25 ms·

Explore Wikipedia's New Look

292 points by zebracanevra 4y ago

M1ch431 4y ago
I prefer Wikiwand over the redesign, but this is still a massive step in the right direction. https://www.wikiwand.com/ https://www.wikiwand.com/
prima-facie 4y ago
I've been using the Mobile Wikipedia extension(1) for Firefox which achieves the same effect. Actually mobile Wikipedia is lighter and loads faster than the new design. (1) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mobile-wikipedia-webextension/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mobile-wikipe...
weird_user 4y ago
For those who don't like the new skin. I have created a user CSS to make it more compact: https://gist.github.com/kool-user/457cbf0100e075cc83977c1fe8acc094 https://gist.github.com/kool-user/457cbf0100e075cc83977c1fe8...
vivegi 4y ago
Love the new ToC links on the left. The new look seems to mess up some inline images. In the following links, the histogram chart under section Historic Population has an unnecessary horizontal scrollbar for the chart image. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bern (New vector-2022 look) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bern?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bern?useskin=vector (Previous vector look) Note: I am viewing this on my surface tablet in landscape mode.
aahmeda 4y ago
Worst choice ever all it makes is for 1 second of being able to read it then it goes all blurry and not to mention I have to put it on full screen width everytime.
SuperSandro2000 4y ago
My first instinct was: how to get rid of the left menu and get the text wider again.
emehex 4y ago
Gut reaction: I hate it. But I'll probably get used to it...
- skyyler 4y ago
  Same! I absolutely hate the amount of empty space everywhere on my 1080p screen.
- zebracanevra 4y ago
  Yeah, same reaction for me... I've always liked the small gradients on the top and the long list of things down the left side which I never click. Felt homely. I'll miss it.
  - BitwiseFool 4y ago
    I pray that one day colors other than just white and light grays return to the backgrounds of elements on the web. The zealot inside of me also wishes for skeuomorphism to make a glorious comeback, but I may not see that in my lifetime.
- timeon 4y ago
  > probably get used to it... Since it is on some language version for some time I already did. But it took some time.
wormslayer666 4y ago
Lots of whitespace, lots of unnecessary animations, and lots of floating bars I'd never click occupying screen space. Hopefully this isn't too hard to fix with browser extensions.
psacawa 4y ago
Good: - Sidebar for navigation Bad: - Wasted screen space - Other languages are not available as a simple anchor tag anymore. They are hidden behind <button> elements. It's annoying for readers who consult their own language and en.wikipedia.org in the same session. It breaks my bookmarklet to change languages, which depended on something like `document.querySelectorAll('a')`
- ilyt 4y ago
  Also for some reason they made links even brighter blue
- philipphutterer 4y ago
  it does not only break your bookmarklet, but even vimium [1] is unable to focus the language selection. this is awful. [1] https://github.com/gdh1995/vimium-c https://github.com/gdh1995/vimium-c
- Fauntleroy 4y ago
  Even in the new design the line length is way too long. I get complaints about wasted screen space, but you really don't want lines of text blasting all the way across the screen either.
  - atsjie 4y ago
    Fully agree. I always downsized my window to read a Wikipedia article (I use fairly large desktop monitors, but not a widescreen). The sentences were comically large making it really hard to see what the next line is. Even in the new design they're still a bit larger than what I'd like.
- askvictor 4y ago
  Humans read best when a line is around 10 words long. Longer, and it's easy to lose which line you're on when you go to the next one. The sidebar collapses if you resize to a narrower window, so I wouldn't call it wasted.
- mike_d 4y ago
ashton314 4y ago
My initial take: I actually like this a lot. The body text is narrower which makes for easier reading. The sidebar with an updating highlight of current place in document is really nice too. I don't mind the "wasted space": Wikipedia is primarily about reading, and any well typeset book or web page should have generous margins so the line length is not too long.
- pdpi 4y ago
  My first take: it’s different so it sucks. The lack of visual separation between the main content and the menu on the left is atrocious. Second take: oh wait, the menu in the left was completely useless and they replaced it with the table of contents for that particular entry. That’s actually a welcome change. I’ll get used to “different so it sucks” soon enough anyway, that’s my fault not theirs. It’s kind of fascinating when you catch yourself having knee-jerk reactions and “watch” your brain correct them.
  - rascul 4y ago
    I find so much whitespace to the left tries to grab my attention and makes it harder to focus on the content.
    - jrochkind1 4y ago
      It says something about how we've (all) been trained to read the web that you find an empty margin more distracting and grabbing of attention than the previous thing that occupied that area of the screen -- a fairly useless list of wikipeida navigational links we had all learned to ignore.
- seanalltogether 4y ago
  I was worried about the narrow body impact on table data since wikipedia often has the most concise charts for comparison. Although the styling looks broken, at the least the data isn't hidden inside an inner scroll area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_30_series?useskin=vector-2022#Desktop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_30_series?useskin=vect...
slimginz 4y ago
For people who don't like the new look, you can go to preferences->Appearance and select 'Vector (Legacy)'. It does require you to login first which is annoying but at least you can easily go back to the old look. Edit: You can also have it take up the entire width by hitting the button in the bottom right. Doesn't seem to remember the change for me though so hopefully they add that in soon.
- coldpie 4y ago
  > You can also have it take up the entire width by hitting the button in the bottom right. Doesn't seem to remember the change for me though so hopefully they add that in soon. Ooh good spot. That fixes my one issue, the bizarrely narrow column width.
- Snitch-Thursday 4y ago
  Thank you! I first went back to vector legacy, but then I saw monobook which is the wikipedia of my memories and have swapped there, so now I'm happy. Kudos to WM for keeping the option for that theme in MediaWiki. Now I have a reason to browse logged in all the time.
- rchard2scout 4y ago
  IIRC, the button in the bottom right is intended to not remember the change. To make the full width setting persistent, when you're logged in, go to Preferences -> Appearance, and disable "Enable limited width mode".
- arc-in-space 4y ago
  Unfortunately this only works if you have javascript enabled on the site, too, and the awful popups they added made me disable it.
- userbinator 4y ago
  Or you can just use custom CSS, which works not only here but on every site, and has been my preferred way of fixing/reverting horrible decisions.
- sdevoid 4y ago
chazeon 4y ago
Have been using this new theme since beta. I love the much cleaner look more than the previous one. One can always tune the CSS yourself at the user's preference near the theme selector. The only thing I need to adjust to my liking is to limit the line width: main#content { max-width: 40em; } For those who hate it: you will always have the option to switch back to the old theme. I really hope any website could be as flexible as Wikipedia to allow users to write their own CSS.
- kerpotgh 4y ago
  How do you make the max-width apply permanently to a website on chrome?
  - flobosg 4y ago
    You can use an extension such as Stylebot: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbmkiecgbjeifoejpgmdaleoha?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbm...
  - sturob 4y ago
    If you're logged in to wikipedia you can add custom css (and js) in 'Preferences > Appearance'
- ghghgfdfgh 4y ago
  > you will always have the option to switch back to the old theme. The only issue is, you need to log in to do this. I don't want to have to log in to a website that I read, and never edit, to get rid of the giant distracting table of contents.
  - trynewideas 4y ago
    Also, VPN users who create or log in to accounts are radically limited or indiscriminately blocked.[1][2] Getting out of that state requires manual intervention.[3] Many VPN users don't use accounts as a result. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IP_edits_are_not_anonymous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IP_edits_are_not_ano... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:I_have_been_blocked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:I_have_been_blocked 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IP_block_exemption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IP_block_exemption
yamtaddle 4y ago
Initial reactions from watching the gif, coming in cold, having not seen the new design: 2003: Ouch. Yeah, that's bad. 2005: Great. 2011: Not worse. Maybe a little better. I have a vague recollection that some things that aren't well-showcased by a still got better with this one, but the still is at least not-offputting compared with '05. 2022: LOL are you serious? You cannot be serious. Please tell me this is unfinished. All that padding. WTF. Someone accidentally hit "0" too many times in their CSS editor. [EDIT] I mean I guess you need enormous swathes of empty space when you remove all other indicators of section division, but... like... just don't do that, then? [EDIT 2] OK, I was like, "whatever, it sucks, but I'll get over it" until I read this: "When you are logged in to Wikipedia, the updated header will move with you as you scroll." Thank god when I try it on the site this doesn't actually work, since that'd force me to have custom CSS for Wikipedia. {ah, I see now it's because I'm not logged in. Great, easy to avoid then, no problem} Also: I'd love a before-after on page weight. Everyone always seems to add like a full MB of junk to the damn page when they add smart search like that, for some reason, even though it shouldn't require anywhere near that much (see: Github, whose pages bloated a ton when they made their search field "smarter"). One of the nicest things about WP is that it's semi-usable on a potato connection and I wouldn't want to see them sacrifice that in the name of almost any other improvement. [EDIT 3] Being the change I want to see in the world: I checked with caches disabled and it looks like transfer and weight are damn near identical compared with the "wikiless" site that someone else linked, for the same article. Very nice, happy to see that. However, it appears to use double the memory of the Wikiless version (which I suppose represents something closer to the old design?) which seems pretty bad to me.
- coldpie 4y ago
  > When you are logged in to Wikipedia, the updated header will move with you as you scroll We need to stage some kind of intervention with web designers. There can't be a single person on the planet who actually likes this anti-feature. Why on Earth do they keep doing it?
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    If it's static, at least it's not the worst kind (though I still "select element -> remove" when I see those): the ones that bounce down when you scroll up even one notch, covering the very thing you were scrolling up to see, are the web design equivalent of someone slapping you in the face.
