Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Archive/Buttons instead of links
Buttons instead of links
Outside the scope of Community Tech and interferes with another team's work.
- Problem: Wikimedia's projects' overall interface uses a lot of links instead of buttons
- Who would benefit: Everyone
- Proposed solution: Convert links to buttons
- More comments: This is pretty straightforward: The sidebar and the topbar (?) in all Wikimedia's projects are comprised almost solely of links, at least in the Vector skin. The lack of buttons causes many new users not to use most of the links there until they gain some trust in their "wiki-abilities", which can mean many months, if not years in some cases. In many wiki-workshops I've been present, a lot of users weren't aware of the preferences tab and had never opened it before even after being an editor for quite some time, to give just an example. Buttons give the urge to press them which helps in engagement and site exploration so maybe it would be beneficial in converting many of the links mentioned above in buttons (they don't need to be necessarily icons, words can be retained).
- Phabricator tickets:
- Proposer: Klein Muçi (talk) 01:30, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
Discussion
- @Klein Muçi: Have you tried the new Vector skin? Is that better for you? For example, https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Community_Wishlist_Survey_2022/Miscellaneous/Buttons_instead_of_links&useskin=vector-2022 DWalden (WMF) (talk) 10:11, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
- @DWalden (WMF), I had actually forgotten about it. I remember trying it for some days and being really excited for the general upcoming changes. Then I switched back to the old version, promising myself to check it again in the future but eventually I had stopped to see updates about it around and forgot about that. Now that you mentioned it, I navigated the site a bit with that and it is very close to what I had in mind (at least in regard to the "topbar"). But... It has that mobile feel overall view that makes me uncomfortable to use it for long. (I hate to say it but I'm not a fan of the overall mobile view and I always switch to the desktop view.) Starting with the changes in regard to the top of the page and the logo, with many icons being gathered together instead of being collapsed on its own, etc. - Klein Muçi (talk) 10:54, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
- @Klein Muçi: From what I am understanding, you would like a significant redesign of the Vector skin? I am afraid this would be out of scope for the CommTech team and would interfere with the work of the Readers Web Team, in particular the Desktop Improvements project. But, I am sure they would welcome any feedback you have. You may also be interested in the work of the Design Systems Team. I am archiving this wish. Thank you for taking part in the survey. DWalden (WMF) (talk) 14:29, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
- @DWalden (WMF), I wouldn't dare call it "a significant redesign" but thank you anyway for the links provided! Appreciated! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 19:57, 25 January 2022 (UTC)