Topic on Talk:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements/Features/Flow

The W?F has come up with yet another really, really bad idea:

"Sticky site and article headers will allow users to access important functionality (logging in/out, edit, talk pages, etc.) without requiring people to scroll to the top of the page."

Just what we need: a part of the screen that never scrolls and makes the readable area smaller. And of course the W?F will start small and then slowly grow the nonscrollable area by adding more and more clutter, just as they have done with the sidebar.

Speaking of the sidebar; does "collapsible": mean that the readable window gets bigger, or is the plan to keep taking up screen real estate with a big blank section? --Guy Macon (talk) 12:53, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

And here I thought I was the only person in the world who thought the W?F is not acting in the best interest of the community. Obvious problems with the existing system are not fixed, but new (many of which are inferior) features are constantly being pushed out. Sigh...

W?F presents their "improvements" as a fait accompli. As for me, I would prefer that developers restrict themselves to features for which the community asked.

The answer -- something the rest of the world has known for over 20 years but the W?F somehow cannot grasp -- is to give users a choice. Does User A want his header links to stay on his screen? Make that an option in the preferences. Does User B want the header links to scroll up like the rest of the page? Make that an option in the preferences. Want to make the sidebar go away? Option. Preferences. Alas, instead of giving us more choices, the W?F thinks they know better than we do what we do and don't want on our screens. :( --Guy Macon (talk) 15:11, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Like many editors who have been here longterm, these changes are irrelevant to me as I use Monobook, I assume these changes are only to Vector, and as nothing in this set of changes tempts me to move to Vector, you might think my view irrelevant. But I would like to suggest the WMF move from an aesthetic and IT fashion based development approach to an evidence based one. Different skins should have different results in terms of recruiting readers to become editors, of editors exploring more options and becoming more active/accomplished editors, and for longterm retention of editors. There is a hypothesis that the move from the somewhat editor focussed Monobook to the more reader focussed Vector is a contributing factor to our reduced ability to convert readers into editors, and retain our longterm editors. I would feel much more relaxed about these changes if from now on you tested such changes and skins and measured and judged them in terms of editor recruitment, editor engagement level and editor retention. WereSpielChequers (talk) 23:12, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

@Guy Macon if you go to Meta while logged-in, you'll see what they have implemented so far. (I don't think I purposely unticked "use legacy vector"? AFAIR, the "New Coke" just appeared one day.) On checking in private mode just now, it seems they haven't turned it on for anons yet. Re. your question "does 'collapsible': mean that the readable window gets bigger, or is the plan to keep taking up screen real estate with a big blank section?" Yep, the latter, more blank space. I suspect max-width will be one of the more problematic aspects of this redesign, and would like to see a separate preference for that at least.

Actually, after thinking about it, instead of (or in addition to) a setting in Preferences that you have to go out of your way to alter, I'd like the ability to toggle between width-limited and full-wide display depending on the context.

For example, in Windows Notepad I can turn Word Wrap on if I'm viewing a readme file, and off if I'm reading a logfile.

Thanks Pelagic. One has to wonder if this love of blankspace is directly an enabler of advertising or merely indirectly so. Creating white space to be overlaid with advertising being so ingrained into "good design" concepts among IT professionals that it is even embraced as "good practice" without stating the reason for promoting this practice.

Hi, WereSpielChequers. I think it's the other way, that keeping line length readable created extra space on the sides that was utilized for navigation and advertising.

At some point the common page-top horizontal banner ad gave way to vertical strip ads on the sides, maybe when we started to get wider-aspect and higher-resolution desktop monitors.

Contrast that to the printed glossy magazine as an example of a publication which carried a lot of advertising. It was paginated not scrolling, portrait not landscape, with text in 2 to 4 columns, and advertising full-page facing or in an inset box (maybe 1 or 2 columns out of 3 or 4 total). Running a full-height single column sidebar of multiple ads would have been unthinkable in that layout.

Extra space
on the sides
is all well
and good for
someone with
a giant
monitor or
huge tablet
in front of
them but
some folks
have to use
small
screens or
have large
screens but
need to use
large fonts
because
they are
visually
impaired.
By forcing
everyone
to have the
sidebar it
forces
these users
to read
everything
in a narrow
column. Has
anyone else
seen the
"Ow, my
balls!" UI
example in
the movie
Idiocracy?