trynewideas 4y ago
Details on the design process: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improveme... - On Wikipedia, and any MediaWiki installation, you can add the useskin query parameter to the URL to change skins on a page, even when not logged in. Current (vector-2022): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=vector-2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=ve... Previous (vector): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=ve... Older (monobook): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=monobook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=mo... Older alternative (modern): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=modern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=mo... Older alternative (cologneblue): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=cologneblue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=co... Mobile (minerva): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=minerva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=mi... Responsive alternative (timeless): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=timeless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=ti... Installed skin list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Version https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Version
- molticrystal 4y ago
  Thanks, used this in conjunction with a url editing add-on [0] Description: Wikipedia Vector Skin Example URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_campbell Include pattern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/* Redirect to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1?useskin=vector Pattern Description: Auto Redirects to vector skin version Advanced Options: Exclude pattern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*?* Feel free to toss a better way or an improvement for this if you end up doing the same. I'm sure the include and exclude patterns can be tuned, the add-on supports regex, otherwise you'll want a second rule for searches and such, but this should get a person started. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/
  - User912983 4y ago
kibwen 4y ago
I appreciate the table of contents moving to the left-hand sidebar, needing to scroll back to the top in order to navigate a long page or get a permalink was always an annoyance.
justoreply 4y ago
I really like it
baal80spam 4y ago
Thank god for wikiless.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  1) Awesome, didn't know about this, but 2) Are they ingesting and modifying raw WP pages, and haven't updated for the new design? I ask because on desktop Safari there are tons of major layout errors (search field completely overlaps left menu; top logo image missing; page stretches one full, empty screenfull past the end of the footer; some text sits on top of section dividers rather than within the boundaries of a section) and wonder whether that's normal or just a temporary issue.
drcongo 4y ago
Oh, it's still hideous. Years ago I used to have a Safari extension that made Wikipedia look absolutely beautiful, with vastly improved readability. Such was the shock when that extension finally stopped working that I can still remember where I was when I suddenly saw the full horror of its regular design.
- coldpie 4y ago
  I would be curious to know what your beautiful version looked like. I find Wikipedia's styling so inoffensive that I don't understand how you could consider it "hideous." It's pretty much just black text on a white background. What about that causes such a strong reaction from you?
danjoredd 4y ago
I don't like it. It was fine the way it was. I like the new table of contents though. Thats kind of useful
satvikpendem 4y ago
Finally. I have a big monitor and the line width is insane, glad they made it a more reasonable column layout, moving my head from end to end was getting very annoying that I had to use custom CSS instead.
- fmajid 4y ago
  They could have made a responsive multi-column layout to keep the readability of reasonable line lengths while keeping information density high.
- blep_ 4y ago
  Why can't you just resize the window to a width that is comfortable for you?
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    I use all my applications in full screen mode usually, so resizing just for a single tab or moving Wikipedia into its own window would be annoying too.
karaterobot 4y ago
I don't need a header to follow me down the page, in fact I'd prefer it not to. On the very rare occasion when I need to scroll all the way to the top of the page, I have no problem figuring out how to do that. Feels like they're introducing a persistent UI element without a benefit. Benefit to me, anyway. Maybe they heard from a lot of users who were having trouble remembering where the header was, I can't say. I don't log in to Wikipedia, so this doesn't affect me much at present. I'm not sure what value the collapsible table of contents is. Maybe it's useful on mobile, to help save screen space, but on desktop it would just be extra work for me to collapse the sections (which appear to be expanded by default). I have not found the length of the table of contents to be a problem, and I see the value of this structure as being that it allows me to see everything at once. I get why having a maximum line length is good for readability. My reaction to this feature is negative, but I wonder if it's because I've gotten good at sizing Wikipedia articles the way I like them to be, by upping the font size and shrinking my browser window. Maybe I will come around on it, but my initial reaction was that I don't trust them to make the right decision for me, so I'd rather they just kept it flexible.
- gpm 4y ago
  I don't need a header either, but I suppose for people editing wikipedia it might be pretty useful. It probably makes sense for wikipedia to optimize for the people providing the free labour slightly more than they optimize for the readers.
  - nsajko 4y ago
    You suppose wrong.
- zeta0134 4y ago
  I usually use my adblocker to simply remove fixed headers. Hopefully there isn't anything critically important in that thing, because whatever's up there just isn't going to be seen. They're far too distracting.
- rickstanley 4y ago
  Yeah, I don't like it either, and I don't see a way to disable this apart from user's defined bookmark script, like kill sticky[0]: javascript:(function()%7Bdocument.querySelectorAll(%22body%20*%22).forEach(function(node)%7Bif(%5B%22fixed%22%2C%22sticky%22%5D.includes(getComputedStyle(node).position))%7Bnode.parentNode.removeChild(node)%7D%7D)%3Bdocument.querySelectorAll(%22html%20*%22).forEach(function(node)%7Bvar%20s%3DgetComputedStyle(node)%3Bif(%22hidden%22%3D%3D%3Ds%5B%22overflow%22%5D)%7Bnode.style%5B%22overflow%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7Dif(%22hidden%22%3D%3D%3Ds%5B%22overflow-x%22%5D)%7Bnode.style%5B%22overflow-x%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7Dif(%22hidden%22%3D%3D%3Ds%5B%22overflow-y%22%5D)%7Bnode.style%5B%22overflow-y%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7D%7D)%3Bvar%20htmlNode%3Ddocument.querySelector(%22html%22)%3BhtmlNode.style%5B%22overflow%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%3BhtmlNode.style%5B%22overflow-x%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%3BhtmlNode.style%5B%22overflow-y%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7D)()%3B%0A But unfortunately, it renders the header useless in this case. [0]: https://github.com/t-mart/kill-sticky https://github.com/t-mart/kill-sticky
ketzu 4y ago
I really like it. Mostly the repurposing of the left side for the table of contents, but also the width reduction. I only use half of my screen for my browser already, and on many pages, lines are just insanely long. Personally, I nevery really minded having open space on websites. I never felt it made reading worse. Contrary, pages with little whitespace felt cramped and I lost my position now and then. But I understand that other people will feel differently about that. I'd stil like the language selector below the table of contents in the sidebar.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I wish they'd let the old sidebar display as a third column if the viewport's wide enough. However, this: > I'd stil like the language selector below the table of contents in the sidebar. would also cover most of the reason I wish they'd do that. [EDIT] Incidentally, what ever happened to 3-column layouts? They could keep the site menu on the left and stick the TOC on the right (keeping it visible all the time is definitely an improvement, and the thing I like most about this redesign). We used those layouts a ton when 800x600 4:3 was still a common monitor resolution & ratio, so surely it'd be fine on 16:9 and 16:10 monitors with 3x or more the pixels.
  - trynewideas 4y ago
    > They could keep the site menu on the left and stick the TOC on the right (keeping it visible all the time is definitely an improvement, and the thing I like most about this redesign). Interestingly, the work toward implementing this new version of Vector allows any skin to decouple the TOC from the page content in MW 1.38+. It wasn't possible to move the page-generated ToC out of the content body before without resorting to JS/CSS hacks or implementing a parallel ToC generator in the skin or as an extension. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:How_to_make_a_MediaWiki_skin#Disabling_the_table_of_contents https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:How_to_make_a_MediaWik...
ohCh6zos 4y ago
Why is everyone moving to so much white space? I wish there was more of an emphasis on information density on the modern web.
- smarkov 4y ago
  Because it emphasizes the distinction between different parts of a website which in turn makes it easier to focus on individual things. Why are so many people against white space when it hasn't been overdone? Obviously "overdone" means different things to different people but in this case the information that matters is still pretty dense.
  - ohCh6zos 4y ago
    I took some quick measurements. The previous version leaves 2% of my browser window as whitespace containing no images or text. By comparison, the new version is 53% whitespace. That seems pretty extreme to me.
    - smarkov 4y ago
      You must be referring to the constrained width of the page, you can change that in the preferences if you really prefer having the text cover your whole screen. There's a reason we have a character limit per line when writing code - it's much easier to read and understand short chunks of vertical text. Personally, I find it far more comfortable reading text which doesn't go above 600-900px in width and this has been a well known UX/UI guideline for the last 10 years. Having your eyes go from the far left to the far right of your screen is also very straining on any >21" screen.
    - hidelooktropic 4y ago
      These kinds of objections are predicated on the idea that white space is inherently wasteful. But the real question is, why is it good to strain the eyes darting them across distances that large. What is gained by filling in the white space just to fill it?
Sunspark 4y ago
Should use white for the text colour to give the design a consistent theme.
mpsprd 4y ago
The table of contents is a great addition! Whitespace/minimalist styling is of little importance as it will change with design fashions, while the table will stay a net positive.
- duderific 4y ago
  A little odd though, that there is no left-padding in the table of contents, so the text is jammed right up against the left side of the page. Or is that just me?
