Talk:Wikimedia mobile engineering


 * ''mobile-feedback-l contains the feedback from end-users which came from the app itself from July 2009 to November 2013. Now that's managed on OTRS queues.

Share your ideas on how to make Wikimedia projects like Wikipedia better below

Windows 8.1 Suggested Improvements
Following improvements can increase user satisfaction and engagement on Windows 8.x.
 * Adjustable Font Size - For accessibility on range of screen sizes, offering a menu item to adjust reading font size will help. Particularly useful for those with poor vision.
 * Configurable Column count - like other eReaders offer options to allow users to control number of columns. In portrait orientation, mimic the mobile wb page layout.
 * Speech based input for search - Consider using the free Win8 Speech Recognizer (bing.com/dev)
 * TTS to playback article

Windows 8 app read display
When you want to read a article the information is displayed in various columns. I think is better if instead of columns the information was displayed in a single column (and this way I think is a better way to use the screen size of a desktop/laptop pc) as in a web browser. The column format is more suitable for a phone.

Editing

 * I'd love to be able to edit on my mobile phone. Tfinc 22:58, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Display of routemaps in mobile view
I recently attempted to view a railway related article on a Samsung Galaxy SII. The display of the associated route map was corrupted. The text of the associated discussion which led me here is below:

from en:Wikipedia talk:Route diagram template

I was looking at several RDT in mobile view (smart phone) over the past day. I have noticed that when various BS templates are used in an RDT, for example en:Template:Glasgow Central which uses BS-5, BS-7 and BS-9 vertical alignment is lost, hence the vertical lines through the template are lost. Looking at a template which has a constant BS - en:Template:Dalry and North Johnstone Line which only has BS-3 the vertical line through the template is maintained. Mobile view also was showing white space between each line, however this was not too much of a viewing issue.

Thoughts? --Stewart '''(talk 11:24, 15 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't use mobile to browse website. Can you capture the screenshots from your phone so we can get a better idea? -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 01:03, 16 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Going to have to work out how to get screenshots from the mobile - may have to revert to a digital camera. In the meantime have a look at and  . This is not exactly the same as the mobile, but illustrates the issue. You might like to pick up the "mobile view" option at the bottom of any page. --Stewart '''(talk 22:09, 17 August 2011 (UTC)


 * If the mobile view option on a "standard" computer browser is close to the actual rendering on the mobile phone, I would say this is unfortunately incurable, UNLESS our mobile staff modify the global css of mobile view. Seemingly the primaily cause of the breakings is that the width and height of the table cell are stretched greater of equal precentage (which is not intended by the RDT project.) This is better reported to meta staff m:Mobile Projects, but I doubt they would take this issue too seriously. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 01:17, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * The rendering via the mobile view on a "standard" copmputer browser illustrates the main display features on a smartphone. So I guess it is off to Mobile Projects. It does raise an interesting point in my mind with respect to the increased use of mobile devices - Android, Blackberry and iPhone - and also tables for example the iPad and (if the copyright issues are sorted) the Samsung Galaxy tablet, as the latter two have a lot of similarities with thier respective assocaited smartphones. Incidentally it is a Galaxy SII that I have recently been trialling. --Stewart '''(talk 11:37, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Thoughts / observations / help on this would be most gratefully received. --Pencefn 11:55, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Mobile site - language links
copied from en:Wikipedia:Help desk. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 03:58, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Many times, in MOBILE SITE, i need to change the laguage of the subjects: especially from domestic language to English. Is it possibbly to put a "English language link" in mobile site? Sincerely, Kemal [e-mail ]  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.166.7.216 (talk) 18:47, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It turns out the language links are in beta now and are available for testing on any mobile browser. Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   17:49, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Catalan?
The interface of the app for Android is in the language of the OS. This is a disadvantage for hundreds of languages ​​and a contradiction with the principles of Wikipedia.

One example is Catalan case. Android is not in Catalan and most Catalan speakers have their phone in Spanish or English. Consequently, the interface of the app is in Spanish or English.

