becoming steadily more prevalent (Samsung phones and tablets, LG phones, Apple Watch, LG's 55EC9300 TV/monitor, etc) is the potential for less energy use and longer battery life, particularly with a dark-background user interface. Our site is so popular that simply popularizing light on dark would save significant energy.
I've been editing wikipedia using a dark background for years. It works better for me. It should remain an option and be fully supported. Currently it's manageable but a bit of a pain to do - I periodically have to fix things to have it keep working for me, or work around issues I haven't or can't yet fix.
Also, OMG. That UX movement post's author is a, well, I'll just say he's got no clue what he's talking about. His argument is as logically sound as that of creationists, and the follow-up comments tear it apart. Wow.
Heiya, I would like to suggest that this skin is documented at Skin:Athena as soon as it is deployed. Cheers
Dear Brandon,
thanks for your marvellous essay on Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-08-06/Op-ed.
Feedback: The current approach is great for all the reasons you've heard a million times already. I associate myself with those criticising the prevailing black colour and prefer a dark gray (see below). While the implementation of a variety of features is already visible in your mockups, some are not - that's great and part of the process. Noticing the inability of an average user - independent of age, gender, educational achievement or profession - to find the sister projects in a Wikipedia article is a pain in the arse. The Beatles mockup involves a gallery at the top of the article, which is a step in the right direction. I'm clueless on a proper way to indicate sister projects where appropriate: when looking on the article about en:Germany I might actually want to see more images about it in a convenient way.
Landing pages: Several domains such as www.wikipedia.de www.wikipedia.com and the like are currently controlled by a variety of people and institutions. Those with affiliation to the WMF could rethink the design of these pages as well. Crawlin the web some time after your presentation at Wikimania I noticed this redesign approach: http://www.chipotoole.com/wikipedia.html - the simplicity of a Google-ish interface speaks for itself. The homepage design approach features a dropdown solution to search for images and other stuff. Searching for images could be a great feature - it'll automatically forward people to the Commons. However, redesigning that platform is a utterly different project ;)
Footer: The footer of http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/ makes use of a dark grey as well. The three column layout and WMF's slightly darker logo result in a rather subtle, inconspicuous impression. Looks good to me. An embossed WMF logo could be appealing as well.
In a nutshell: I don't intend to say that these suggestions are the best solution - in the end any design approach remains a question of personal taste. A combined colour swatch of white, blue (see header section of the reportcard - similar to your edit button) light and dark gray features both: a reminiscence to the current design and a fresh, new interface experience. Your feedback on my suggestions above would be appreciated.
Regards,
The design looks great, this is a much-needed advancement. Is this intended to be a reverse-compatible skin, or will this be a ground-up codebase rewrite?
I'm attempting a responsive skin now, but am having trouble getting media queries through the resource loader -- any suggestions about workarounds? (e.g. how to add a vanilla <style> tag to a page header?)
Thanks for your efforts --
Right now we're thinking about a skin that is responsive (there have been some prototypes using a different design), but we're not at the implementation phase yet. As far as resource loader questions go, I'd suggest asking Krinkle (Timo) about them.
Many thanks, and good luck!
Hello everyone, I have seen that some of you have tried this skin, but I don't find where to download it.
Please tell me
When is Athena expected to be released and fully functional for the Wikis? Specifying it would be good in the corresponding article. Thanks (P.S. I would like a copy of the reply on my en wikipedia talk page too, if thats not a problem)
Hello! I attended the Wikimania talk on Athena and I loved the screenshot! Having a huge picture on top looks cool.
Anyway, I'm writing here because I'm very concerned with the width of the page text. It's often recommended that each line of text should have 40-80 characters, depending on the depth of the content. Since Wikipedia is very deep, I expect 70-100 characters, and no more. But now I have around 200 on this laptop computer and even more in my desktop computer. So my question is: are you considering having an option in Athena to reduce text width to some configurable em size?
Also, if this happens, the rest of the width could be used for image galleries, not to mention those huge tables. Thank you! --NaBUru38 (talk) 17:18, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
- The new design shows a large picture placed above the article, with the title of the article placed in front of it, in white text. The image is shown matching up perfectly to the width of the screen. How would this be possible to do on all screens?
- I can't see having a 100%-width image over every article working. Many topics simply don't have a good "representative" image. What would be at the top of, say, w:Adverb, w:Enlargement of the African Union, w:Telecommunications in South Korea, w:Dunning–Kruger effect, w:Sainte-Laguë method, or w:Languages of Oceania? Even for those articles that could have an image that represents the topic, how many could be 100%-width, ~160px-height image, working well? I'm having difficulty thinking of any article other than w:The Beatles itself that it would work well with.
- The image seems to show virtually everything collapsed under a "more v" menu. That's going to make things seriously difficult to find.
- Avatars? Um, that's not going to be liked.
- In plain white, the "Locked" icon loses much of the meaning. The difference between being move-protected, full-protected, semi'd, PC'd, etc is significant.
- What is the "Contents >" bar supposed to be? Navigation based on images? Wouldn't simple text, like the current Table of contents, work better?
- "Search over 4 million articles" heavily overemphasizes article count, in my opinion, and isn't very clear. Additionally, it doesn't translate well for new wikis :/ .
- The new GlobalProfile pic looks nice, though I think it would be helpful if all parts of it were customizable, so users could, for example, decide to not display their uploads on their user page, or relocate the contribs box.
I really liked the old design, at least the general structure of it. The new version, not so much...
I haven't seen the old version Yair rand refers to, but I really like this concept as it stands now. I have a couple of concerns -- one being the use of advanced interface elements being unusable on older browsers (both mobile and desktop) or older hardware (again both mobile and desktop), and the other the predominance of greyscale images in the examples. For that latter point, note that both images featured on the Beatles mockup are greyscale, which serves to emphasize the "primarily monochromatic theme" touted in the Color Scheme section... I wonder if the effect of this "minimal and bold" color scheme will be muted or disrupted if coupled with full-color article images. LtPowers (talk) 15:47, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
If the icon used in the "History" button of this design is visible on essentially every page, it would probably quickly cause the icon to be synonymous with the history page, allowing it to be used alone, without accompanying text, to symbolize history page links. This would make it possible to redesign watchlist and recent changes lists, replacing "hist" everywhere with a smaller version of the icon.