wolpoli 4y ago
I don't like the extra padding that every designer is adding into every web site and application. I need to keep multiple sites/apps on my screen as I need to look at references, work on my tasks, and communicate with others. but every designer thinks I should maximize their site/app. It's forcing me to resize and move windows all the time.
- autoexec 4y ago
  Even when I only have one maximized window up I hate all the empty white space. I've taken to just zooming in until the text fills the window. The new design handles the zoom so much better than the old one.
- Gualdrapo 4y ago
  I don't think "every" designer does that. And not everyone wants all content crammed into a little area. All in all, it should be up to the user decide how much content density they want on websites.
- dangus 4y ago
  The article addresses this by mentioning that they referenced research demonstrating text that is too wide causes people to read less comfortably and retain less information. The page gets much less padded when you reduce the size of the window, because the padding isn't there to make blank space, it's there to enforce a maximum line width.
  - l- 4y ago
    > text that is too wide causes people to read less comfortably and retain less information. This seems like an excuse to force JS to enable ads & what should be the default that is toggled with the fullscreen button in the bottom right. It does not justify wasted width as the user can more easily set the text to the appropriate zoom than applying some custom CSS: .mw-page-container { max-width: none !important; } .mw-content-container { max-width: none !important; } Zooming in now decreases the padding on the right, but has an offsetting increase in the wasted padding on the left contents until it completely disappears with huge text.
liberia 4y ago
I browse with Safari on iOS with JS disabled by default. I do this for privacy and accessibility reasons (gotta stop those annoying popup modals, trackers and other annoyances). One thing I noticed with Wikipedia with JS /enabled/, all the sub-categories of a topic are by default, closed. But when I browse with JS disabled, all the sub-categories are /opened/ and I have the full article. Since most people browse with JS enabled, this means they have to make additional clicks just to read the sub-categories. Which leads me to question: which version is better? The JS where you have to make additional clicks, or the no-js version where you get the full article?
- shrx 4y ago
  I always prefer the full article, but this is a matter of opinion. The issue is that the behavior is not consistent.
- lxgr 4y ago
  Closed subsections break page search (at least on iOS Safari), which I find very frustrating.
nighthawk454 4y ago
This reminds me of the Modern Wiki browser extension, which seems to have a lot of the same things but looks better to me at a glance. Also configurable, dark mode, etc. https://www.modernwiki.app/ https://www.modernwiki.app/
- kotaru 4y ago
  Unfortunately the new design seems to break the extension's ToC sidebar
askvictor 4y ago
Now, is there a dark mode like on the app?
ssalka 4y ago
Looks nice on desktop, have yet to see how mobile has changed. Oddly, I find that it still shows the old UI on certain pages? Eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Does_not_compute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Does_not_compute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_Diffusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_Diffusion And I guess my one complaint is, it now takes 2 clicks to iterate through random articles.
ssnistfajen 4y ago
The new layout style, most notably the centrered text blocks, has already been the default on a few other language versions of Wikipedia most notably fr.wikipedia.org.
xeyownt 4y ago
Wikipedia is really becoming awesome, and for me is really a Wonder of the modern world. Combined with tools like ChatGPT (or improved variants) for high quality translation of any article in any language, or combining submissions in several languages, or to get summaries or interactive explanations on some subject, this will become the most powerful tool of knowledge in history.
- ssnistfajen 4y ago
  Lots of Wikipedia articles have become well-cited but that façade begins to break down as we dive into more niche topics. Editor wars are real and impossible to resolve most of the time due to how obsessive the involved parties are. Some of them are rather damaging to what narrative is being shaped on some of these articles. The power to control edit access rests in a small group of administrators/moderators who are relatively anonymous. This has served the site well so far but could be a weak point should something occur in the future that fundamentally challenges the integrity of Wikipedia.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > Lots of Wikipedia articles have become well-cited but that façade begins to break down as we dive into more niche topics. A lot of the time they're just making the citation up. Wikipedia's page on French toast says this: > The earliest known reference to French toast is in the Apicius, a collection of Latin recipes dating to the 1st century CE, where it is described as simply aliter dulcia 'another sweet dish.'[8] The recipe says to "Break [slice] fine white bread, crust removed, into rather large pieces which soak in milk [and beaten eggs] fry in oil, cover with honey and serve".[9] The problem is that the reference to eggs doesn't exist in the Apicius. It comes from an "augmented translation" that was written in 1936; the eggs are original content from that "translation". The sidebar's claim that French toast originates in the Roman empire is a lie, and so is the claim that French toast appears in the Apicius. This has been noted on the associated talk page forever, but (apparently) so what? More on the obscure end of things, I'm also annoyed by the page on Chen Shimei ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Shimei_and_Qin_Xianglian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Shimei_and_Qin_Xianglian ). It claims that Chen Shimei, a stock dramatic character which the page itself dates to 1594, is represents an attempt at character assassination against an official of the Qing dynasty, which began in the mid-17th century. The claim (that the fictional character is based on a historical person) used to be cited to a newspaper article which did not itself cite anything. That citation has since been removed, but the claim lives on in the page without even a fig leaf citation.
Y_Y 4y ago
The Second Law of Interface Thermodynamics means that the software can't get more usable with time, nor can it even retain its previous level of usability. Everything decays, especially software.
muti 4y ago
A max line width is welcome from me, I'll be able to remove my tampermonkey script for wikipedia. I'll still need to keep the generic one around that I use on demand to fix other unreadable pages though.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
marcodiego 4y ago
My personal problem with it: the sidebar became wider. Now I have to disable it, but when I disable it, it disappears and makes the text lines much wider than what I'm used to. I'm one of those few people who don't maximize the browser to get a good acceptable line width. Wikipedia simply broke this :(
- 51Cards 4y ago
  You can set a fixed width view in the preferences which might help a lot.
toastercat 4y ago
I think it's nice actually. It also works great with JavaScript disabled! Thanks Wikipedia.
- justaj 4y ago
  > also works great with JavaScript disabled That was my primary concern. Last thing I need is to have a JS-only Wikipedia added to the seemingly ever-groing list of websites that try to squeeze as much data from their visitors as possible and using "functionality and features" as an excuse.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
BitwiseFool 4y ago
I sense part of what drove this redesign is the fact that 4K and Ultrawide monitors are now common enough that designing to accommodate them cannot be ignored. That being said, I much prefer left-justification instead of centering the content and having massive whitespace islands to either side. I wish there was an option to left justify.
- 51Cards 4y ago
  I'm the reverse of you in that I prefer content in the middle, as I sit in the middle of my screen and prefer to not have to be constantly looking to the left. I agree, personal choice would be nice.
mostlysimilar 4y ago
Floating table of contents on the left is a nice feature, but why is the styling so plain? It's just links floating in a void. Why do modern designers hate borders so much?
- bearmode 4y ago
  Because it works well without borders. You need to have a justification for adding things - what does a border add here? Other than making it feel more boxed-in?
- thiht 4y ago
  Because it works without borders. Do you have any trouble differentiating the sidebar from the content? I'm gonna guess no. Hence, no need for a border.
g051051 4y ago
Thanks, I hate it. Everything I loathe about "modern" web design made manifest here, and switched on without warning! At least I can turn it off in settings.
- ohCh6zos 4y ago
  You can even turn off responsive design in the settings. I should have checked earlier.
  - stockerta 4y ago
    yay, I need to get an account so I can browse it normaly. great...
  - kcb 4y ago
    Do you have to log in?
    - ohCh6zos 4y ago
      It seems you do need to log in, but just unchecking 'responsive' makes everything load a lot faster and become a lot more usable.
Willish42 4y ago
> Research has shown that limiting the width of longform text leads to a more comfortable reading experience, and better retention of the content itself. Is this actually true? I'm curious if anybody has sources for this and if it's a common UX practice. I tend to use wider windows than traditional 8:9 half-screens and this max-width practice drives me nuts.
- bearmode 4y ago
  Yes, it's extremely common UX practice. Lines really should be no longer than 80 characters at an absolute maximum. 50-60 is ideal.
- messe 4y ago
  Anecdotal, but personally I can’t stand reading overly long lines and don’t keep my browser window maximised. I’ve written user styles for certain sites in order to keep lines sufficiently narrow, and I’m one of the few people I know to use an 12.9” iPad Pro in portrait mode regularly.
- favorited 4y ago
  It's a common accessibility requirement. For example, WCAG suggests limiting the max width of blocks of text to ~80 characters (40 for CJK). https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/#visual-presentation https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/#visual-presentation
  - Willish42 4y ago
    Aha, I was aware of the 80-character line limit for source code files, but wasn't aware it was a general accessibility recommendation. Thanks for the link!
    - favorited 4y ago
      Sure thing! I only know about it because I've worked on more AX bug reports related to text layout than I care to admit... I think the 80 characters-per-line for code was a holdover from when IBM punch cards had 80 CPL, but I could be wrong there. I know American typewriters had about 80 CPL, so from a typography perspective maybe that's why 80 is the accessibility sweet-spot? If it's the ballpark equivalent to what we'd see on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper?
carapace 4y ago
oh goddammit (sorry) Is there a way to change it back?
- jsmith45 4y ago
  If you are signed in you can change to any of the historical themes and a few others. That is the easy option for switching.