As Wikipedia is a multilingual and collaborative project, I propose that the users could also choose the interface language, not just the articles language, as happens now. Thanks you ;-) -- Davidpar (talk) 23:28, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Mobile site: Skin switch to Chick
Regarding, it would be a nice feature to have a toggle switch between the mobile skin and the Chick skin, just as there is a (oneway) switch to the default skin. You could sell Chick as "expert mode"/"author mode" or something along the line.--217.226.79.206 19:12, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Cache entire encyclopedia for offline
I frequently don't have Internet connectivity, rendering the app useless. There should be an option to download a snapshot of the entire encyclopedia sans embedded media to the SD card. That way, the app can be used offline. FYI weekly snapshots are already uploaded to the web.

I'm willing to help with development, but I warn you I am a noob programmer :'( Richard.decal (talk) 15:56, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Analyzing Wikipedia Mobile Browser Energy Consumption
Hello, just in case you haven't seen this:
 * Who Killed My Battery: Analyzing Mobile Browser Energy Consumption Narendran Thiagarajany, Gaurav Aggarwaly, Angela Nicoara, Dan Bonehy, Jatinder Pal Singh, World Wide Web 2012 conference in Lyon, France:
 * Using our energy measurements we suggest guidelines for building energy-efficient web pages, namely pages that reduce energy use on the client. For example, by applying our guidelines to the Wikipedia mobile site we reduced its energy consumption from 35 Joules to 25 Joules, a saving of 29%. Our modification simply changes how Javascript works on the page, without affecting the user experience. (...) The Wikipedia webpage has two Javascript files linked to the page - application.js and jquery.js. (...) The Javascript in jquery.js is used primarily for a single purpose - to dynamically identify the correct section based on the id of the button clicked. But loading this Javascript to the memory alone takes 4 Joules. In order to prove that this energy is avoidable, we redesigned the page with a different Javascript. This time each text section and the button are given the same id and the Javascript function uses document.getElementById to get the right section and element. value=show/hide is used. The application.js is now replaced by this simple Javascript. We found that in cache mode, the modified Wikipedia page renders with 9.5 Joules. Just adding the application. js and jquery.js files as link to the page increases the energy consumption to 15 Joules.

Best wishes --Atlasowa (talk) 13:28, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia Windows 8 App Does not Display Long Equations Correctly
Long, single line equations currently are cut off in the Windows 8 Wikipedia. For example, check out the Noether's Theorem article. It seems that when an equation is written using a tabular form in Latex it will show up in an "expand table" block, but when it is just one line (very common in physics articles) the image of the equation is cut off and there is no way to expand it to see the whole thing.

Wikipedia Windows 8 App - More Metro
The Tile of the Wikipedia app for Windows 8 simply doesn't fit the Metro principle. If it should look Metro-like, you should replace the "W" in the small logo and the "Wikipedia" in the wide logo with the Wikipedia Logo (ball with letters), but 100% white/transparent (white ball, transparent letters as example), but keep the white "Wikipedia" in the left corner. Do the same with the Splash Screen (remove "Wikipedia" and simplify the ball). The background of the Tile and Splash Screen should be the gray color of the in-app top bar. And to fit the Metro principle even more, delete the button "Read in..." in the App Bar and move it as "Language" into the Settings Pane. The language should be saved, so you don't have to switch every time you open the app. Then, if you close the app, it should save the current article and display it on the next start. Then you should disable Sharing while on the start page (simply check for the UniqueID). Also you should be able to pin an article to the Start Page, if you right click an article in the start page, same for sharing. These changes would be really cool!

Metro is simple: Not much animation, not much color-play and nearly always looks the same in each app.

Scaling error with SVG and tables
I noticed that pages that show the football line up are not displayed correctly on the Wikipedia App for smart phones. The player list to the right of the line-up can not be seen. Tablets work ok because they have bigger screens. I'm not sure if the wikicode has to be changed, the svg, or the Wikipedia app itself. Anyway I attached a screenshot that shows the error. The app doesn't allow horizontal scrolling which would solve the problem, but make it more difficult to use in my opinion. Another solution would be to make horizontal scrolling only possible for tables that are too wide to fit the screen. The rest of the content would stay in place and just the table would move horizontally so if one decides to scroll vertically there is no scrolling into white space. This can be seen for example in the Wolfram Alpha app. Compare this site to the screenshot: UEFA_Euro_2012_Group_A#Poland_vs_Russia. --Tobias1984 (talk) 08:43, 13 June 2012 (UTC)



