6 ms·

This article taught be a new term. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon

by simonjgreen 5y ago

MaxBarraclough 5y ago
Non-mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  Digression: why do sites like Wikipedia and Twitter use different URLs for their mobile, given that in the end it’s essentially the same stuff being served?
  - 41b696ef1113 5y ago
    For Wikipedia, I imagine they have interests in making the content most accessible on the maximum number of devices. Which means pages crafted to be lightweight and minimal Javascript. Yes, you could do that all in one page, at the altar of developer velocity, but I think the strict isolation is user forward. A quick test from Firefox dev tools for initial page load: - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon 1.04MB, Finish 619 ms - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon 1.94MB, Finish 1500 ms
    - rozab 5y ago
      Wow. I guess today I'll be writing a stylesheet to un-mobile-ify m.wikipedia.org
      - j-james 5y ago
        I use a short userscript: // @include *://*.m.wikipedia.org/* window.location.replace("https://en.wikipedia.org https://en.wikipedia.org" + window.location.pathname);
        stan_rogers 5y ago
        I believe the object was not so much to force mobile links/URLs to desktop URLs, but to style the lighter mobile page for the desktop.
  - bawolff 5y ago
    I'd guess its essier to manage caching.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Wikipedia launched that in July 2013 in response to rising web traffic and the existing site not working well on mobile browsers. That was preceded by Wapedia, an independent site that started in 2004 to provide a reformatting proxy for mobile use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapedia The basic answer is that early on the tooling wasn't there to support very difference devices from the same HTML. You could try tricks to detect mobile devices and serve different content. But it was much easier just to let people decide which they wanted. I haven't kept up, but I know the tooling keeps improving, so I expect that few people today are creating mobile-specific URLs, and that the existing ones will go away in the long run.
  - wiml 5y ago
    IIRC it dates to before we had things like media-query in CSS or other good ways to adapt the page load to the device.
  - MatmaRex 5y ago
    Wikipedia's mobile site was originally running completely separate software (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering/Ruby_gateway https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering/...). My guess is that it was easier to set up that way at the time, and then the configuration was kept when a mobile version was integrated into MediaWiki itself. There are plans to merge the domains (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T214998 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T214998), although they are vague and stalled.

This article taught be a new term. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon

MaxBarraclough 5y ago

Non-mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon

chrismorgan 5y ago
Digression: why do sites like Wikipedia and Twitter use different URLs for their mobile, given that in the end it’s essentially the same stuff being served?
- 41b696ef1113 5y ago
  For Wikipedia, I imagine they have interests in making the content most accessible on the maximum number of devices. Which means pages crafted to be lightweight and minimal Javascript. Yes, you could do that all in one page, at the altar of developer velocity, but I think the strict isolation is user forward. A quick test from Firefox dev tools for initial page load: - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon 1.04MB, Finish 619 ms - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon 1.94MB, Finish 1500 ms
  - rozab 5y ago
    Wow. I guess today I'll be writing a stylesheet to un-mobile-ify m.wikipedia.org
    - j-james 5y ago
      I use a short userscript: // @include *://*.m.wikipedia.org/* window.location.replace("https://en.wikipedia.org https://en.wikipedia.org" + window.location.pathname);
      - stan_rogers 5y ago
        I believe the object was not so much to force mobile links/URLs to desktop URLs, but to style the lighter mobile page for the desktop.
- bawolff 5y ago
  I'd guess its essier to manage caching.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Wikipedia launched that in July 2013 in response to rising web traffic and the existing site not working well on mobile browsers. That was preceded by Wapedia, an independent site that started in 2004 to provide a reformatting proxy for mobile use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapedia The basic answer is that early on the tooling wasn't there to support very difference devices from the same HTML. You could try tricks to detect mobile devices and serve different content. But it was much easier just to let people decide which they wanted. I haven't kept up, but I know the tooling keeps improving, so I expect that few people today are creating mobile-specific URLs, and that the existing ones will go away in the long run.
- wiml 5y ago
  IIRC it dates to before we had things like media-query in CSS or other good ways to adapt the page load to the device.
- MatmaRex 5y ago
  Wikipedia's mobile site was originally running completely separate software (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering/Ruby_gateway https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Mobile_engineering/...). My guess is that it was easier to set up that way at the time, and then the configuration was kept when a mobile version was integrated into MediaWiki itself. There are plans to merge the domains (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T214998 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T214998), although they are vague and stalled.