  - carapace 4y ago
    Bless you noble stranger!
gardenhedge 4y ago
I didn't like the look of it from that GIF but after visiting it I don't mind it at all
rozab 4y ago
>When you are logged in to Wikipedia, the updated header will move with you as you scroll. You will no longer need to scroll to the top of the page to find what you are looking for, and you can focus on reading and editing instead. How do people write things like this with a straight face
zamadatix 4y ago
I was really hoping for a built in dark mode with the update. The mobile app is fantastic about this.
mschuster91 4y ago
What, excuse me, the fuck. It's almost like all lessons from the Windows 95 era were forgotten (see e.g. [1], and the top comment of the HN discussion is worth a read as well [2]). No borders visually separating areas of different function, no visible indicators where the clickable area of an UI element (e.g. a button) is, and the content jumps to the right when opening the main menu. > These improvements will make Wikipedia more welcoming and easier to use. Above quote from the notification, which, again, has no visual borders. Just an insanely contrast-less sky blue on a white background. Whoever has thought of this being a good idea should just go and resign in shame. Not every questionable design "trend" has to be followed. [1] https://twitter.com/tuomassalo/status/978717292023500805 https://twitter.com/tuomassalo/status/978717292023500805 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21888451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21888451
realworldperson 4y ago
[dead]
vermooten 4y ago
Magnify to 150% and it's readable again.
yellowapple 4y ago
This is all fine and dandy, but it baffles me that in the Year of Our Lord 2023 Wikipedia still insists on separate domains/URLs for mobile v. everything else.
- nayuki 4y ago
  Agreed so much with this. The "mobile version" should be triggered by the viewport size, not by the subdomain. I was hoping this site redesign would have unified the mobile and desktop sites.
nipperkinfeet 4y ago
It seems fine. I'm glad they didn't use a useless watered-down mobile design with excessively rounded components like Xfinity and other businesses have lately been doing. On larger monitors, there should be a full width option though.
aendruk 4y ago
Sigh, yet another site that contorts into an absurd distortion of a mobile layout at a still spacious viewport width. Am I the only person with two windows up? Screenshot: https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmaovnEHiCo6knhTPpp4XJyr5x9XYy5nbEW2Hyzk16Myw7 https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmaovnEHiCo6knhTPpp4XJyr5x9... This actually increased the line length.
- LordDragonfang 4y ago
  Pardon me asking, but what font (cipher? language?) are your tab titles and menus in? I don't recognize it, and I'm familiar with quite a few ciphers. (I initially thought it was another language, but it's clearly a transliteration of English.)
  - aendruk 4y ago
    It’s just a silly font, still a work in progress. Inspired by https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@Nifflas/109330930338202763 https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@Nifflas/109330930338202763
    - vladharbuz 4y ago
      Could you share what font editor you used, and whether you're using ligatures?
      - aendruk 4y ago
        FontForge, despite its antiquated interface, and liberal use of ligatures: https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmVMS6LFUEqJJdnXDVuVZWRDSHTSa8q42vXmw5z9Rw7GN7 https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmVMS6LFUEqJJdnXDVuVZWRDSHT... The biggest challenge has been keeping it legible while dense. Ultimately I’d like to give it aesthetics similar to a roman serif, but for now still experimenting with the basic construction.
        LordDragonfang 4y ago
7373737373 4y ago
Great, now it takes two clicks to switch languages old.wikipedia.org when?
- trompetenaccoun 4y ago
  Plus it now requires typing input, or you have to scroll through an annoying menu that sorts them by region and not importance. Judging by the rave reviews this gets though, it seems that people who use the site as opposed to just wanting pretty design are in the minority. If most users don't even switch languages or such, I wonder how many readers check the citations and discussions before blindly believing what random anonymous authors tell them.
canadianfella 4y ago
[dead]
katamarimambo 4y ago
I like it but I wish I could still have the available languages on the left column instead of having to click a button at the top. It would be great to pick some languages to be displayed on the left if there's a version available.
friend_and_foe 4y ago
~2005 was peak Wikipedia aesthetic. All these flat, border less design decisions take away from intuitive UX and make things more... globally homogenous.
- b1ue64 4y ago
  It's not like old UX wasn't "globaly homogenous" either
rsynnott 4y ago
... Got to admit, seeing the headline, I was assuming I would hate it, but... it looks pretty good.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
retox 4y ago
I wish the search was better, you basically have to know the exact spelling of the thing you're looking for, and there doesn't seem to be any partial word results.
Wowfunhappy 4y ago
Not that it matters to most people, but I'm surprised this didn't break the Dictionary app on my 10-year-old version of OS X (10.9 Mavericks). Wikipedia inside the Dictionary app looks basically identical to how it did a week ago, even though aiui it's basically just rendering the Wikipedia page (in a now terribly outdated browser engine) with some custom CSS. I wonder why it's still working.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  Oops, I'm an idiot, the new theme isn't the default yet!
  - 130e13a 4y ago
    just tested this, and it seems to be the default (at least when i navigate to the english-language wikipedia in a new incognito browser tab). Dictionary app still seems to be working fine, though. my guess here would be that they probably don't access the HTML at all, but instead go through MediaWiki's API.
mynameishere 4y ago
Now I have to log into Wikipedia just like reddit in order to get the non-atrocity user interface experience. How nice.
dotnet00 4y ago
Ewww what's with this terrible trend of wasting the majority of the screen space on a 16:9 monitor like this. Let it fit the window width, if someone needs it to be narrow let it adjust itself appropriately.
- bearmode 4y ago
  White space isn't wasted space. It makes the page infinitely more readable to limit line lengths. Yes, you could have reduced your window width before. No, you shouldn't have to do that to get a comfortable reading experience.
  - dotnet00 4y ago
    Making more than half the screen white space is wasted space. The point of resizable windows is to be able to adjust the content as desired, so it's pretty ridiculous to argue that everyone else should suffer wasted space because long lines are scary.
berjin 4y ago
I guess they have to justify their e-begging banner somehow even though a tiny proportion of the donations actually get spent on Wikipedia.
kristofferR 4y ago
Does anyone have any CSS/JS code to always expand the ToC sections?
LastTrain 4y ago
Wow, an improvement to a website that is actually an improvement. Reads way easier. Can I get Confluence to look like this?
65 4y ago
If you hate it, it's probably because it's different. You'll get used to it. It's similar to how every time a company re-designs their logo, there's always a huge backlash solely because it's change, and people do not like change. It's a really nice improvement from the previous design.
- awepoiufjwaeoip 4y ago
  > If you hate it, it's probably because it's different. No, the only thing I actually hate is that the main page has plenty of space on the side to show the sidebar, yet I still have to click it in order to get it to open up and see "Current Events". I don't dislike it because it's different, I dislike it because it is measurably slower to do something I used to do in one click. THERE IS NOTHING THERE WHEN THE SIDEBAR IS COLLAPSED.
- veqq 4y ago
  It's been in use for ages in other languages which I read a lot. It isn't "different". It is concretely worse to me and many others here.
a1371 4y ago
Never occurred to me how better it feels with the table of content on the side, even though that's a common thing in document processors. UX is the ultimate one-way function. Hard to make right, easy to judge.
impalallama 4y ago
feels modern, but modern in a very web center way that i feel like very 2020s. it feels overly minimalist in a way that looks good in design sheets. love the table of contents on the side dont care for the modern trend of removing any and all color separation between distinct portions of the page.
rising-sky 4y ago
> Research has shown that limiting the width of longform text leads to a more comfortable reading experience, and better retention of the content itself Surprised they did not include a citation for this research...
- goldbattle 4y ago
  It seems they link to a discussion page [1], which references this document (I can't find a published version): Computer text line lengths affect reading and learning Peter Orton https://cdn.tc-library.org/Edlab/eye-tracking%20article.pdf But it seems that Peter Orton has published quite a few works in this area [2], [3]. Specifically [3] seems to note that with a less wide text column width readers are not statistically significant faster (but are a bit), but do see that for difficult reading content, the shorter width requires less re-reading then a wider one along with significantly better retention of the contents of the document. [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Features/Limiting_content_width https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improveme... [2] https://www.scienceopen.com/document_file/671b2d53-73ce-4a91-946d-fde0b7db381a/ScienceOpen/015_Beymer.pdf https://www.scienceopen.com/document_file/671b2d53-73ce-4a91... [3] https://sci-hub.se/https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/11555261_59 https://sci-hub.se/https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007...
  - rising-sky 4y ago
    Appreciated, thanks. Just expected footnote marks in the article similar to Wikipedia or hyperlinks
interestica 4y ago
Just let me link to a content section (named anchor) on mobile. It makes sharing specific parts kinda difficult.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
2143 4y ago
I don't know if they're rolling it out in phases or what, but the new design seems to work only on some articles. As of right now (UTC 4:50 am): - Hanlon's Razor (new design) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor - Dunning-Kruger effect (old design) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
- abruzzi 4y ago
  both show the old design to me so seems more like some servers in a group have the new design elements and some have the old?
NautilusWave 4y ago
But how does it look with a massive charity drive ad banner?
mozball 4y ago
So Much White Space Its also off-center which is annoying on an 15"laptop
- trompetenaccoun 4y ago
  But they added the donate button in a prominent position top right. At least no one will miss that when they're looking for a context menu ;)
hotpockets 4y ago
something is definitely wrong with firefox on linux. There is no margin on the left side.
stockerta 4y ago
Thanks I hate it. I hate that sides want to control how "wide", I mean narrow the text can be. Sorry, I prefer longer lines and not a bunch of empty space on the sides.
drumhead 4y ago
Another irritatingly unnecessary change.