Always show 2 copies of lists in "References"
Android APK will show 2 copies of lists with exact the same content in the section "References" of every topic.
 * This was reported on Bugzilla and should be fixed with the next update. Thanks :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 19:56, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

local storage not available occasionally while connection broken or slow
I saved some pages to local storage so I can read it offline some later. Everything is OK if I keep on connection to or disconnect from internet. But some time, if wiki andriod app is requesting the content from server on a slow or unstable connection and didn't return for long time, then I click "saved pages", but it will show an empty list even if I exited and restarted this app again. But everything will recover after a successful request, e.g. I got a good connection, open the app and show some page successfully, received some later.

-- some supplement: in fact the local saved pages will not be available if the last time of visiting online wikipedia is failed or no visit to online wikipedia after power on of phone.

Another suggestion for improvement on local storage: it should be better if provide indexes or categories for local saved pages, and it will be great if user can customize the categories, so there should be another tab page on "saved pages".

By Wang Hongqi (hongqi.wang@gmail.com)

Android app error "You are offline..."
I hope this is the correct area to post this. I tried looking for the support page/site for the official Wikipedia Android app and this is the page I found. If this is not the correct place to post this, would you please let me know where I can?

As you may or may not know, (as of November 2012) the Android Wikipedia app is having issues connecting to the internet. I am unsure to exactly when the issue first started, but there are many reviews of the Google Play store that are reporting the same issue.

The app opens to the page that displays, "Sorry, this page is not available. You are offline and the page has not been previously saved.  You can open a saved page or go online and search." Wikipedia is still accessible via an internet browser on the Android device, yet if the app is used to try and open the same article, the error page comes up. --Marcusaxavier77 (talk) 19:20, 11 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The team just released a new version of the app that should address this issue. Please continue to keep us updated and let us know if you're still experiencing problems! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 00:19, 14 November 2012 (UTC)


 * A ton of people, myself included, are still having this problem even after the update. Reinstalls didn't help. Problem is in both the normal and the beta apps. Crcarlin (talk) 20:41, 18 November 2012 (UTC)


 * To ignore this and not fix it is just ludicrous. If you can't fix it in the next 2 wks, I'm going to request Google pull your app from the store because it DOESN'T WORK.

BlackBerry PlayBook version doesn't display articles
I found the Wikipedia app on the BlackBerry PlayBook quite useful until a recent OS update, now the Wikipedia app searches but doesn't display the articles anymore. It only shows a blank screen. The current BlackBerry OS is 2.1.0.1008. I'm not sure is there is a fix for this. Thanks.

Native iOS app?
I posted on Bugzilla but was told that this is a better place for discussion.

Do you think we should convert the Wikipedia app for iOS into a native iOS app? It would probably improve the performance, and it would make it look and feel like iOS apps are supposed to. Thoughts? The Anonymouse (talk) 17:56, 19 November 2012 (UTC)


 * We are planning to do this -- should happen sometime in the next few months. --brion (talk) 18:20, 22 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Being familiar with iOS development myself, I would be glad to assist if any help is needed. The Anonymouse (talk &#124; contribs) 07:33, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Congrats
Congratulations on winning the Africa News Innovation Challenge. Abbasjnr (talk) 17:35, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Congo 2:2
Of someone in the Congo-Zaïre get access to wikipedia over a mobile phone, this will be in one of the following languages: fr, kg, ln, sw. I tried this with the links xx.m.wikipedia.org. While fr and sw looks nice, kg and ln looks horrible. Can someone help the ln community (of three!) to arrange this and also do it on kg (there is only one contributor and no community). Thank you. There is probabely something in the wiki code that goes well on internet, but not on mobile. --Eruedin (talk) 14:34, 17 December 2012 (UTC)]].
 * Could you please file a bug report? This way your problem reported doesn't get lost and you can get notifications on every update. see How to report a bug.--Qgil (talk) 22:38, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

J2ME App
The Mobile projects home page is linking to |a J2ME App on a Github repo. Is it official? Shouldn't it be linked on the Platforms Support Status? Olivier Mengué | ⇄ 22:35, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * The information about the Series40 app can be found here. It will be official but it's being developed by a contractor, which kind of explains the different treatment.--Qgil (talk) 04:52, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Windows 8 app will not launch
I've been using the app on a Windows 8 tablet and it recently stopped working. It just dumps back to the start screen after showing the Wikipedia splash screen for a second. I uninstalled and reinstalled, checked for updates, etc. and it still won't run.


