Wikimedia Apps/status

Last update on: 2014-10-monthly

2012-03-15
Brion Vibber merged a volunteer contributed pull request adding support for the BlackBerry Playbook.

2012-03-16
Yuvi released new beta versions of the Wikipedia app for iOS and Android

2012-03-31
Brion Vibber merged a volunteer-contributed pull request adding support for the BlackBerry Playbook. Yuvaraj Pandian released new beta versions of the Wikipedia app for iOS and Android.

2012-04-02
Yuvi pushed out both a new iOS and Android version of the Wikipedia app. Android app is available now while the iOS is pending Apple review

2012-04-05
Yuvi pushed new versions of our Android app and our first ever PhoneGap version of the iOS app. Issues were identified with iOS 4.x and were actively working on them

2012-04-16
We pushed an emergency bug fix for the Wikipedia iOS app fixing scrolling issues on iOS4.X and numerous other issues

2012-04-26
Yuvi continued work on the api move branch. Brion pushed out a final build of the Wikipedia App to the BlackBerry market. He also started experimenting with a Windows mobile version

2012-04-monthly
Yuvaraj Pandian released [//blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/05/new-wikipedia-app-for-ios-and-an-update-for-our-android-app/ new versions] of our Android app and our first ever PhoneGap version of the iOS app. Issues were identified with iOS 4.x and we released an update to fix them. Yuvaraj also continued work on the API move branch. Brion Vibber pushed out a final build of the Wikipedia App to the BlackBerry market, and started experimenting with a Windows mobile version.

2012-05-02
<section begin=2012-05-02/>Yuvi wrapped up work on v1.2beta1 and mailed it out to testers. This new version fully decouples our apps from mobile frontend and makes them completely API driven. We'll be iterating on this beta for a couple of cycles and then taking a break from the Wikipedia app in order to work on a Wiki Loves Monuments App<section end=2012-05-02/>

2012-05-10
<section begin=2012-05-10/>Yuvi mailed out the latest beta of the Wikipedia app to testers<section end=2012-05-10/>

2012-05-11
<section begin=2012-05-11/>Yuvi announced the availability of the Wikipedia beta app on Google Play<section end=2012-05-11/>

2012-05-16
<section begin=2012-05-16/>Patrick started work on upgrading the Wikipedia aps to the latest PhoneGap release<section end=2012-05-16/>

2012-06-02
<section begin=2012-06-02/>Patrick finished working on the PhoneGap 1.7 port of the app. Yuvi reviewed it and we're scheduling it for deployment. Brion released the official Windows 8 Wikipedia app to the market. <section end=2012-06-02/>

2012-05-monthly
<section begin=2012-05-monthly/>The mobile team spent the month of May converting the Wikipedia app to use the API, increasing the amount of supported platforms, and porting it to the latest PhoneGap codebase. Yuvaraj Pandian and Max Semenik used the new mobile API to fully decouple the Wikipedia app and started beta testing. By using the new mobile API, the Wikipedia app no longer has to screen-scrape the site, allowing us to make design changes that don't break the app experience. Brion Vibber released the Windows 8 version of the Wikipedia app. This new Wikipedia app is built following the Windows 8 Metro Style guidelines and only uses CSS, HTML5, and Javascript. Patrick finished work porting the Wikipedia app over to PhoneGap 1.7. These changes will be included in version 1.3 of the Wikipedia app.<section end=2012-05-monthly/>

2012-06-19
<section begin=2012-06-19/>Yuvi released the Wikipedia app for Android 1.2 on Google Play, to generally positive reviews. <section end=2012-06-19/>

2012-06-monthly
<section begin=2012-06-monthly/>The app team (Yuvi) spent the month of June polishing off the Wikipedia app for Android (Vers. 1.2) and iOS (Vers. 3.2). Android is available in the market immediately while iOS is still under Apple review. The iOS version is picking up the latest PhoneGap 1.7 changes and will see a dramatic speed improvement.<section end=2012-06-monthly/>

2013-02-01
<section begin="2013-02-01"/>* Apps/Wikipedia is available on several platforms. <section end="2013-02-01"/>
 * Apps/Wikipedia has not yet been started.
 * Apps/Commons is being worked on for Android and iOS ...