292 points by zebracanevra 4y ago

I prefer Wikiwand over the redesign, but this is still a massive step in the right direction. https://www.wikiwand.com/ https://www.wikiwand.com/

prima-facie 4y ago

I've been using the Mobile Wikipedia extension(1) for Firefox which achieves the same effect. Actually mobile Wikipedia is lighter and loads faster than the new design. (1) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mobile-wikipedia-webextension/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mobile-wikipe...

weird_user 4y ago

For those who don't like the new skin. I have created a user CSS to make it more compact: https://gist.github.com/kool-user/457cbf0100e075cc83977c1fe8acc094 https://gist.github.com/kool-user/457cbf0100e075cc83977c1fe8...

vivegi 4y ago

Love the new ToC links on the left. The new look seems to mess up some inline images. In the following links, the histogram chart under section Historic Population has an unnecessary horizontal scrollbar for the chart image. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bern (New vector-2022 look) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bern?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bern?useskin=vector (Previous vector look) Note: I am viewing this on my surface tablet in landscape mode.

aahmeda 4y ago

Worst choice ever all it makes is for 1 second of being able to read it then it goes all blurry and not to mention I have to put it on full screen width everytime.

SuperSandro2000 4y ago

My first instinct was: how to get rid of the left menu and get the text wider again.

emehex 4y ago

Gut reaction: I hate it. But I'll probably get used to it...

skyyler 4y ago
Same! I absolutely hate the amount of empty space everywhere on my 1080p screen.
zebracanevra 4y ago
Yeah, same reaction for me... I've always liked the small gradients on the top and the long list of things down the left side which I never click. Felt homely. I'll miss it.
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  I pray that one day colors other than just white and light grays return to the backgrounds of elements on the web. The zealot inside of me also wishes for skeuomorphism to make a glorious comeback, but I may not see that in my lifetime.
timeon 4y ago
> probably get used to it... Since it is on some language version for some time I already did. But it took some time.

wormslayer666 4y ago

Lots of whitespace, lots of unnecessary animations, and lots of floating bars I'd never click occupying screen space. Hopefully this isn't too hard to fix with browser extensions.

psacawa 4y ago

Good: - Sidebar for navigation Bad: - Wasted screen space - Other languages are not available as a simple anchor tag anymore. They are hidden behind <button> elements. It's annoying for readers who consult their own language and en.wikipedia.org in the same session. It breaks my bookmarklet to change languages, which depended on something like `document.querySelectorAll('a')`

ilyt 4y ago
Also for some reason they made links even brighter blue
philipphutterer 4y ago
it does not only break your bookmarklet, but even vimium [1] is unable to focus the language selection. this is awful. [1] https://github.com/gdh1995/vimium-c https://github.com/gdh1995/vimium-c
Fauntleroy 4y ago
Even in the new design the line length is way too long. I get complaints about wasted screen space, but you really don't want lines of text blasting all the way across the screen either.
- atsjie 4y ago
  Fully agree. I always downsized my window to read a Wikipedia article (I use fairly large desktop monitors, but not a widescreen). The sentences were comically large making it really hard to see what the next line is. Even in the new design they're still a bit larger than what I'd like.
askvictor 4y ago
Humans read best when a line is around 10 words long. Longer, and it's easy to lose which line you're on when you go to the next one. The sidebar collapses if you resize to a narrower window, so I wouldn't call it wasted.
mike_d 4y ago

ashton314 4y ago

My initial take: I actually like this a lot. The body text is narrower which makes for easier reading. The sidebar with an updating highlight of current place in document is really nice too. I don't mind the "wasted space": Wikipedia is primarily about reading, and any well typeset book or web page should have generous margins so the line length is not too long.

pdpi 4y ago
My first take: it’s different so it sucks. The lack of visual separation between the main content and the menu on the left is atrocious. Second take: oh wait, the menu in the left was completely useless and they replaced it with the table of contents for that particular entry. That’s actually a welcome change. I’ll get used to “different so it sucks” soon enough anyway, that’s my fault not theirs. It’s kind of fascinating when you catch yourself having knee-jerk reactions and “watch” your brain correct them.
- rascul 4y ago
  I find so much whitespace to the left tries to grab my attention and makes it harder to focus on the content.
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    It says something about how we've (all) been trained to read the web that you find an empty margin more distracting and grabbing of attention than the previous thing that occupied that area of the screen -- a fairly useless list of wikipeida navigational links we had all learned to ignore.
seanalltogether 4y ago
I was worried about the narrow body impact on table data since wikipedia often has the most concise charts for comparison. Although the styling looks broken, at the least the data isn't hidden inside an inner scroll area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_30_series?useskin=vector-2022#Desktop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_30_series?useskin=vect...

slimginz 4y ago

For people who don't like the new look, you can go to preferences->Appearance and select 'Vector (Legacy)'. It does require you to login first which is annoying but at least you can easily go back to the old look. Edit: You can also have it take up the entire width by hitting the button in the bottom right. Doesn't seem to remember the change for me though so hopefully they add that in soon.

coldpie 4y ago
> You can also have it take up the entire width by hitting the button in the bottom right. Doesn't seem to remember the change for me though so hopefully they add that in soon. Ooh good spot. That fixes my one issue, the bizarrely narrow column width.
Snitch-Thursday 4y ago
Thank you! I first went back to vector legacy, but then I saw monobook which is the wikipedia of my memories and have swapped there, so now I'm happy. Kudos to WM for keeping the option for that theme in MediaWiki. Now I have a reason to browse logged in all the time.
rchard2scout 4y ago
IIRC, the button in the bottom right is intended to not remember the change. To make the full width setting persistent, when you're logged in, go to Preferences -> Appearance, and disable "Enable limited width mode".
arc-in-space 4y ago
Unfortunately this only works if you have javascript enabled on the site, too, and the awful popups they added made me disable it.
userbinator 4y ago
Or you can just use custom CSS, which works not only here but on every site, and has been my preferred way of fixing/reverting horrible decisions.
sdevoid 4y ago

chazeon 4y ago

Have been using this new theme since beta. I love the much cleaner look more than the previous one. One can always tune the CSS yourself at the user's preference near the theme selector. The only thing I need to adjust to my liking is to limit the line width: main#content { max-width: 40em; } For those who hate it: you will always have the option to switch back to the old theme. I really hope any website could be as flexible as Wikipedia to allow users to write their own CSS.

kerpotgh 4y ago
How do you make the max-width apply permanently to a website on chrome?
- flobosg 4y ago
  You can use an extension such as Stylebot: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbmkiecgbjeifoejpgmdaleoha?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbm...
- sturob 4y ago
  If you're logged in to wikipedia you can add custom css (and js) in 'Preferences > Appearance'
ghghgfdfgh 4y ago
> you will always have the option to switch back to the old theme. The only issue is, you need to log in to do this. I don't want to have to log in to a website that I read, and never edit, to get rid of the giant distracting table of contents.
- trynewideas 4y ago
  Also, VPN users who create or log in to accounts are radically limited or indiscriminately blocked.[1][2] Getting out of that state requires manual intervention.[3] Many VPN users don't use accounts as a result. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IP_edits_are_not_anonymous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IP_edits_are_not_ano... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:I_have_been_blocked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:I_have_been_blocked 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IP_block_exemption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IP_block_exemption

yamtaddle 4y ago

Initial reactions from watching the gif, coming in cold, having not seen the new design: 2003: Ouch. Yeah, that's bad. 2005: Great. 2011: Not worse. Maybe a little better. I have a vague recollection that some things that aren't well-showcased by a still got better with this one, but the still is at least not-offputting compared with '05. 2022: LOL are you serious? You cannot be serious. Please tell me this is unfinished. All that padding. WTF. Someone accidentally hit "0" too many times in their CSS editor. [EDIT] I mean I guess you need enormous swathes of empty space when you remove all other indicators of section division, but... like... just don't do that, then? [EDIT 2] OK, I was like, "whatever, it sucks, but I'll get over it" until I read this: "When you are logged in to Wikipedia, the updated header will move with you as you scroll." Thank god when I try it on the site this doesn't actually work, since that'd force me to have custom CSS for Wikipedia. {ah, I see now it's because I'm not logged in. Great, easy to avoid then, no problem} Also: I'd love a before-after on page weight. Everyone always seems to add like a full MB of junk to the damn page when they add smart search like that, for some reason, even though it shouldn't require anywhere near that much (see: Github, whose pages bloated a ton when they made their search field "smarter"). One of the nicest things about WP is that it's semi-usable on a potato connection and I wouldn't want to see them sacrifice that in the name of almost any other improvement. [EDIT 3] Being the change I want to see in the world: I checked with caches disabled and it looks like transfer and weight are damn near identical compared with the "wikiless" site that someone else linked, for the same article. Very nice, happy to see that. However, it appears to use double the memory of the Wikiless version (which I suppose represents something closer to the old design?) which seems pretty bad to me.