 * I am having the same problem with the App on my PC. I get the splash screen and then it crashes. I'm uninstalled and re-installed, restarted the computer etc... multiple times. no luck.


 * Thank you for reporting the problem. I have filed a bug report. Please use bugzilla to report issues and track down the issues you have reported. Also, please provide as many details as possible e.g. what version of the Wikipedia app have you installed, what hardware are you using, what error messages do you get... See also How to report a bug. And finally, please sign your comments with --~ so we can now who and when commented. Thank you!--Qgil (talk) 04:49, 22 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I can confirm the bug and am looking into it now. --brion (talk) 18:16, 22 January 2013 (UTC)


 * This should be resolved since about 3 hours ago. --brion (talk) 23:39, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Same Problem since 1 month! Won rt German. --62.158.134.96 16:28, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

This problem exists since early August and it does still! Windows 8 pro, both Desktop and Tablet. The Wikipedia App stopped working all of a sudden and there is no fix after three months! 16. Oct. 2013 today Have a look at the many negative user ratings in the MS-Appstore. If you continue to ignore this, then you will damage the Wikipedia reputation! I suggest that you at least temporarily remove this app from the store - before Microsoft does...... Cheers, Wolfgang

id.m.wikipedia.org
Please fix this situation for wp.id mobile http://prntscr.com/ybu78 Thanks in advance.  Ę-oиė   >>>  ™ 09:27, 29 March 2013 (UTC)


 * This has been fixed on TranslateWiki.net and should update live within a day or so. Thanks for the report! --brion (talk)

Problem with the Android app in the Esperanto Version
Hola, hay un problema en la aplicación para android de Wikipedia, la aplicación funciona muy bien para las versiones en idiomas como español, inglés, alemán, etc. Pero cuando se cambia el idioma a Esperanto u otros idiomas menores, no aparece la página principal del projecto con los articulos destacados, en el caso especifico del esperanto aparece este mensaje: :Ĉefpaĝo. ¿Donde se edita, o como se puede solucionar este problema? / Hello, there is a problem in the Wikipedia Android app, the application works fine for versions in languages ​​like Spanish, English, German, etc.. But when you change the language version to Esperanto or other minority languages​​, is not displayed the main page with the featured articles of that specific wikipedia version, in the specific case of Esperanto this message appears: :Ĉefpaĝo. Where we should edit, or how we can solve this problem? -- Remux - Nunca Olvidaré, que me enamoré de la más hermosa flor. Ĉu mi povas helpi vin iel? 00:06, 4 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Mi kredas ke mi konas la problemon... momenton, mi provos ripari. :) --brion (talk) 18:51, 5 April 2013 (UTC)


 * La bazan problemon mi jam riparis ĉe -- sed la riparaĵon ne ricevis la apliko. La sekvanta versio de la apliko; ĝi aperos post kelkaj tagoj. --brion (talk) 19:01, 5 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Dankon kara brion! mi ne pensis ke iu povus respondi min ĉi tie esperante ;) --Flag of Santiago de Cali.svg Remux - Nunca Olvidaré, que me enamoré de la más hermosa flor. Ĉu mi povas helpi vin iel? 23:38, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Location permission
Does the app actually still need the permission to access the location?

"Nearby" Coordinates for german WP not working?
The english "Nearby" works for me (with Location permission) on iphone safari and on desktop firefox, the german nearby doesn't: Why? Or is it just me? --Atlasowa (talk) 09:37, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
 * https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby OK.
 * https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby Doesn't show anything, just spinning.

Watchlist issues on mobile website
Here are a couple issues I've noticed while using mobile Wikipedia in Safari on my iPhone 4S (6.1.1). I searched the bugtracker and couldn't find these issues reported there, but they seem too obvious to not already be discussed somewhere, so I'll just add my comments here and hope that this is helpful.

