Talk:Winter

Previous discussion is archived at Talk:Winter/Archive 1.

Anyone have screenshots of Winter designs? I don't see any collections on Commons

I can't find any screenshots in Commons, but there are the usertesting videos linked at Winter/User tests that could be used for visual reference.

This seemed to be a very cool project, but it's a bit disappointing that it's no longer 'maintained'. It looked liked there was a lot of effort that went into this, especially considering money was paid to start user testing. ( https://www.usertesting.com/plans Man these are expensive!)

So, since it's dead, what happens to it? Is there something that's going to replace this framework? Or could it still be picked back up?

bump

See http://m.imgur.com/a/027fP , on mobile chrome browser, the first image show bottombar blocked some language selection on the right when content is too short and there are too many languages, and secondly at the same time while in the winter page the jump to Ænglisc page and arabic page is successful, it can't jump to like chinese or canton

fwiw... there is a fair number of invalid entries in the current winter.css file and your observation is most likely being caused by one or more of these invalid entries -- primarily

• ''overflow:" is set to invalid entry ''show'' rather than the proper value ''visible''; possibly followed by
• several instances where the absolute positioning attributes such as ''top:" and/or ''left:'' are set to unit-less values such as ''10'', ''155'' & ''40'' instead of ''10px'', ''155px'' & ''40px''
• . . . among several other "mistakes".

In fact, all the winter/snowflake related .css files need to be [re]checked against W3.org's .css validator at:

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Roughly when is Winter expected to be released as a beta feature and as the default skin?

I don't know. I don't think there are any current plans for anyone to do that work, sorry.

IIUC, Winter is not ever intended to be released as a Complete Skin, or a Beta Feature. See Winter#The Winter Framework - it's a test-bed for people (anyone) to experiment at.

What does any of this experimentation achieve, if there is no intended future for Winter? Is it to build a resource for whichever actual skin will be made in the future? My life is a lie.

The elements ("snowflakes" in Winter's terminology) can potentially be deployed as either new elements of the existing skin(s), or as standalone BetaFeatures that could also eventually/potentially be merged into a skin. E.g. at http://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures we can try out the "Fixed header" BetaFeature.

Right, so what about Right Rail as a BetaFeature? It'd be highly useful for designing wp, help, portal etc. pages, not to mention obvious advantages concerning the main ns.

I'm not sure how much work would need to be done (as the note on the project page says, "This is fairly large in scope."). There are currently no developers or product managers with the many needed hours to spare. All I can see offhand (but I am not a developer) is https://git.wikimedia.org/tree/winter%2Fsnowflakes/HEAD/rightrail

However, Pau is working on some interesting designs for modular rightrail components in Flow (nothing online, yet), for metadata and checklists and similar, so that might be where the work re-begins.

:-(

Is this still an active project?

I have no insider information so this is all speculation, but my understanding that with Jorm's departure Winter is in stasis as a separate 'thing'. He was one of the large proponents behind it. As Tar mentions, it's really the bringing together of multiple projects to bring a more cohesive design to the interface of MediaWiki/WMF-projects.

I'd love to be corrected on this if wrong, but I think reaching out to the design team and looking at the MediaWiki UI and UI Standardization Board in Phabricator might shed more light on where things are going.

Afaik, strictly speaking, this was never a project. It's rather a vision of several projects, developed separately and with different priority. We can see some of them already (Typography Refresh, MediaWiki UI, if I'm correct) and have to wait for the next (e.g. Right Rail).

Thanks for your reply. I believe most people think that this was about creating the next generation skin for MediaWiki. Personally I have never seen it as a "mutilated" Vector thing. So Winter did not end up in permafrost...

Ha! I see what you did there, and I like your sense of humor.

The design of text&pic seems to me (German user) very oldfashioned, because it reminds in a way the first printed books in 15th century, trying to copy the handwitten medieval manuscripts. What I mean: Did you want persons to read articles as they are used to or do you want to present a new medium?

Has anybody noticed that the sidebar looks kind of weird if you scroll away from the top of the page after hiding the sidebar and then showing it again? I like how this makes the sidebar come with you as you scroll, but shouldn't its formatting remain the same as that which it takes on when you're at the top of the page after you've scrolled away from there?

On the upcoming skin (I think), is there a way that we can have a profile pic instead of a icon; and on the hide sidebar feature, is there a way that we can tap on the logo, and would show the hover menu without going to the main page on mobile when we want to use the full site?

I have lots of issues with the current Wikipedia layout and the Winter prototype appears to fix/improve on nearly all of them! This is great work. Even though most of the time I spend on the site is in edit mode, I instantly appreciate the changes to the read mode.

Out of every single project I've seen, I think *this* should be the priority for the WikiMedia Foundation. It profoundly affects the way the site is seen and used - for the better. I think the dated look and basic functionality of the software is underestimated as a factor in known declining participation.

Only one suggestion - when entering the edit mode, the right rail area remains empty. It would be much more preferable to use this space to either (a) extend the edit text view to a width similar to the current one (in edit mode, the sole focus is the editing area and presentational spacing for improved prose comprehension is not a factor) , or (b) move the most useful editing links/tools/toolbars into this area.

Actually, two more points: categories, portals and navigation boxes should have sections in the right rail. I actually drafted a right aligned box in Wikipedia for this very same purpose two and half years ago and would very much like to see the delivery of that concept by people more technically able than I. Transformation of our "See also" sections into a right rail gadget would also be very useful. All together, these would be nothing short of a navigation revolution for Wikipedia (especially for oft-missed categories and portals).

I tried the "Fixed header" on Beta Labs (with VE also enabled), and ran into trouble with the big blue Edit button. The little dot on the right has a hover menu to choose between Edit source and VE, but it's very tricky to get the mouse from the blue edit button to the menu links. It usually disappears when I start to move the mouse toward the menu.

Also, on my browsers at least (Iceweasel and Chromium on Debian Testing), the button isn't rendering as intended; there's overlap between the text and the three-dot-menu icon. See http://imgur.com/Vq8Zunf

see also: T85247 VisualEditor incompatible with "Fixed header" beta feature