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please keep Vector Legacy skin unchanged
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Description

This is a development policy suggestion.

T344498 broke mobile support for our self-hosted mediawiki when changing form 1.39.4 to 1.40.0.

Context: We're using Vector Legacy with our own "skin augmentation" by injecting our own custom CSS and Javascript. We rely on Vector Legacy staying as it is or at least having only minor and far fewer changes than Vector 2022 which is still under development. The recent change set Vector Legacy to "responsive: false" which caused problems.

We would like to request that Vector Legacy stays unchanged and only if really necessary have (only minor) changes.

Our argument: Vector Legacy has in its name that it's a legacy skin, not under active development. Most wikis which are still using it are probably either not doing active development or are otherwise relying on this skin staying the same. So we would argue Vector Legacy is the perfect skin to stay as is.

An alternative might be for us to rebase on Skin:Example, however re-inventing what Vector Legacy already does would be a high effort.

Event Timeline

adrelanos renamed this task from please keep Vector Legacy unchanged to please keep Vector Legacy skin unchanged.Aug 22 2023, 12:10 PM

The recent change set Vector Legacy to "responsive: false" which caused problems.

Hi, please describe problems, instead of requesting one potential specific solution only. Thanks a lot! :)

I thought I did describe the problem but I try to elaborate. There is a way to frame this as a bug report or feature request if that helps.

Bug report:

T344498 broke mobile support for our self-hosted MediaWiki when changing form 1.39.4 to 1.40.0. Our custom wiki skin is based on Vector Legacy. Future new versions by MediaWiki might break it again for similar reasons. We were under the impression that Vector Legacy development has cased. Is now stable except for perhaps minor maintenance updates to keep it compatible with future MediaWiki core changes.

Vector Legacy is a better base for our use case than Skin:Example.

Feature request:

Keep the HTML / CSS of Vector Legacy stable.

Potential solutions:

  • A) Keep Vector Legacy as is as per development policy.
  • B) Introduce a variable similar to wgVectorDefaultSkinVersion but that seems to make little sense since Vector Legacy development is now considered "feature complete".
Jdlrobson subscribed.

Legacy Vector is not being active developed.

It is impossible for HTML to not occasionally change when the architecture changes. Please do not rely on HTML, the https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/Stable_interface_policy/Frontend outlinee better alternatives.