Recent Changes redesign 2002

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

This is a suggestion for a new design of the recent changes list which makes use of tables and JavaScript, but should still work in older browsers.

There are three key differences to the way Recent Changes works now:

  • The list uses a table format instead of a list format (better readability, easier extension)
  • Changes to the same page are summarized
  • A list of recent changes to the same article can be dynamically expanded and collapsed. This uses the same technology as Kuro5hin's dynamic comment mode. Go to any Kuro5hin story and set the display to "Dynamic Threaded" to see how this works. Expanding a change does not require reloading the page, only the specific information is loaded from the server. This advanced feature could be made a user preference, or shown only when a capable browser is detected.

Furthermore, it should be possible to view differences between two revisions when viewing the expanded mode of a change. The new design also gives more information about the number of edits. The "M" and "N" should be <abbr> tags, so that a speed-tip is shown when the user moves the mouse over them.

This new design should be more intuitive and more powerful (never search for changes belonging together again). Below is a GUI mock-up. There is no implementation yet. Please post your comments on the Talk page.