Wikipedia has released their new layout, which unsurprisingly includes whitespace bars on either side, justified by the claim "most people prefer a column 60-80 characters wide" (although it's not that extreme).
The changes being introduced are not very dramatic — in fact, they may not even be immediately noticed by some users. The organization, however, says the update was necessary in order to meet the needs of the next generation of internet users, including those who are more newly coming online and may have less familiarity with the internet.
To develop the new interface, the foundation engaged with more than 30 different volunteer groups from around the world, with users in places like India, Indonesia, Ghana and Argentina, among others, all helping to test the update and provide insights into the product development. The goal for the update was to make Wikipedia more of a modern web platform, it said, and to remove clutter, while also making it easier for users to contribute. It additionally aimed to make the desktop web version more consistent with Wikipedia's mobile counterpart.
It is possible to go back to the old layout, if you log in to the site and set it in your preferences.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Monday January 23 2023, @02:22PM (1 child)
First impressions:
- The left column is much wider. You get a lot less content showing in the center column.
- Maximum line-width. This is an ancient argument in the Internet, but: why? If I want a stupidly wide window, why shouldn't the text flow to fill it?
- The language switcher tool takes two clicks to switch languages. Before, the most common languages were shown in the left column and could be selected with a single click, with other available with a second click.
All negative points so far...
- The left column now shows a ToC for the article, instead of a lot of links most people don't care about.
So one positive point.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by owl on Monday January 23 2023, @05:09PM
Because, sadly, there are many "designers" out there who believe that you should be forced to view their "design" exactly as they laid it out and that you should not have the power to modify their most wonderful (/sarcasm) design they have created for you.
A brower used to be called a "User Agent" (for the reason that it should follow the end User's desires) but many "designers" have forgotten (or overtly ignored) that meanig and instead want to impose their view of "how it should be" upon you, whether you agree or not to their viewpoint.