Last modified: 2013-01-18 05:13:46 UTC
Currently we show either the last viewed page or the home page. The home page is not available via the API (yet), and last viewed page takes a while to load and is often not what the user wants.
I believe that the first screen a user should be is a help page. Something along the lines of.. Welcome to your new Wikipedia Mobile app! You now have Wikipedia at your finger tips! Search for the article you are interested in using the search box above or find articles near you by using nearby (something along those lines) If a user visits in the future they should see the last article they viewed.
For the beta we're just going to start with a blank slate.
What about this: show search activated, meaning the keyboard is open and the search field is active?
Blank page + search activated?
@Phil: I tried today, seems there is no way to actually bring up the keyboard from javascript on iOS without the user actually tapping on it.
https://github.com/wikimedia/WikipediaMobile/pull/219 has an implementation that starts with a blank page.
With the new intro screen, some of the buttons in the bottom toolbar should be de-activated. The screen is coming soon.
Created attachment 10490 [details] proposed alternative to a blank startup screen
Looks great. Will implement. However, note that if 'Surprise Me' is a link to 'Random Article', there is nowhere else in the UI that the user can actually get a random article from.
Good point. Also, this is not a permanent change, so I wonder if we should minimize functionality on this page. Probably it is better to leave out the links at the bottom.
I'd want to have links to Main page and perhaps Change Langauge? Also 'last visited page'?
We are discussing this issue as part of the new nav UI. For now, this is a temporary measure due to unavailability of the Mainpage API. However, there is a general usability issue related to the spinner as the initial page downloads (although in some cases it would be possible to retrieve the last viewed page from cache). Basically, it is not clear to the user that he can proceed with search even while the page is downloading. Therefore, it may be better to present something static on app launch, showing, for example, links to Home or Random, or help text.
Also, Lindesy will deliver a version of the page with only the W icon, in time for the next beta.
Created attachment 10515 [details] WP globe icon
Created attachment 10537 [details] Wikipedia globe with no text
Can I get a 256x256 render of the globe alone? Thanks!
Created attachment 10538 [details] roughly 256 PNG Wikipedia globe alone
Created attachment 10549 [details] Initial start screen with just the globe Looks very confusing, IMO.
We don't have enough design resources to finalize on this right now. I'm going to punt this to 1.3 so that we can get 1.2 out the door.
Interesting (if not bizarre) review via Tomasz suggests users expect more hand holding on launching the app. Essentially the user seems to have felt confused to why the homepage showed them a link to some TV show they had never watched.
Interestingly someone just requested that the home page is a blank static page - as they are concerned about the extra data they download every time they start the app and they only use the search function. They suggested making this possible via the settings page. This could be a good way to experiment with different start pages...
