The Rise of Mobile Wikipedia
yuri.is
yuri.is
Stop posting en.m.wikipedia.org links!
"m." subdomains are just a totally outdated concept and I wish they would disappear entirely. It is trivial for the web server to detect what device type, OS, screen size etc. the user is on and serve content accordingly.
Yes. Some might argue otherwise, but I'm with you there except…
… sometimes the mobile version of a page is preferable as it cuts out a load of crap including adverts and other distractions, just giving you the information actually being linked to. So "m." type links or other "force mobile view" options can be accidentally useful for a purpose beyond what their designer intended.
> It is trivial for the web server to detect what device [properties]
No, it is not trivial to do this reliably server-side with no client-side assistance. It is much better where possible to do it client-side with well-designed CSS (maybe, but not necessarily, making use of media queries and such).
There is an exception here too: if you want to send less data to the mobile client, instead of sending everything you would send to others and adjusting styles to alter the display for small screens and finger-based input, then you need to either try detect the UA's properties or given the user an explicit "full or minimal" option (which may put you back to offering an "m." URL or equivalent so a user can jump direct to the minimal version).
That's more convenient than having to change my user agent or simply having mobile versions unavailable unless I shrink my browser window down to phone-sized.
https://www.perficient.com/insights/research-hub/mobile-vs-d...
I suspect the number is lower on HN, but it’s still a losing battle. It’s also fairly easy to miss the “m.” when you’re copying a URL.
or you can do this client-side with an extension or tampermonkey sort of fix.
To anyone pasting in wp links: be kind, take the m out of the url when sharing links.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mobile2desktop-wik...
I stopped using it a while ago because it wound up breaking something else, I don't remember what it was exactly though.
But honestly this is just something Wikipedia itself should handle -- if I'm logged in to Wikipedia, give me a setting to "always redirect mobile to desktop".
Wikipedia created the problem with the "m" subdomain, they ought to be the ones fixing it too.
I literally wrote a script that does the exact opposite of what you suggest!
I have one script that runs on all pages and converts all Wikipedia links to the mobile version, while another that runs on Wikipedia only and automatically redirects to the mobile version if I somehow land on a non-mobile Wikipedia page. It also has a shortcut to switch between mobile and desktop, and takes the referrer into account so that once I've switched to the desktop version links aren't pointing to the mobile version again. It has a couple more features like a shortcut to edit the page, since I often contribute.
Same. Once I discovered that, and that the mobile site didn't have the random stalls from loading login.wikimedia.org, I started using it exclusively. The hardest part was retraining my muscle memory to type !wm instead of !wiki when searching for something.
The one to rewrite all WP links on all pages is part of a larger script which I haven't cleaned up yet, but this already provides an automatic switch to mobile if you happen to load a desktop version of the page.
If I'm on a desktop, have a moment, and see one that's particularly egregious, I often respond with a comment to the full version linking to the appropriate table of contents anchor.
The only sense in which a mobile link "forces" you to see a specific design is that en.wikipedia will redirect to en.m.wikipedia on mobile devices, but the inverse is not the case: en.m.wikipedia will not redirect to en.wikipedia on a desktop computer.
But here's the thing: the only way for me to ensure that all Wikipedia pages will use the mobile design on my desktop is to either 1. create an account to change my theme preference and always be logged in on all devices, or 2. use some browser extension. Both of those options are roughly as difficult, and option 2 is also available for you to ensure that you always see the desktop design!
And change any Reddit ones to point to old.reddit.com.
IMO the link that results in the users preference being followed should always be preferred, not the link that forces the preference of the poster.
The use case here is that some enthusiasts like to share their Wikipedia crawls and especially the "leaf" links at the end of filtering those search trees. Right now their perception is that mobile mode prevents them from doing the one thing that they most enjoy about Wikipedia, which is collaborating.
If there's already a way to access the anchor links from mobile, then by all means enlighten us.
Actually, after YEARS of dealing with this inconvenience, it just occurred to me to try turning off mobile mode entirely. It turns out that you can do this at the bottom of any Wikipedia page by clicking the "Desktop" link. You can go back by clicking the "Mobile view" link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Enable_mobile_versio...
You can also click on the hamburger menu -> Settings -> Expand all sections. This is nice for reducing friction during deep Wikipedia crawls where we're skimming large amounts of information. Mobile mode seems to be designed for more of a neurotypical way of browsing data in a top-down fashion, rather than casting a wide net and brainstorming ideas in parallel.
curl -I https://en.wikipedia.org|sed -n "/^x-client-ip: /{s/.*: //p;}"This also means that when you press the Back button, the sections are collapsed, and you lose the place where you just were.
All-around a terrible design and implementation from usability perspective, in my opinion.
Also yes about the scroll position – while at least occasionally (possibly within the same session, but not if you're closing and later re-opening the whole browser) it seems like Wikipedia tries remembering which sections were opens and which were collapsed, it happens too late in comparison to the browser attempting the restore your scroll position. So if you had scrolled farther than you can scroll in the completely unepxanded state of the stage, your scroll position will be lost.
This definitely has not been the case for me. If I don't expand the sections while online, I can't do it when offline.
Some people on mobile phones like the desktop view with timeless skin (add ?useskin=timeless to end of url).
E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_between_Quebec_and_Newf... (assuming you arent autoredirected to mobile)
(The toggle only appears on small devices, as on larger devices there is no section collapsing.)
And no, they won't ever get rid of categories. It's just that the phone variants of the site are very heavily geared towards a specific type of reader, at the expense of editors or other types of users. They have been trying to address this over incremental updates though, such as now showing talk pages.
I think it's one of the few things on my phone that I actually prefer the app version of.
Note that this is not an issue of speed, wikipedia in the browser is plenty fast. It's smoothness — the app's navigation model is better adapted to the use case, it's themed to match the OS perfectly, and there's no extraneous browser chrome or other little browserisms dragging down the experience.
If the iPad version got a Mac Catalyst port I'd probably use that on the desktop too.
One of my favourite features were the summaries (like ther hover cards that sometimes appear on desktop now) and reading lists, which are basically bookmarks but hyper-optimised for Wikipedia articles. All of it was something you could already do with a browser, but it was just way more streamlined.
- Access to the talk pages which are interesting to read on certain articles.
- Improved multi-language support (You can select your preferred languages and quickly switch while searching)
- The "My lists" feature.
- It has its own tabs so it's easier to manage.
I'm using "Wikipedia Beta" app.
That functionality is likely the same data as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby but with a better interface
I keep an offline copy of Wikipedia on my phone just in case I need it someday.
So I find myself constantly fighting the website to access the Desktop version
The version you get served when using an m. URL but forcing the mobile browser to view Desktop pages is something of a compromise - it has a sharper design than the proper desktop mode but it still lacks the categories.