Visiting my watchlist defaults to showing "All" instead of showing "Modified", but when I visit my watchlist, my goal is always to check on recent changes to my watched articles, so I always have to then tap "Modified". This preference is not remembered if I reload the page.

If I click the notifications link in the top-right corner of any page, the resulting view gives me a list of notifications with the newest notifications on the bottom, but I'd expect the newest notifications to be on the top. I can't reproduce this behavior in my desktop browser - if I go to a mobile website page (such as ) and click the notifications link at top right, I see notifications with the newest notification on top, which seems correct. I only get the reversed list in Safari on my iPhone.

Thanks for all your work! Dreamyshade (talk) 05:55, 28 November 2013 (UTC)


 * More detail on the first report: I cleared cookies in Settings -> Safari (to make sure no weird cookies were hanging around), went to Wikipedia and logged in, went to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist (which redirected to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist), and tapped "Modified". Then I again went to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist and "List" was still the default view instead of "Modified". I'm not sure if that's expected behavior.


 * For the reversed notifications, I added a comment to Bug 58050. Dreamyshade (talk) 19:37, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Improvements on mobile application
Wikipedia's official mobile application, in my opinion, has some problems that should be solved. For example: Is it possible to improve this aspects? --Leoo (talk) 17:01, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
 * it is not possible to edit articles or sections
 * italic words are visualized as both italic and bold (this way)
 * "small" words (between " " and " " tags) are visualized with normal size

Android nearby
Is there a better page for this? Anyway the Android app has a nice feature to read our GPS location and show a map of nearby articles. Handy, but it could be far more useful:
 * 1) Atlantic Ocean. The first thing that comes up is a sea of blue. That's because it hasn't read GPS yet, and assumes we are at Longitude Zero, Latitude Zero, mid-Atlantic. If we're indoors or for some other reason GPS isn't giving a location, it stays that way. Needlessly confusing, hence wrong. Should show a world map until it finds a location, or at least a "No GPS yet" indicator.
 * 2) True GPS only. I generally keep GPS turned off because it drains my battery too fast. Google Maps for Android still knows where we are, presumably due to cell tower triangulation and WiFi footprints. Wikipedia app should do the same, or ask GM.
 * 3) Battery. Wikipedia app drains my battery even faster than GM does when GPS is on.
 * 4) Desert. If we're in an area that has no Wikipedia articles, it shows nothing. Or if it thinks we're in mid-Atlantic. Should adjust zoom level until there's a reasonable number of points to show, say five to thirty or some such range.
 * 5) Comeback. It's useful to tap on an article, find out that it's not one we want to visit, and use the back arrow to go back to the map for another go. Except, the map shows mid-Atlantic again because the app has already totally forgotten where we are. Should be able to remember for, like, even a whole minute.
 * 6) Nearby what? We're looking at an article when we hit the menu key, right? If the article has coords, the menu should ask something like, "Near to you, or where this article is?" If it's a list of a hundred coords, show them all and let us zoom and pan for the right ones.
 * 7) Pictures. Should have an option to see where the Commons pictures are in this neighborhood, with a different and preferably smaller icon.

This is a copy of something I put in WP:WPP. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:07, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Talk page link?
I wasn't sure whether to post here or to Extension_talk:MobileFrontend. A link to the talk page from mobile frontend would be great.

Talk pages render just fine on mobile; and have a nice link back to the main article. A similar link to the talk page at the top ("discuss this article") or a tab icon would both work. Even an obscured link above the current history link at the bottom of the article would be better than nothing.

Related bug: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33909

The beta mobile frontend has an icon that links to a quasi-talk page: it isn't quite clear what one is looking at (it's not formatted like articles with collapsed sections), and it makes it impossible to edit the page. I think a simple link to the full talk page (this generally renders fine on my devices) would be enough. Sj (talk) 19:40, 12 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Sj, I think the underlying issue is «question: is it actually desirable to get mobile users in closer touch with community ;)». See also next section. --Nemo 10:30, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

The separate world of Mobile?
FYI. Sorry for cross posting; please comment there. --Nemo 10:30, 3 May 2014 (UTC)