coldpie 4y ago
> When you are logged in to Wikipedia, the updated header will move with you as you scroll We need to stage some kind of intervention with web designers. There can't be a single person on the planet who actually likes this anti-feature. Why on Earth do they keep doing it?
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  If it's static, at least it's not the worst kind (though I still "select element -> remove" when I see those): the ones that bounce down when you scroll up even one notch, covering the very thing you were scrolling up to see, are the web design equivalent of someone slapping you in the face.

trynewideas 4y ago

Details on the design process: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improveme... - On Wikipedia, and any MediaWiki installation, you can add the useskin query parameter to the URL to change skins on a page, even when not logged in. Current (vector-2022): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=vector-2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=ve... Previous (vector): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=ve... Older (monobook): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=monobook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=mo... Older alternative (modern): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=modern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=mo... Older alternative (cologneblue): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=cologneblue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=co... Mobile (minerva): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=minerva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=mi... Responsive alternative (timeless): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=timeless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/59th_Academy_Awards?useskin=ti... Installed skin list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Version https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Version

molticrystal 4y ago
Thanks, used this in conjunction with a url editing add-on [0] Description: Wikipedia Vector Skin Example URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_campbell Include pattern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/* Redirect to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1?useskin=vector Pattern Description: Auto Redirects to vector skin version Advanced Options: Exclude pattern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*?* Feel free to toss a better way or an improvement for this if you end up doing the same. I'm sure the include and exclude patterns can be tuned, the add-on supports regex, otherwise you'll want a second rule for searches and such, but this should get a person started. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/
- User912983 4y ago

kibwen 4y ago

I appreciate the table of contents moving to the left-hand sidebar, needing to scroll back to the top in order to navigate a long page or get a permalink was always an annoyance.

justoreply 4y ago

I really like it

baal80spam 4y ago

Thank god for wikiless.

yamtaddle 4y ago
1) Awesome, didn't know about this, but 2) Are they ingesting and modifying raw WP pages, and haven't updated for the new design? I ask because on desktop Safari there are tons of major layout errors (search field completely overlaps left menu; top logo image missing; page stretches one full, empty screenfull past the end of the footer; some text sits on top of section dividers rather than within the boundaries of a section) and wonder whether that's normal or just a temporary issue.

drcongo 4y ago

Oh, it's still hideous. Years ago I used to have a Safari extension that made Wikipedia look absolutely beautiful, with vastly improved readability. Such was the shock when that extension finally stopped working that I can still remember where I was when I suddenly saw the full horror of its regular design.

coldpie 4y ago
I would be curious to know what your beautiful version looked like. I find Wikipedia's styling so inoffensive that I don't understand how you could consider it "hideous." It's pretty much just black text on a white background. What about that causes such a strong reaction from you?

danjoredd 4y ago

I don't like it. It was fine the way it was. I like the new table of contents though. Thats kind of useful

satvikpendem 4y ago

Finally. I have a big monitor and the line width is insane, glad they made it a more reasonable column layout, moving my head from end to end was getting very annoying that I had to use custom CSS instead.

fmajid 4y ago
They could have made a responsive multi-column layout to keep the readability of reasonable line lengths while keeping information density high.
blep_ 4y ago
Why can't you just resize the window to a width that is comfortable for you?
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  I use all my applications in full screen mode usually, so resizing just for a single tab or moving Wikipedia into its own window would be annoying too.

karaterobot 4y ago

I don't need a header to follow me down the page, in fact I'd prefer it not to. On the very rare occasion when I need to scroll all the way to the top of the page, I have no problem figuring out how to do that. Feels like they're introducing a persistent UI element without a benefit. Benefit to me, anyway. Maybe they heard from a lot of users who were having trouble remembering where the header was, I can't say. I don't log in to Wikipedia, so this doesn't affect me much at present. I'm not sure what value the collapsible table of contents is. Maybe it's useful on mobile, to help save screen space, but on desktop it would just be extra work for me to collapse the sections (which appear to be expanded by default). I have not found the length of the table of contents to be a problem, and I see the value of this structure as being that it allows me to see everything at once. I get why having a maximum line length is good for readability. My reaction to this feature is negative, but I wonder if it's because I've gotten good at sizing Wikipedia articles the way I like them to be, by upping the font size and shrinking my browser window. Maybe I will come around on it, but my initial reaction was that I don't trust them to make the right decision for me, so I'd rather they just kept it flexible.

gpm 4y ago
I don't need a header either, but I suppose for people editing wikipedia it might be pretty useful. It probably makes sense for wikipedia to optimize for the people providing the free labour slightly more than they optimize for the readers.
- nsajko 4y ago
  You suppose wrong.
zeta0134 4y ago
I usually use my adblocker to simply remove fixed headers. Hopefully there isn't anything critically important in that thing, because whatever's up there just isn't going to be seen. They're far too distracting.
rickstanley 4y ago
Yeah, I don't like it either, and I don't see a way to disable this apart from user's defined bookmark script, like kill sticky[0]: javascript:(function()%7Bdocument.querySelectorAll(%22body%20*%22).forEach(function(node)%7Bif(%5B%22fixed%22%2C%22sticky%22%5D.includes(getComputedStyle(node).position))%7Bnode.parentNode.removeChild(node)%7D%7D)%3Bdocument.querySelectorAll(%22html%20*%22).forEach(function(node)%7Bvar%20s%3DgetComputedStyle(node)%3Bif(%22hidden%22%3D%3D%3Ds%5B%22overflow%22%5D)%7Bnode.style%5B%22overflow%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7Dif(%22hidden%22%3D%3D%3Ds%5B%22overflow-x%22%5D)%7Bnode.style%5B%22overflow-x%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7Dif(%22hidden%22%3D%3D%3Ds%5B%22overflow-y%22%5D)%7Bnode.style%5B%22overflow-y%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7D%7D)%3Bvar%20htmlNode%3Ddocument.querySelector(%22html%22)%3BhtmlNode.style%5B%22overflow%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%3BhtmlNode.style%5B%22overflow-x%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%3BhtmlNode.style%5B%22overflow-y%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7D)()%3B%0A But unfortunately, it renders the header useless in this case. [0]: https://github.com/t-mart/kill-sticky https://github.com/t-mart/kill-sticky

ketzu 4y ago

I really like it. Mostly the repurposing of the left side for the table of contents, but also the width reduction. I only use half of my screen for my browser already, and on many pages, lines are just insanely long. Personally, I nevery really minded having open space on websites. I never felt it made reading worse. Contrary, pages with little whitespace felt cramped and I lost my position now and then. But I understand that other people will feel differently about that. I'd stil like the language selector below the table of contents in the sidebar.

yamtaddle 4y ago
I wish they'd let the old sidebar display as a third column if the viewport's wide enough. However, this: > I'd stil like the language selector below the table of contents in the sidebar. would also cover most of the reason I wish they'd do that. [EDIT] Incidentally, what ever happened to 3-column layouts? They could keep the site menu on the left and stick the TOC on the right (keeping it visible all the time is definitely an improvement, and the thing I like most about this redesign). We used those layouts a ton when 800x600 4:3 was still a common monitor resolution & ratio, so surely it'd be fine on 16:9 and 16:10 monitors with 3x or more the pixels.
- trynewideas 4y ago
  > They could keep the site menu on the left and stick the TOC on the right (keeping it visible all the time is definitely an improvement, and the thing I like most about this redesign). Interestingly, the work toward implementing this new version of Vector allows any skin to decouple the TOC from the page content in MW 1.38+. It wasn't possible to move the page-generated ToC out of the content body before without resorting to JS/CSS hacks or implementing a parallel ToC generator in the skin or as an extension. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:How_to_make_a_MediaWiki_skin#Disabling_the_table_of_contents https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:How_to_make_a_MediaWik...

ohCh6zos 4y ago

Why is everyone moving to so much white space? I wish there was more of an emphasis on information density on the modern web.

smarkov 4y ago
Because it emphasizes the distinction between different parts of a website which in turn makes it easier to focus on individual things. Why are so many people against white space when it hasn't been overdone? Obviously "overdone" means different things to different people but in this case the information that matters is still pretty dense.
- ohCh6zos 4y ago
  I took some quick measurements. The previous version leaves 2% of my browser window as whitespace containing no images or text. By comparison, the new version is 53% whitespace. That seems pretty extreme to me.
  - smarkov 4y ago
    You must be referring to the constrained width of the page, you can change that in the preferences if you really prefer having the text cover your whole screen. There's a reason we have a character limit per line when writing code - it's much easier to read and understand short chunks of vertical text. Personally, I find it far more comfortable reading text which doesn't go above 600-900px in width and this has been a well known UX/UI guideline for the last 10 years. Having your eyes go from the far left to the far right of your screen is also very straining on any >21" screen.
  - hidelooktropic 4y ago
    These kinds of objections are predicated on the idea that white space is inherently wasteful. But the real question is, why is it good to strain the eyes darting them across distances that large. What is gained by filling in the white space just to fill it?

