Community Wishlist Survey 2017/Miscellaneous/Responsive CSS/Template Framework for Media Wiki

Responsive CSS/Template Framework for Media Wiki

Problem:

Most of the help and meta pages are in Wikipedia and other WikiProjects are cobbled with strange copy'n'paste constructions of Templates, HTML and InlineStyles. This leads to an inconsistent, hard to maintain interface, that fails on many platforms. A lot of the editors maintaining these pages are not programmers. Since there is no simple comprehensible library where they can find all the buttons, boxes, grids and teasers. Most of them copy just what they find on other meta-pages - often without really understanding how it works.

Who would benefit:

Readers and Editors alike

Proposed solution:
Create a simple but effective library of CSS-Styles (like Bootstrap) and MediaWiki-Templates, that enables editors to quickly create interfaces that work on all devices and screen sizes and has a consistent look and feel. Possible components are:
- Buttons
- Teaser-Boxes
- Form-Elements
- A Grid-System

More comments:

Phabricator tickets:

Proposer: Martin Kraft (talk) 17:57, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Translations: none yet

Discussion

If I understand correctly, this would be like T90687, except scoped for the content area, not the software/skin area. That would be a great thing to have, although potentially a lot of work (it would have to take into account different devices, different skins, RTL...) Developers would probably benefit just as much editors/readers as it would be easier to make assumptions about how articles look / wrangle the content to be appropriate for mobile screens.

@Martin Kraft:: The proposal could do with a less handwavy list of use cases IMO (forms and buttons are barely used in wikitext-generated content, and I imagine a grid and boxes would not be the only things to standardize; see also the various subtasks and blockers of T483).

For performance reasons this might depend on TemplateStyles (although if it's not too much overhead we might just prefer to load such a framework on all pages; especially if the original, software-interface-oriented version of T90687 does get done and uses the same rules). --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 02:09, 21 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Support Tgr (talk) 06:20, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support Der Fussi 07:03, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support Dvorapa (talk) 09:21, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:12, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support This is needed to help developers create better looking gadgets with less bugs. Chico Venancio (talk) 20:17, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support Kurt Jansson (talk) 21:47, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support Thomas Obermair 4 (talk) 21:57, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support Shizhao (talk) 03:04, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:33, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ermahgerd9 (talk) 21:06, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support A good idea. Actually, many skins layouts are made with tables. Giovanni Alfredo Garciliano Diaz (talk) 21:54, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Evad37 (talk) 23:54, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support Goodship11 (talk) 16:18, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support Nabla (talk) 00:03, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support Termininja (talk) 17:34, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support Gryllida 00:55, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ahm masum (talk) 21:42, 7 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support Tpt (talk) 12:51, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support Martin Kraft (talk) 17:55, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]