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Cosmetic UX changes to Details Dialog
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Description

Context

The padding and margins in the Details Dialog can be improved slightly to make the relationship between different elements visually clearer (Gestalt theory), and some of the font colors seem different from the design system tokens. @ElineWMDE, @thiemowmde and @lilients_WMDE agreed that UX will share the distances between the elements in pixels, and then ENG will implement paddings and margins that approximate those distances relative to each other (so does not have to be the same amount of pixels exactly).

Changes
  • Distance in pixels between the elements in the design:

image.png (586×536 px, 58 KB)

  • The font line height in the designs is 22px:

image.png (344×250 px, 25 KB)

  • The text color of "Dem Feld hinzugefügter Inhalt wird hier angezeigt." should be the same as that of the input field placeholder text, color-placeholder

image.png (486×114 px, 10 KB)

Current color in product is darker:

image.png (588×224 px, 28 KB)

  • The border-divider in the middle of the dialog now has the same color as the outside border of the dialog border-color-base, but the divider in the middle should have border-color-subtle as color:

image.png (497×116 px, 10 KB)

Outcome

Screenshot from 2026-06-11 11-35-51.png (661×604 px, 60 KB)

Event Timeline

Change #1225549 had a related patch set uploaded (by SarthakSingh2904; author: SarthakSingh2904):

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] Cite: Use correct design tokens for Details Dialog colors

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1225549

Hello! I’ve completed the requested changes and pushed the update. I’d appreciate it if you could review it when convenient.
Thanks in advance.
@ElineWMDE @thiemowmde @lilients_WMDE

Question to @ElineWMDE: This ticket currently asks to change the text color from @color-subtle (#54595d) to @color-placeholder (#72777d, i.e. slightly brighter). The thing is that we are currently using the same color in more than one place. Notably for the "This reference is defined in a template or other generated block, and for now can only be previewed in source mode." message in various places, i.e. in all situations where we have to show a placeholder message instead of the real (sub-) reference. Should we change all of these places the same?

Screenshot of some of the other places that currently use @color-subtle:

Screenshot from 2026-01-28 13-26-01.png (770×498 px, 79 KB)

Answer: Change only the sub-ref placeholder to @color-placeholder. Don't change the other message.

Change #1298778 had a related patch set uploaded (by Svantje Lilienthal; author: Svantje Lilienthal):

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] Cosmetic UX changes to Details Dialog

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1298778

Change #1298778 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] Cosmetic UX changes to Details Dialog

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1298778

Change #1225549 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] Cite: Use correct design tokens for Details Dialog colors

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1225549

I try to understand what's missing:

  • Text color and border color should be correct after https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1225549.
  • The line height is just the default. The calculated value might be e.g. 21px depending on various factors. But one or two pixels difference doesn't justify a custom CSS hack, in my opinion.
  • The fact that the divider line is indented looks like a mistake in the mock to me. It would also require a surprising amount of extra fragile CSS to make it possible. I would like to avoid that,

What else is missing?

WMDE-Fisch subscribed.

I'm fine, just double checked. The line height is even correct for me. I would leave the divider unless we have a clear todo. :-)

Change #1299496 had a related patch set uploaded (by Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE); author: Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE)):

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] Indent separator line in sub-ref dialog

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1299496

Change #1299496 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/Cite@master] Indent separator line in sub-ref dialog

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1299496

Looks like we should make another small adjustment to make the whole placeholder text readable for longer texts like German:

Screenshot from 2026-08-11 17-05-52.png (516×465 px, 55 KB)

Screenshot from 2026-08-11 17-05-52.png (516×465 px, 55 KB)

I can reproduce this on all live wikis. I did a git bisect and found that this issue is new since https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1319183. From the changes in that library update the change https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1319167 appears to be responsible for the behavior change, linked to T433533: Empty document placeholder is fragile. This is probably worth a new Regression ticket.

Change #1328648 had a related patch set uploaded (by DLynch; author: DLynch):

[VisualEditor/VisualEditor@master] ui.Surface: reserve the placeholder height on its own node

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1328648

Change #1328648 merged by jenkins-bot:

[VisualEditor/VisualEditor@master] ui.Surface: reserve the placeholder height on its own node

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1328648

Change #1328661 had a related patch set uploaded (by DLynch; author: DLynch):

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] Update VE core submodule to master (5e8709982)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1328661

Change #1328661 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] Update VE core submodule to master (5e8709982)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1328661

Change #1328674 had a related patch set uploaded (by DLynch; author: DLynch):

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@wmf/1.47.0-wmf.16] Update VE core submodule to master (5e8709982)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1328674

Change #1328674 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@wmf/1.47.0-wmf.16] Update VE core submodule to master (5e8709982)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1328674

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-08-24T20:07:20Z] <kemayo@deploy1003> kemayo: Backport for [[gerrit:1328674|Update VE core submodule to master (5e8709982) (T414328 T433533 T435688)]] synced to the testservers (see https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug). Changes can now be verified there.

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-08-24T20:16:04Z] <kemayo@deploy1003> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1328674|Update VE core submodule to master (5e8709982) (T414328 T433533 T435688)]] (duration: 10m 47s)

Closing the ticket again, this has been resolved months ago by the patches above which I have verified in production.

Screenshot From 2026-10-06 15-28-13.png (622×550 px, 62 KB)

Looks like we should make another small adjustment to make the whole placeholder text readable for longer texts like German:

Screenshot from 2026-08-11 17-05-52.png (516×465 px, 55 KB)

I can reproduce this on all live wikis. I did a git bisect and found that this issue is new since https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1319183. From the changes in that library update the change https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1319167 appears to be responsible for the behavior change, linked to T433533: Empty document placeholder is fragile. This is probably worth a new Regression ticket.

Great! The mentioned regression was solved as part of T433533 without a new ticket.