Sunspark 4y ago

Should use white for the text colour to give the design a consistent theme.

mpsprd 4y ago

The table of contents is a great addition! Whitespace/minimalist styling is of little importance as it will change with design fashions, while the table will stay a net positive.

duderific 4y ago
A little odd though, that there is no left-padding in the table of contents, so the text is jammed right up against the left side of the page. Or is that just me?

wolpoli 4y ago

I don't like the extra padding that every designer is adding into every web site and application. I need to keep multiple sites/apps on my screen as I need to look at references, work on my tasks, and communicate with others. but every designer thinks I should maximize their site/app. It's forcing me to resize and move windows all the time.

autoexec 4y ago
Even when I only have one maximized window up I hate all the empty white space. I've taken to just zooming in until the text fills the window. The new design handles the zoom so much better than the old one.
Gualdrapo 4y ago
I don't think "every" designer does that. And not everyone wants all content crammed into a little area. All in all, it should be up to the user decide how much content density they want on websites.
dangus 4y ago
The article addresses this by mentioning that they referenced research demonstrating text that is too wide causes people to read less comfortably and retain less information. The page gets much less padded when you reduce the size of the window, because the padding isn't there to make blank space, it's there to enforce a maximum line width.
- l- 4y ago
  > text that is too wide causes people to read less comfortably and retain less information. This seems like an excuse to force JS to enable ads & what should be the default that is toggled with the fullscreen button in the bottom right. It does not justify wasted width as the user can more easily set the text to the appropriate zoom than applying some custom CSS: .mw-page-container { max-width: none !important; } .mw-content-container { max-width: none !important; } Zooming in now decreases the padding on the right, but has an offsetting increase in the wasted padding on the left contents until it completely disappears with huge text.

liberia 4y ago

I browse with Safari on iOS with JS disabled by default. I do this for privacy and accessibility reasons (gotta stop those annoying popup modals, trackers and other annoyances). One thing I noticed with Wikipedia with JS /enabled/, all the sub-categories of a topic are by default, closed. But when I browse with JS disabled, all the sub-categories are /opened/ and I have the full article. Since most people browse with JS enabled, this means they have to make additional clicks just to read the sub-categories. Which leads me to question: which version is better? The JS where you have to make additional clicks, or the no-js version where you get the full article?

shrx 4y ago
I always prefer the full article, but this is a matter of opinion. The issue is that the behavior is not consistent.
lxgr 4y ago
Closed subsections break page search (at least on iOS Safari), which I find very frustrating.

nighthawk454 4y ago

This reminds me of the Modern Wiki browser extension, which seems to have a lot of the same things but looks better to me at a glance. Also configurable, dark mode, etc. https://www.modernwiki.app/ https://www.modernwiki.app/

kotaru 4y ago
Unfortunately the new design seems to break the extension's ToC sidebar

askvictor 4y ago

Now, is there a dark mode like on the app?

ssalka 4y ago

Looks nice on desktop, have yet to see how mobile has changed. Oddly, I find that it still shows the old UI on certain pages? Eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Does_not_compute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Does_not_compute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_Diffusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_Diffusion And I guess my one complaint is, it now takes 2 clicks to iterate through random articles.

ssnistfajen 4y ago

The new layout style, most notably the centrered text blocks, has already been the default on a few other language versions of Wikipedia most notably fr.wikipedia.org.

xeyownt 4y ago

Wikipedia is really becoming awesome, and for me is really a Wonder of the modern world. Combined with tools like ChatGPT (or improved variants) for high quality translation of any article in any language, or combining submissions in several languages, or to get summaries or interactive explanations on some subject, this will become the most powerful tool of knowledge in history.

ssnistfajen 4y ago
Lots of Wikipedia articles have become well-cited but that façade begins to break down as we dive into more niche topics. Editor wars are real and impossible to resolve most of the time due to how obsessive the involved parties are. Some of them are rather damaging to what narrative is being shaped on some of these articles. The power to control edit access rests in a small group of administrators/moderators who are relatively anonymous. This has served the site well so far but could be a weak point should something occur in the future that fundamentally challenges the integrity of Wikipedia.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > Lots of Wikipedia articles have become well-cited but that façade begins to break down as we dive into more niche topics. A lot of the time they're just making the citation up. Wikipedia's page on French toast says this: > The earliest known reference to French toast is in the Apicius, a collection of Latin recipes dating to the 1st century CE, where it is described as simply aliter dulcia 'another sweet dish.'[8] The recipe says to "Break [slice] fine white bread, crust removed, into rather large pieces which soak in milk [and beaten eggs] fry in oil, cover with honey and serve".[9] The problem is that the reference to eggs doesn't exist in the Apicius. It comes from an "augmented translation" that was written in 1936; the eggs are original content from that "translation". The sidebar's claim that French toast originates in the Roman empire is a lie, and so is the claim that French toast appears in the Apicius. This has been noted on the associated talk page forever, but (apparently) so what? More on the obscure end of things, I'm also annoyed by the page on Chen Shimei ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Shimei_and_Qin_Xianglian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Shimei_and_Qin_Xianglian ). It claims that Chen Shimei, a stock dramatic character which the page itself dates to 1594, is represents an attempt at character assassination against an official of the Qing dynasty, which began in the mid-17th century. The claim (that the fictional character is based on a historical person) used to be cited to a newspaper article which did not itself cite anything. That citation has since been removed, but the claim lives on in the page without even a fig leaf citation.

Y_Y 4y ago

The Second Law of Interface Thermodynamics means that the software can't get more usable with time, nor can it even retain its previous level of usability. Everything decays, especially software.

muti 4y ago

A max line width is welcome from me, I'll be able to remove my tampermonkey script for wikipedia. I'll still need to keep the generic one around that I use on demand to fix other unreadable pages though.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

marcodiego 4y ago

My personal problem with it: the sidebar became wider. Now I have to disable it, but when I disable it, it disappears and makes the text lines much wider than what I'm used to. I'm one of those few people who don't maximize the browser to get a good acceptable line width. Wikipedia simply broke this :(

51Cards 4y ago
You can set a fixed width view in the preferences which might help a lot.

toastercat 4y ago

I think it's nice actually. It also works great with JavaScript disabled! Thanks Wikipedia.

justaj 4y ago
> also works great with JavaScript disabled That was my primary concern. Last thing I need is to have a JS-only Wikipedia added to the seemingly ever-groing list of websites that try to squeeze as much data from their visitors as possible and using "functionality and features" as an excuse.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

BitwiseFool 4y ago

I sense part of what drove this redesign is the fact that 4K and Ultrawide monitors are now common enough that designing to accommodate them cannot be ignored. That being said, I much prefer left-justification instead of centering the content and having massive whitespace islands to either side. I wish there was an option to left justify.

51Cards 4y ago
I'm the reverse of you in that I prefer content in the middle, as I sit in the middle of my screen and prefer to not have to be constantly looking to the left. I agree, personal choice would be nice.

mostlysimilar 4y ago

Floating table of contents on the left is a nice feature, but why is the styling so plain? It's just links floating in a void. Why do modern designers hate borders so much?

bearmode 4y ago
Because it works well without borders. You need to have a justification for adding things - what does a border add here? Other than making it feel more boxed-in?
thiht 4y ago
Because it works without borders. Do you have any trouble differentiating the sidebar from the content? I'm gonna guess no. Hence, no need for a border.

g051051 4y ago

Thanks, I hate it. Everything I loathe about "modern" web design made manifest here, and switched on without warning! At least I can turn it off in settings.

ohCh6zos 4y ago
You can even turn off responsive design in the settings. I should have checked earlier.
- stockerta 4y ago
  yay, I need to get an account so I can browse it normaly. great...
- kcb 4y ago
  Do you have to log in?
  - ohCh6zos 4y ago
    It seems you do need to log in, but just unchecking 'responsive' makes everything load a lot faster and become a lot more usable.

Willish42 4y ago

> Research has shown that limiting the width of longform text leads to a more comfortable reading experience, and better retention of the content itself. Is this actually true? I'm curious if anybody has sources for this and if it's a common UX practice. I tend to use wider windows than traditional 8:9 half-screens and this max-width practice drives me nuts.

bearmode 4y ago
Yes, it's extremely common UX practice. Lines really should be no longer than 80 characters at an absolute maximum. 50-60 is ideal.
messe 4y ago
Anecdotal, but personally I can’t stand reading overly long lines and don’t keep my browser window maximised. I’ve written user styles for certain sites in order to keep lines sufficiently narrow, and I’m one of the few people I know to use an 12.9” iPad Pro in portrait mode regularly.
favorited 4y ago
It's a common accessibility requirement. For example, WCAG suggests limiting the max width of blocks of text to ~80 characters (40 for CJK). https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/#visual-presentation https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/#visual-presentation
- Willish42 4y ago
  Aha, I was aware of the 80-character line limit for source code files, but wasn't aware it was a general accessibility recommendation. Thanks for the link!
  - favorited 4y ago
    Sure thing! I only know about it because I've worked on more AX bug reports related to text layout than I care to admit... I think the 80 characters-per-line for code was a holdover from when IBM punch cards had 80 CPL, but I could be wrong there. I know American typewriters had about 80 CPL, so from a typography perspective maybe that's why 80 is the accessibility sweet-spot? If it's the ballpark equivalent to what we'd see on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper?

carapace 4y ago

oh goddammit (sorry) Is there a way to change it back?

jsmith45 4y ago
If you are signed in you can change to any of the historical themes and a few others. That is the easy option for switching.
- carapace 4y ago
  Bless you noble stranger!

