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WikiForum structural refactorisation, UI redesign and UX improvements
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Description

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The WikiForum extension has been poorly designed and needs to be revamped. It'll provide better consistency with MediaWiki overall and also better UX. (NOTE: This issue I'd say IMO is almost high or as high as a priority as #434) Here are the issues, and here's how they can be improved. I'll also provide sketches/rough drafts of what new appearance pretty soon today.

Another NOTE: I greatly encourage for other people to provide feedback on each idea's, and to also provide rough drafts for a new look that fixes most of the issues listed below. Then, we can take the best of each one and combine to create a beautiful forum extension that's also functional :) 👍

  1. Issues
  2. Icons:
    • Problem: All these icons have too much detail and thus distracting.
    • Solution: Replace all current icons with the WikiFont (munmay/WikiFont) icon set. Icons are simpler and to the point.
  3. Typography:
    • Problem: An odd mixture of two different fonts, Arial and Verdana. Verdana is a poorly designed font and isn't very nice to read.
    • Solution: Make the base font just Arial so that other wikis can change it to what they like.
  4. Non-responsive UI:
    • Problem: Doesn't degrade gracefully across devices. Was designed desktop first without consideration for phones and tablets.
    • Solution: Recode the entire thing basically, easier to start back from scratch.
  5. Search:
      • Problem: It isn't functional at all. Tried searching up "LEGO" on the Brickipedia WikiForum (http://en.brickimedia.org/wiki/Special:WikiForum) and it said it popped up with 0 hits yet gave me one single random thread, instead of giving an actual list of threads in a search result format.
    • Solution: Like above, it's easier to start back from scratch.
  6. More functions please! As a user, I should be able to: (there's probably some other stuff that this extension needs but I can't think of too many so far, I'll edit when I come up more )
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Rough draft

Starting on paper, then we get to a good rough draft we can move to the final draft which would be in code form. How's that transition idea? (this section will be updated later today)

Event Timeline

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Note: This was originally posted at https://github.com/Brickimedia/brickimedia/issues/437 but moved upstream as a non-Brickimedia-specific proposal.

Basically +2 to almost everything. It's about time WikiForum gets some tender loving care; it's been in maintenance mode for far too long. The only thing I disagree with are the icons, as I don't find the current ones distracting or overly detailed, unless you consider color a distracting factor. Font change is easy and can be +2'd as soon as someone submits a patchset.

cc'ing @Isarra for design/UX stuff.

It's best to at least try to minimise the number of icon sets folks see across a wiki, and using wikifont icons would at least keep it consistent with other extensions also using it. I mean, the icons themselves are kind of not very good, but at least that way if someone fixes that in general this would benefit too, right?

Why does it need its own font at all?

It doesn't need it's own icon font, visual consistency aids in a better UX which is something we should aim for. We should try something new too, it doesn't hurt to try

SamanthaNguyen renamed this task from WikiForum redesign and UX to WikiForum structural refactorisation, UI redesign and UX improvements.May 9 2016, 11:57 PM
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SamanthaNguyen triaged this task as Medium priority.