Tasks

Background

We plan to build tabbed browsing for the iOS Wikipedia app in June 2025. This task is for creating an initial prototype, and completing technical spikes to understand what's possible, and how adding tabs will affect the App. Our hypothesis is: If we develop and test design prototypes for tabbed browsing in the Wikipedia iOS app, we will gain and incorporate actionable insights on usability, while also enabling engineers to assess technical feasibility of different approaches, building a solid foundation for adding Tabs to the app in Q4.

MVP Requirements (Flexible)

• Users can open and close Tabs from Article View
• Show list of article names for open tabs in tab overview (does not need to have images, article descriptions, etc)
• Show active tab at the top
• Navigate backwards in a Tab stack (don’t need forward yet)
• Allow opening an article in a new tab after long-press on any article link (in article view). Short presses still open articles in the active tab.
• “New tab” option (can show Search for now)
• Users can close individual tabs
• External links open automatically in a new tab

Engineering notes

Potential spike notes are in this document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IeG9qFfpedsawaU24qURTubF8qoNFjprOJvm1IFr_dg/edit?tab=t.0

Grayed-out items are not needed for MVP, so we aren't making spike subtasks yet. Subtasks have been made for other items.

Bugs / Improvements identified during prototyping that we should consider later (@scblr , @Tsevener , @HNordeenWMF please keep adding to list)

• New tab button (+): We should consider a new tab button in the article. Either in the More menu at the bottom right T386375#10595573
• iPad → icon size change: Noticed that the tabs icon changes its size on iPad Mini in Portrait T386375#10595573

Prototype screenshots