gardenhedge 4y ago

I didn't like the look of it from that GIF but after visiting it I don't mind it at all

rozab 4y ago

>When you are logged in to Wikipedia, the updated header will move with you as you scroll. You will no longer need to scroll to the top of the page to find what you are looking for, and you can focus on reading and editing instead. How do people write things like this with a straight face

zamadatix 4y ago

I was really hoping for a built in dark mode with the update. The mobile app is fantastic about this.

mschuster91 4y ago

What, excuse me, the fuck. It's almost like all lessons from the Windows 95 era were forgotten (see e.g. [1], and the top comment of the HN discussion is worth a read as well [2]). No borders visually separating areas of different function, no visible indicators where the clickable area of an UI element (e.g. a button) is, and the content jumps to the right when opening the main menu. > These improvements will make Wikipedia more welcoming and easier to use. Above quote from the notification, which, again, has no visual borders. Just an insanely contrast-less sky blue on a white background. Whoever has thought of this being a good idea should just go and resign in shame. Not every questionable design "trend" has to be followed. [1] https://twitter.com/tuomassalo/status/978717292023500805 https://twitter.com/tuomassalo/status/978717292023500805 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21888451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21888451

realworldperson 4y ago

[dead]

vermooten 4y ago

Magnify to 150% and it's readable again.

yellowapple 4y ago

This is all fine and dandy, but it baffles me that in the Year of Our Lord 2023 Wikipedia still insists on separate domains/URLs for mobile v. everything else.

nayuki 4y ago
Agreed so much with this. The "mobile version" should be triggered by the viewport size, not by the subdomain. I was hoping this site redesign would have unified the mobile and desktop sites.

nipperkinfeet 4y ago

It seems fine. I'm glad they didn't use a useless watered-down mobile design with excessively rounded components like Xfinity and other businesses have lately been doing. On larger monitors, there should be a full width option though.

aendruk 4y ago

Sigh, yet another site that contorts into an absurd distortion of a mobile layout at a still spacious viewport width. Am I the only person with two windows up? Screenshot: https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmaovnEHiCo6knhTPpp4XJyr5x9XYy5nbEW2Hyzk16Myw7 https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmaovnEHiCo6knhTPpp4XJyr5x9... This actually increased the line length.

LordDragonfang 4y ago
Pardon me asking, but what font (cipher? language?) are your tab titles and menus in? I don't recognize it, and I'm familiar with quite a few ciphers. (I initially thought it was another language, but it's clearly a transliteration of English.)
- aendruk 4y ago
  It’s just a silly font, still a work in progress. Inspired by https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@Nifflas/109330930338202763 https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@Nifflas/109330930338202763
  - vladharbuz 4y ago
    Could you share what font editor you used, and whether you're using ligatures?
    - aendruk 4y ago
      FontForge, despite its antiquated interface, and liberal use of ligatures: https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmVMS6LFUEqJJdnXDVuVZWRDSHTSa8q42vXmw5z9Rw7GN7 https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmVMS6LFUEqJJdnXDVuVZWRDSHT... The biggest challenge has been keeping it legible while dense. Ultimately I’d like to give it aesthetics similar to a roman serif, but for now still experimenting with the basic construction.
      - LordDragonfang 4y ago

7373737373 4y ago

Great, now it takes two clicks to switch languages old.wikipedia.org when?

trompetenaccoun 4y ago
Plus it now requires typing input, or you have to scroll through an annoying menu that sorts them by region and not importance. Judging by the rave reviews this gets though, it seems that people who use the site as opposed to just wanting pretty design are in the minority. If most users don't even switch languages or such, I wonder how many readers check the citations and discussions before blindly believing what random anonymous authors tell them.

canadianfella 4y ago

[dead]

katamarimambo 4y ago

I like it but I wish I could still have the available languages on the left column instead of having to click a button at the top. It would be great to pick some languages to be displayed on the left if there's a version available.

friend_and_foe 4y ago

~2005 was peak Wikipedia aesthetic. All these flat, border less design decisions take away from intuitive UX and make things more... globally homogenous.

b1ue64 4y ago
It's not like old UX wasn't "globaly homogenous" either

rsynnott 4y ago

... Got to admit, seeing the headline, I was assuming I would hate it, but... it looks pretty good.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

retox 4y ago

I wish the search was better, you basically have to know the exact spelling of the thing you're looking for, and there doesn't seem to be any partial word results.

Wowfunhappy 4y ago

Not that it matters to most people, but I'm surprised this didn't break the Dictionary app on my 10-year-old version of OS X (10.9 Mavericks). Wikipedia inside the Dictionary app looks basically identical to how it did a week ago, even though aiui it's basically just rendering the Wikipedia page (in a now terribly outdated browser engine) with some custom CSS. I wonder why it's still working.

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
Oops, I'm an idiot, the new theme isn't the default yet!
- 130e13a 4y ago
  just tested this, and it seems to be the default (at least when i navigate to the english-language wikipedia in a new incognito browser tab). Dictionary app still seems to be working fine, though. my guess here would be that they probably don't access the HTML at all, but instead go through MediaWiki's API.

mynameishere 4y ago

Now I have to log into Wikipedia just like reddit in order to get the non-atrocity user interface experience. How nice.

dotnet00 4y ago

Ewww what's with this terrible trend of wasting the majority of the screen space on a 16:9 monitor like this. Let it fit the window width, if someone needs it to be narrow let it adjust itself appropriately.

bearmode 4y ago
White space isn't wasted space. It makes the page infinitely more readable to limit line lengths. Yes, you could have reduced your window width before. No, you shouldn't have to do that to get a comfortable reading experience.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  Making more than half the screen white space is wasted space. The point of resizable windows is to be able to adjust the content as desired, so it's pretty ridiculous to argue that everyone else should suffer wasted space because long lines are scary.

berjin 4y ago

I guess they have to justify their e-begging banner somehow even though a tiny proportion of the donations actually get spent on Wikipedia.

kristofferR 4y ago

Does anyone have any CSS/JS code to always expand the ToC sections?

LastTrain 4y ago

Wow, an improvement to a website that is actually an improvement. Reads way easier. Can I get Confluence to look like this?

65 4y ago

If you hate it, it's probably because it's different. You'll get used to it. It's similar to how every time a company re-designs their logo, there's always a huge backlash solely because it's change, and people do not like change. It's a really nice improvement from the previous design.

awepoiufjwaeoip 4y ago
> If you hate it, it's probably because it's different. No, the only thing I actually hate is that the main page has plenty of space on the side to show the sidebar, yet I still have to click it in order to get it to open up and see "Current Events". I don't dislike it because it's different, I dislike it because it is measurably slower to do something I used to do in one click. THERE IS NOTHING THERE WHEN THE SIDEBAR IS COLLAPSED.
veqq 4y ago
It's been in use for ages in other languages which I read a lot. It isn't "different". It is concretely worse to me and many others here.

a1371 4y ago

Never occurred to me how better it feels with the table of content on the side, even though that's a common thing in document processors. UX is the ultimate one-way function. Hard to make right, easy to judge.

impalallama 4y ago

feels modern, but modern in a very web center way that i feel like very 2020s. it feels overly minimalist in a way that looks good in design sheets. love the table of contents on the side dont care for the modern trend of removing any and all color separation between distinct portions of the page.

rising-sky 4y ago

> Research has shown that limiting the width of longform text leads to a more comfortable reading experience, and better retention of the content itself Surprised they did not include a citation for this research...

goldbattle 4y ago
It seems they link to a discussion page [1], which references this document (I can't find a published version): Computer text line lengths affect reading and learning Peter Orton https://cdn.tc-library.org/Edlab/eye-tracking%20article.pdf But it seems that Peter Orton has published quite a few works in this area [2], [3]. Specifically [3] seems to note that with a less wide text column width readers are not statistically significant faster (but are a bit), but do see that for difficult reading content, the shorter width requires less re-reading then a wider one along with significantly better retention of the contents of the document. [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Features/Limiting_content_width https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improveme... [2] https://www.scienceopen.com/document_file/671b2d53-73ce-4a91-946d-fde0b7db381a/ScienceOpen/015_Beymer.pdf https://www.scienceopen.com/document_file/671b2d53-73ce-4a91... [3] https://sci-hub.se/https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/11555261_59 https://sci-hub.se/https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007...
- rising-sky 4y ago
  Appreciated, thanks. Just expected footnote marks in the article similar to Wikipedia or hyperlinks

interestica 4y ago

Just let me link to a content section (named anchor) on mobile. It makes sharing specific parts kinda difficult.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

2143 4y ago

I don't know if they're rolling it out in phases or what, but the new design seems to work only on some articles. As of right now (UTC 4:50 am): - Hanlon's Razor (new design) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor - Dunning-Kruger effect (old design) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

abruzzi 4y ago
both show the old design to me so seems more like some servers in a group have the new design elements and some have the old?

NautilusWave 4y ago

But how does it look with a massive charity drive ad banner?

mozball 4y ago

So Much White Space Its also off-center which is annoying on an 15"laptop

trompetenaccoun 4y ago
But they added the donate button in a prominent position top right. At least no one will miss that when they're looking for a context menu ;)

hotpockets 4y ago

something is definitely wrong with firefox on linux. There is no margin on the left side.

stockerta 4y ago

Thanks I hate it. I hate that sides want to control how "wide", I mean narrow the text can be. Sorry, I prefer longer lines and not a bunch of empty space on the sides.

drumhead 4y ago

Another irritatingly unnecessary change.