On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 2:40 PM, Patrick Reilly <[email protected]>wrote:
> The reason that I went the route of creating an extension vs a skin was > that > I wanted the most flexibility in adapting the content for mobile device > rendering. There are a number of sections that need to be removed from the > final output in order to render the content effectively on mobile devices. > So, being able to use a PHP output buffer handling is a nice feature. I > also > wanted the ability to use many of the features that are available when > writing an extension to hook into core functionality. > To clarify -- a skin alone can't really do everything we want out of this system -- it needs to be able to freely modify a large swath of output, including rewriting content and styles and breaking long pages into shorter pages. A combination of a skin *and* other extension bits could probably be a good future step for simply *adjusting the view a bit* for high-functioning modern smartphones on the regular site, but will need to be combined with paying more attention to how our MediaWiki's native user interface elements display on a very small screen at native mobile size (as opposed to a zoomable desktop-sized rendering as when you view regular MediaWiki on an iPhone or Android browser). The 'extension that rewrites a bunch o' stuff on output' allows a more direct port of the existing Ruby codebase, which'll get equivalent stuff running and ready to hack sooner. IMO this is a plus! We *should* continue to look at the core MediaWiki interface as well, and longer term also end up thinking about ways to supplement some forms & special pages with small-screen-friendly variants. (Editing for instance will.... not be very nice with a toolbar that's three times wider than your screen, and will need a major redesign! :D) -- brion _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
