Thread:Talk:New skins system/Don't remove all the non-CSS-heavy skins!/reply

The claims about Simple, Chick, etc... being low bandwidth are complete FUD. Vector loads ~19.3KB of CSS while Simple loads ~11.9KB this is only around half the size, for all that loss of UI this isn't a significant enough bandwidth gain. Especially when you factor two things in. We load ~134.7KB of JS, this applies to every skin, including Simple. This means that while you manage to save 10 measly KB you've barely made any savings at all since you still have x13 that being loaded. And the other thing, is we have nice and aggressive caching. So no matter what skin you're using after you've downloaded the assets once you don't download them again. So there is no point to trying to micro-optimize like this.

As for the user who are in fact on low bandwidth connections. They should be using the mobile site, not a full fledged desktop skin. That's what it's for, small screened and low bandwidth clients.

And these skins have no accessibility benefits. Accessibility is supposed to be always-on. Jump links, flexible font sizes, etc... accessibility is something in the background that should be done for every skin. Skins like simple and chick don't improve accessibility. Moreover basic accessibility should NEVER be a user preference. A person should never have to create an account and login just to get accessibility. Accessibility should be built into the site default skin. The thought of these skins providing an accessibility improvement to MediaWiki are also FUD.

So skins who's entire rationale for existing is based on FUD have no business being in core.