Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements/Updates/2021-08 user menu

Desktop improvements. A new change!


Within the next couple of weeks, the Wikimedia Foundation Web team will move all links in the user menu (the username,,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ) into a dropdown menu. In the new menu, links will be paired with icons.

This change will make it more intuitive to find and understand the user links. The change is also a step towards the sticky header.


 * Why we are changing this

Currently, the user links are not presented cohesively as a unit. They create confusion for newcomers who do not know what the links are associated with. , it has been unclear that these are personal rather than site-wide tools. Icons will make it even easier to understand the links.

In addition to that, currently, the links take a lot of space on the screen. Together with the sidebar, these contribute to a feeling of a cluttered interface.

We are beginning to work on a sticky header. It will be available at the top of the screen all the time. Without a dropdown menu for the user links, the sticky header would be far less useful.

As always, we will verify if the change improves the usability. This time, we will not perform any A/B tests. Instead, we will compare the usage of the links for the two weeks before and two weeks after the change.
 * How will we verify the improvement

Some gadgets and user scripts might need to be updated or might become redundant or obsolete. We provide support for users who would like to maintain the compatibility.
 * Gadgets' compatibility


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