Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Archive/Replace the mobile frontend with the timeless skin

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Replace the mobile frontend with the timeless skin

NoN Outside the scope of Community Tech

  • Problem: mobile frontend at [1] is hard to use lacks features etc. Vast majority of users are not aware of the alternative, the timeless skin
  • Who would benefit: mobile users
  • Proposed solution: query wikis asking whether they would be willing to change ".m." URLs to use the timeless skin by default
  • More comments: further development of the timeless skin and making other skins mobile friendly would be nice
  • Phabricator tickets:

Discussion

@Gryllida: Could you please elaborate what "hard to use lacks features etc." means? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 14:52, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

AKlapper (WMF) The Mobile frontend as it is currently being implemented is actually hard to use and un-intuitive for the editor community. Take for example, the difference in the text editors-the mobile one does not even support the basic buttons for adding bold text, references, links etc something which Timeless already offers. Any work done on the mobile editor is lost if you swipe to far down on an android mobile. The lack of a revert button, and the Page Issues dialog make it absolutely impossible to perform basic maintenance tasks which could have been done with two clicks on the Timeless skin. Additionally, some of the equally basic gadget functionality (such as the Twinkle or HotCat) is missing from MiniveraNeue which is provided by Timeless.FR30799386 (talk) 18:29, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hi AKlapper (WMF) thanks for your question,
  • Missing sidebar which was carefully crafted by the sysops and consensus - disrespect for the links which they considered useful for a newcomer
  • the default edit notice is not shown - again neglects the needs and consensus by the relevant wiki members (visual editor shows it in a tiny 200px wide box, classic source editor in a timeless skin shows it full width, often the edit notice has important information)
  • gadgets missing - again there was consensus about what gadgets to enable by default,
  • no undo button for an edit that I just made,
    • history is really hard to discover,
  • bold and italic missing in source editor,
  • source editor has no syntax highlight,
  • settings limited and do not have many important things,
  • edit box does not have preview,
  • user privileges and edit count are shown at the bottom somewhere when viewing a diff but I don't want them to show and there is no opt-out,
  • project logo not shown only its name as text,
  • icons are boring greyscale hard to remember compared with colored icons or even text labels,
  • (By the way, the Special:History page is a nightmare, it is hard to find it useful, many user icons which lack meaning as they are all the same.)
  • it does not show what categories a page is in (something you vector guys see at the end and I as a user of timeless see in the sidebar at the right.
I think you may find more points in phabricator and on the talk page of the mobile frontend.
If you ask at a wiki village pump they may share more tips.
I think it would make more sense to fund the development of responsive versions of the existing skins (timeless, vector, monobook, modern), and merge any relevant bits of mobile frontend into the existing skins. This way everything just seems more useful and any potential improvements are available.
--Gryllida 00:13, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually, is there any ways to use timeless skin instead of mobile skin as default when navigating wikipedia using mobile web browser? C933103 (talk) 18:10, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @C933103: As far as I'm aware it is not possible to turn off the mobile site in preferences. If you manually go to the desktop site on a mobile device then Timeless works okay. Jc86035 (talk) 19:14, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    What happens if you visit the URL without '.m.' in it? Gryllida 19:24, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Gryllida: (Are you asking me?) The preference to use the desktop site is set with a cookie. URLs without .m redirect to the mobile site on most mobile browsers until the cookie is set by manually choosing the desktop site. Jc86035 (talk) 19:42, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    This proposal is pretty broad (I've worked on the mobile site for 6 years towards the goals of "merging relevant its of mobilefrontend into core/skins", adding "undo" and still haven't achieved them 😂), but technically, you cannot replace Mobilefrontend with Timeless. You can replace Vector with Timeless or Minerva with Timeless but not MobileFrontend with Timeless.
    MobileFrontend is what provides you a "m." domain and the ability to use different skins on that domain. Right now MobileFrontend is tightly coupled to a bunch of mobile optimisations. Both MinervaNeue (the current mobile skin) and Timeless are responsive skins and any issue that's present in Minerva would have exactly the same issues in Timeless. For example, you complained about the history page - I'd expect history page in timeless is not useful to you either; and there's a whole bunch of work to be done to fix the editing issues you bring up. Removing the MobileFrontend optimisation features for all users would be very backward from a performance perspective. Right now we are often recognised as being one of the highest performers on mobile devices because of those optimisations. Access to Wikipedia in developing countries is pretty important IMO, so such a step should not be taken lightly and would have to be hugely justified. On a more exciting note, Wikimedia is dedicating quite a large chunk of resourcing to mw:Reading/Web/Advanced mobile contributions (about a year's worth of work!). Reading between the lines and through your list it sounds like the work there would satisfy most of your wishes here. The goal here is to provide more links in the main menu and fix a bunch of special pages in mobile to be more aligned with their desktop counterparts. Wikimedia investment in features for editors has been lacking in the previous years so I personally am very excited to see this happen. I request you scrutinize that project page and help guide it, as that project is likely to get a lot more resourcing than community tech will be able to provide and so far it hasn't gathered that much feedback (and if community tell that project what it wants they'll likely get it). In particular, please provide some feedback on the prototype linked to at the top of the page! There is a longstanding bug to allow users to choose a preferred skin on mobile. Back in August, I even wrote a patch to support that . I think the only reason it isn't merged is lack of review and support on its associated Phabricator ticket. You might want to consider asking specifically for that as a wish as I'm not sure if that's currently in scope for the Advanced mobile contributions project. Jdlrobson (talk) 22:55, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Gryllida: This isn't a bad idea, but I think it will get declined by the Community Tech team due to interfering with the roadmap for the Reading Web team's mobile work (as mentioned by Jon above). My suggestion would be to reframe this proposal as "Let users set their mobile skin to Timeless" (i.e. T173527), as that would be more feasible and less likely to be declined. Kaldari (talk) 23:22, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with @Kaldari. We would require to have the option to choose independently a desktop/laptop skin (large screens) and a mobile skin (small screens) that are both active (in the profile/preferences) depending on the type of interface at run time. If a user wants to use the same skin on a desktop/laptop and on a smartphone, then one would just select two times the same skin... Maybe we do not need to refer to desktop/laptop/mobile but only want to discriminate between large and small screens? Even for small laptops you can have a large (external) screen connected? Imagine also a Raspberry Pi 3+ connected to a large flatscreen? Give the user some freedom. Geert Van Pamel (WMBE) (talk) 14:25, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • From a technical standpoint, the easiest thing here would probably just be to make the distinction be between the MF version of the site and the non-MF ('desktop') and surface the MF setting for mobile skin as a user preference option as well/allow communities to set it as a site option... except even if people select Timeless instead of Minerva for that, it's MF specifically hiding a lot of features, displaying the different versions of special pages, etc, not the skin, so Timeless would have a lot of the same problems there regardless. -— Isarra 16:49, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Isarra So basically you adopt my proposal to allow the user to choose 2 skins in his profile; one for normal URL (large screens) and one for .m. sites (small screens). This would perfectly work. It would give the user the freedom to work with 2 types of screens each with the right skin attached to it. Geert Van Pamel (WMBE) (talk) 09:48, 8 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also see CSS changes. Geert Van Pamel (WMBE) (talk) 09:56, 8 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Gryllida and all: I think what Jdlrobson recommends is the best way to handle this -- you should check out the Advanced mobile contributions project page, and talk to the folks on that team. They'd like to get more feedback on the work that they're currently doing, and I know they'll appreciate hearing from you there. I'm going to archive this proposal; thanks for participating in the Wishlist Survey. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 19:26, 15 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]