4 ms·

MediaWiki has a skin system, and judging from other comments here this appears to be treated as a new skin, or an iteration of the already default "Vector" skin

• pwdisswordfish4 6y ago
  I wish this were more widely known, and not just for Wikipedia. There are too many local MediaWiki installations that stick with the dated default Vector theme. NB: it's not the theme's datedness that makes it bad; it's that the design decisions are poor ones that reflect trendy anti-patterns of that era, and in the meantime, the insistence on them has more or less quietly and thankfully disappeared. I'm referring to the attitude that publishing on the Web calls for a sui generis "look" involving sidebars, dubious color and font size choices, and bold emphasis on app-like UI elements and other cruft like navigation controls, rather than foremost emphasizing the content itself and letting the user agent handle things like preferred font size. The Vector skin, like popular Wordpress themes of that time, strongly reflects that style, and it's bad. The Web would be much better off if future MediaWiki installations by default shipped with a skin resembling Wikiwand (modulo the fixes that should be made to it as well—e.g. stop fucking overriding the browser's native font size with your tiny-ass text! HN is just as guilty on this; any site that makes the main body text <1em (or >1em, for that matter) is by definition doing it wrong).
• iso8859-1 6y ago
  If you have a user, you can set the skin permanently on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsec... I use Monobook, which is more compact than the default (Vector). It used to be the default. Having a user also enables you to toggle "Gadgets" which can provide productivity boosts, especially for editors.
• choo-t 6y ago
  There are also `?useskinversion=1` and `?useskinversion=2` which are useful to force the use of the legacy version of skins.
• leokennis 6y ago
  Not sure if what you’re linking is the same, but Wikipedia and other Wiki sites also allow you to apply your own css in your user settings. These override any themes you set. If you add only these two, it already improves the experience with 99%: To limit the width of paragraphs: #mw-content-text { max-width: 50em; } To set a serif font for text and headings: p, page-heading.h1, mw-parser-output.h1, mw-parser-output.h2, mw-parser-output.h3, mw-parser-output.h4, mw-parser-output.h5, mw-parser-output.h6, .mw-headline { font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", sans-serif; }
  • trynewideas 6y ago
    This is different — user CSS requires a login and can override a skin, but is separate from skins, which are installed on the back end similar to an extension. Similarly, skins can have their own custom CSS in a similar namespace. Also, you can use the `useskin` URL parameter to preview one of those backend-installed skins without logging in first, while user CSS requires a login.
• roryokane 6y ago
  I use the Timeless theme myself (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangolin?useskin=timeless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangolin?useskin=timeless). If you like the Timeless theme’s less-busy navigation but don’t like that theme’s sticky header and misaligned icons, you can copy my CSS customizations for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rory_O%27Kane/timeless.css https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rory_O%27Kane/timeless.cs... To try those customizations yourself, copy the CSS code on that page. Then, in your Wikipedia account’s Preferences > Appearance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsec...), choose Timeless as your skin. Finally, click Custom CSS next to Timeless, paste my CSS, and click Save. If you don’t like those customizations, just edit the page again and delete the CSS. I made one final tweak to the Timeless theme: on page load, a bit of JavaScript scrolls the page down to hide the search bar and user menu. Most of the time I don’t care about that part of the page when I visit an article, and when I do want to see it care, I just have to remember to scroll up. I installed that JavaScript using a custom user script installed with https://violentmonkey.github.io/ https://violentmonkey.github.io/, though you could probably get it working with the Custom JavaScript link in your Preferences > Appearance settings too. Here’s a simplified version of my JS that you are free to copy: // ==UserScript== // @name Wikipedia – scroll below Timeless-skin static header on load // @description When using Wikipedia’s Timeless skin, modified with user CSS to not have a fixed header, this scrolls below that header when a page loads. This hides the distracting color bar and lets you see more of the article. If you want to see the header, just scroll back up. // @namespace roryokane.com // @match https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/* // @grant none // @author Rory O’Kane // ==/UserScript== const headerHeight = 60; const usingTimelessSkin = () => document.body.classList.contains("skin-timeless"); if (window.location.hash === "" && usingTimelessSkin()) { window.scrollTo(0, headerHeight); }