Talk:OOUI

Fix

@Jdforrester (WMF) @Yaron Koren

Does the OOUI#Future of OOUI alongside Codex section need fixing? Waddie96 (talk) 00:10, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay. I have no idea (I'm not an OOUI developer), though it seems fine to me. What might need updating? Yaron Koren (talk) 14:40, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

Efforts lately to mark OOUI as discouraged seem premature

I've seen some people lately making some moves to discourage OOUI. For example, adding "OOUI is in maintenance mode. New code should use Codex" to the OOUI article, and declining or suggesting declining OOUI tasks on Phabricator (phab:T155567, phab:T101484, phab:T155473).

However, is Codex in a state where it can actually replace OOUI? For example, does HTMLForm::factory( 'ooui' ) have feature parity with HTMLForm::factory( 'codex' )? My impression is that it does not, so trying to wind down OOUI might be premature.

I would consider a new design system to be ready for mass adoption (and the old design system ready for deprecation) when we are able to rewrite the PHP code for all the MediaWiki core special pages in the new design system (without rewriting these pages in Vue), and I don't think we've reached that point yet.

For these reasons, should we stop treating OOUI as discouraged, and remove the "New code should use Codex" message in the OOUI article, and un-decline the mentioned tasks in Phabricator? –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:33, 24 August 2025 (UTC)

Related discussion: phab:T155567#11112809. I've also un-declined some OOUI tasks on Phabricator. –Novem Linguae (talk) 14:54, 24 August 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Waddie96. You changed this page today to say that ooui is deprecated. Can you please link to somewhere that confirms that ooui is deprecated? This is not something to be declared lightly and needs a source. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:15, 24 August 2025 (UTC)

No I didn't. It was there on 22 August look Waddie96 (talk) 21:36, 24 August 2025 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae Waddie96 (talk) 21:36, 24 August 2025 (UTC)

When I looked at this page yesterday, it had the softer wording "OOUI is in maintenance mode. New code should use Codex". I still want to have a discussion about that (this talk page section), but I am more OK with that wording than with "OOUI was deprecated in favour of Codex in MediaWiki 1.39." "Deprecated" is much stronger wording.

Same question as above. Do you have a source saying that OOUI is deprecated? Is it marked @deprecated in the code? Is there a Phab ticket calling it deprecated? etc.

Deprecated to me means "go replace it all". But I think there's a strong argument that OOUI is not ready to be replaced by Codex. From discussions I've had with others, I don't think it has reached feature parity with OOUI for some important use cases. And now that the Design Systems Team has been reorganized, it doesn't sound like there's much work being done on Codex. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:04, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: Deprecated on wiktionary: Said of a function or feature planned to be phased out, but still available for use. Waddie96 (talk) 04:37, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

And now that the Design Systems Team has been reorganized, it doesn't sound like there's much work being done on Codex. That is incorrect. Codex Steering Committee now maintains it. And it's very much having work done on it? Check out the Phab. Waddie96 (talk) 04:41, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

In the context of WMF, my understanding is that a committee is very different from a team in terms of how much time the engineers get to spend on the product. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:49, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae I see you created MediaWiki user interface framework. Similar page already exists at Design System Team/History of user-interface libraries and frameworks in MediaWiki?

(P.S. @Volker E. (WMF) is MediaWiki user interface framework correct?) Waddie96 (talk) 21:57, 24 August 2025 (UTC)

Design System Team/History of user-interface libraries and frameworks in MediaWiki is a very nice find. Thank you for mentioning it here. I have copy pasted some text from there into history sections at the articles JQuery UI, WVUI, and Wikit, and added it to the see also section of MediaWiki user interface framework.

I am flexible on the name of MediaWiki user interface framework. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:54, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae Is this not a conversation to be had with Codex developers on Phab? x Waddie96 (talk) 21:52, 24 August 2025 (UTC)

If this talk page discussion doesn't get enough people, I will consider re-posting it to a more active venue such as Phabricator and/or wikitech-l. I think we should give it a couple of days though. WMF software engineers may not be back in the office until Monday. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:06, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Talk:MediaWiki user interface framework#c-Waddie96-20250826021500-Consolidate to consolidate.

Waddie96 (talk) 02:18, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

Shouldn't a discussion about deprecating OOUI and the wording of deprecation-ish OOUI banners happen at Talk:OOUI? –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:37, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae: Yes. Unfortunately @Waddie96 clearly disagrees with, and has accused me of bad behaviour in asking them to stop, so I've given up trying to correct things. I don't know what to do here to clarify the situation. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 14:52, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

@Jdforrester (WMF) I do not disagree. Waddie96 (talk) 07:20, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

I've started phab:T403021 to try to get more eyes on this. –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:16, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

Feedback on icons

We did a user test recently and one piece of feedback that we received was for the icons "first" and "last. Some users read these as the letter "K". The icons were used on buttons without labels (like in this picture).

We found some replacement icons that hopefully will work better in our case, but thought you'd like to know anyway. Sebastian Berlin (WMSE) (talk) 09:56, 3 October 2025 (UTC)