

Wikipedia's new look - kuahyeow
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:UsabilityInitiativePrefSwitch

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pmichaud
It's a minor improvement--it's cleaner, it probably loads a little faster.
Nothing drastic.

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frou_dh
Could it be an elusive big-site redesign without a user backlash?

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shrikant
Also, mouse-hover on an internal link brings up a snippet view of the
resulting page. What is really cool is, this works for links in the snippet
view as well, so you can open nested snippet after snippet.

These had been available to logged in users as a Beta for quite a while now
(~3 months? Can't remember when it started..)

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pclark
It has to be enabled from the Gadgets preferneces for a logged in user:

> Navigation popups, article previews and editing functions popup when
> hovering over links

for more info:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation_popu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation_popups)

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tomstuart
Looks better, but the new autosuggest search has a horrible race condition:
type fast, hit enter quickly, and you end up with a truncated or blank search
string. Not an improvement!

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pohl
I was hoping that this would fix my only issue, but alas I think my issue is
with Chrome.

When I was a Safari user, I could call up Wikipedia and I knew that I just had
to hit the TAB key once to get to the search field.

Now that I've been lured away by Chrome, I go to Wikipedia and hit tab about
half a dozen times before I give up and use the mouse pointer to put focus in
the search field. It's a frustrating detail that I think Safari got right.

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rw
With Vimium, press f-S-E and you're there. Not as good as one keystroke, but
better than using the mouse!

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ErrantX
The only drawback for me is the navigation across the tops of pages. Fade
effects might be a current fad but it doesn't quite work (I feel quite
strained reading the nav)

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pmjordan
My biggest wish for Wikipedia UI: enable the "languages" feature in the mobile
version. Having to switch to the standard layout on the iPhone really sucks.

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Entlin
I agree. This and access to categories are my 2 biggest wishes for the mobile
version.

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ugh
Looks good. Line lengths can still get way too long when surfing full screen
on a high res monitor. My browser window is at the moment only 970px wide and
one line already has more than 100 characters – that’s nearly too much.

Yeah, it sucks when you get wide empty margins but running away from the
problem won’t help.

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gregwebs
I stoppped editing Wikipedia when I realized the majority of my time was taken
up by doing things that should have been automated by software. I was using
the beta version at the time. I don't think this update will change things
that much, although a good toolbar will help.

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tokenadult
_I stopped editing Wikipedia when I realized the majority of my time was taken
up by doing things that should have been automated by software._

What are some examples?

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gregwebs
I think the automation is not the traditional kind of automation, but instead
software that supports getting the same thing done in a fraction of the time.

Just the act of beginning an edit in WP is painful. I see where the article
text is, then I have to click the edit button and wade through the editing
text (this can be very difficult sometimes) to find it.

The workflow that involves collaborating with other people is completely
tedious- the talk pages are awful because this is not what wiki's were
designed for. I would suggest moving to a model similar to version controlled
software where changes can be staged and reviewed before committing, and
discussions can be made around those changesets.

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aw3c2
While I really like the look of the sidebar I find it weird that the
Discussion page is deemed more important than the History.

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lionhearted
It's clean, but losing left-side navigation hurts a bit, since that's my
default on almost every website. I'm not going to need to change languages or
contact Wikipedia very often.

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maw
For the people who do switch languages often it's very handy to be able to do
so quickly. Wikipedia is in its way an excellent translation tool when you're
looking for relatively specialized terms.

