Talk:Acai Designs

Tabs

I commented in a thread on the English Wikipedia's Village Pump about some of this, but I thought that some of my concerns might be better expressed here. I'm primarily looking at the tab design mock-up.

First of all, I'm concerned about the drop-down menus. While most modern browsers, on computers, should handle them well, won't they cause problems with certain devices? For example, on the iPod Touch and iPhone, you can't access hover elements, because the interface is based on tapping. If the menus were instead based off of JavaScript, you'd then have all the attendant problems of JavaScript, including that if JavaScript failed or wasn't available, the user probably wouldn't be able to make certain actions (without composing the URL manually, which no newbie will know how to do). Therefore: can such menus be implemented reliably? It might also be interesting to learn more about the usability consequences of hiding actions in menus (I'm no expert), but that's probably a necessary compromise in simplifying the interface. I'm also concerned about the ability for advanced editors to modify the interface (I [personally] strongly dislike drop-down menus; many custom tools add tabs), but that's a secondary concern.

Second, I have a minor suggestion: that the current "active" tab system (in CSS) be replicated in the new tabs, namely, that the active tab should have an orange border and bold text, and the other tabs normal text and grey borders. If grey borders don't really work, then I suggest a wider border for the active tab. It should be more evident than just continuity with the page (the only evidence I see in the mockup) that a particular mode is active.

Also, on discussion pages, why is the "New section" link hidden (presumably in "Actions"), rather than being available with the other links? Having been the one who made that tab more visible by changing the default "+" to "New section", I would be concerned were such a feature hidden. In my opinion, it's important for procedural usability.

Finally, is the background of the inactive tab (either "Article" or "Discussion" for the main namespace) really supposed to be transparent? Does that help? It's also one of the only places I don't like the look of the mock-up. Is there another way that the inactive state of that tab could be demonstrated?

Thanks for the work you've put in so far. I hope my input is useful. {{Nihiltres|talk}} 17:26, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki page sizes

My test resulted in a 169:1 ratio of page download size vs. actual page content size. More in my blog post: Wikipedia’s pages too big for Africa? Regards, --Kozuch 10:37, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

From Scratch?

I have a small question,,, why is the beta an empty project and not just connected to the actual wikipedia database,, (or at least an old stable version) that people can just work on it instead of doing everything from scratch??

I know it's a lazy question from a lazy guy.. but that should lead to faster testing results, and we'll be able to start measuring differences we'll have when moving the actual thing into the new version from now... Koraiem 01:20, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Go/Search

Why do we have two search buttons "go" and "search"? Isn't the choice confusing? I know google always had the "i'm gonna be lucky" button, but's I think the joking tone and the size of the button make it less confusing.

I've been several times in doubt about which button will take me to an article and which to a search page. Most importantly, when I use wikipedia in english, I'm never sure of writing whe words right, so I always want to "search".

Have you tested this design? Have you tested alternative designs? --190.177.207.213 04:06, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Hello. Why not considering to replace "go" by "read"? So we would have "read/search". 92.136.237.136 13:45, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm also asking myself why two search buttons are necessary. Everbody is used to one search button because of google, yahooo,... or other sites on the internet. Furthermore I don't see those big advantages to have the go-button. Only a few advanced users take the benefits of the go-button. If you remove the confusing utton new users will be less irritated and the advanced users could add it (if they really need it) by a css- or js-hack. --Eneas 16:50, 21 July 2009 (UTC)