2013-12-monthly
<section begin="2013-12-monthly"/>The team added saved pages, article navigation, and language support to the mobile Wikipedia app. During the quarterly planning meeting, it was decided to postpone photo uploads from our market release plan in favor of text editing.<section end="2013-12-monthly"/>

2014-02-monthly
<section begin="2014-02-monthly"/>We've worked primarily on enabling wikitext editing, specifically enabling logged-out editing, logged-in editing, logging in and creating accounts.<section end="2014-02-monthly"/>

2014-03-monthly
<section begin="2014-03-monthly"/>The team worked on logged-out editing to logged-in editing, and table of contents refinements.<section end="2014-03-monthly"/>

2014-04-monthly
<section begin="2014-04-monthly"/>The Mobile App team continued moving toward the first market release of the rebooted Wikipedia App for Android and iOS. The team focused on bug fixes, editing refinements, and UX polish. Several issues related to keyboard, navigation bar, edit summary, and abuse filter were fixed. The app now uses the newly created Wikifont which reduced the size of the app and the number of graphical assets. Articles should now look even closer to their mobile web counterparts. Product management switched from Kenan Wang to Maryana Pinchuk due to Kenan's departure, and the team welcomed Dmitry Brant as an Android software developer.<section end="2014-04-monthly"/>

2014-05-monthly
<section begin="2014-05-monthly"/>This month, the Apps team worked on a series of navigation improvements to the iOS and Android alpha apps, focusing on the UI for searching, saving and sharing pages, and navigating to the table of contents. We also worked on restyling the global navigation menu and article content—typography, color, and spacing—to create a standardized experience across the mobile web and apps. In preparation for the launch of the Android app in June, we tackled a number of user-reported crashing bugs to ensure a more stable and reliable experience for our users.<section end="2014-05-monthly"/>

2014-06-monthly
<section begin="2014-06-monthly"/>The Mobile Apps team released the new Android Wikipedia app and it is now available to be downloaded through the Google Play store on Android devices.

Core features of the app include the ability to save pages for offline reading, a record of your browsing history, and the ability to edit either as a logged in user or anonymously. Therefore the app is the first mobile platform that allows anonymous editing! The app also supports Wikipedia Zero for participating mobile carriers.

Additional work done this month includes the start of implementing night mode for the Android app (by popular demand), creating an onboarding experience which is to be refined and deployed in July, and numerous improvements to the edit workflow.<section end="2014-06-monthly"/>

2014-07-monthly
<section begin="2014-07-monthly"/>Following on from the successful launch to Android, the Mobile Apps team released the new native Wikipedia app to iOS on July 31. The app is the iOS counterpart to the Android app, with many of the same features such as editing, saving pages for offline reading, and browsing history. The iOS app also contains an onboarding screen that is shown the first time the app is launched, asking users to sign up, a feature which was also launched on Android this month (see below).

On Android this month we released to production accessibility and styling features which were requested by our users, such as a night mode for reading in the dark and a font size selector. We also released an onboarding screen that asks users to sign up.

Our plan for next month is to get user feedback from Wikimania, wrap up our styling fixes, and begin work on an onboarding screen the first time that someone taps edit.<section end="2014-07-monthly"/>

2014-08-monthly
<section begin="2014-08-monthly"/>In August, the Mobile Apps Team focussed on bug fixes for the recently released iOS app and for the Android app, as well as gathering user feedback from Wikimania.

The team also had unstructured time during Wikimania, in which the engineers are free to work on whatever they fancy. This resulted in numerous code quality improvements on both iOS and Android. On iOS, the unstructured time also spawned a preliminary version of the feature "Nearby", which lists articles about things that are near you, tells you how near they are to you, and points towards them. On Android, the unstructured time spawned a preliminary version of full text search, an improved searching experience which aims to present more relevant results.<section end="2014-08-monthly"/>

2014-09-monthly
<section begin="2014-09-monthly"/>In September, the Mobile Apps Team released a new version of the iOS app containing the Nearby feature which shows you articles about things that are near your location, and a references panel that pops up whenever you tap a reference. The team also released an iOS 8 compatibility build to market. The team also spent time performing code quality improvements and refactoring on both the iOS and Android apps.<section end="2014-09-monthly"/>

2014-10-monthly
<section begin="2014-10-monthly"/>In October, following on from the successful launch of Nearby on iOS in September, the Wikimedia Apps team released Nearby on Android as well. Nearby allows you to see articles about things that are near you, and read their articles to learn more about them. The team also released features that roll up disambiguation and page issues into a button underneath the page title, so that the content of the article is brought closer to the top of the article. We also released a refactor of the technical architecture of the app to bring the app closer to compliance with Google's standards for Android apps, which also brought a few minor UX improvements. On the iOS side, a bug fix build was released which improved the UI scaling on iPads, fixed a few minor issues with the table of contents, and fixed miscellaneous crashes. At the end of the month, a build was submitted to Apple which reworked the way the app retrieves information from the servers, which should increase the stability of the app and reduce crashes.<section end="2014-10-monthly"/>