Last modified: 2014-03-18 05:59:05 UTC
This is a proposal to enable strapping-mediawiki in mediawiki.org as an optional skin marked as EXPERIMENTAL, for testing purposes. This is NOT a request to include this skin as part of MediaWiki or to support it officially. "Strapping is an elegant, responsive, and friendly starter skin for MediaWiki. Its purpose is to provide a good base to build upon, and was primarily created to provide a great default for wiki-as-a-website — but it works well for standard wikis too." https://github.com/OSAS/strapping-mediawiki http://www.ovirt.org/ https://wiki.openstack.org/ http://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Skin:Strapping Not only is something fresh and pretty neat. It also relies on a solid foundation: http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/ There is an instance for testing at https://wikitech-test.wmflabs.org/wiki/Main_Page?useskin=strapping However, there is nothing like testing a skin in the wiki you work all day. This skin happens to have some common elements with https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Athena (all navigation in the header followed by 100% content body). I guess we could even play with it in combination with Agora's CSS. All this to say that this proposal is not departing or far-off from our trends and plans. While we are busy developing other things, someone else is taking care of potential foundations or source for inspiration like Strapping and strapping-mediawiki (and this is good). So why not paying more attention and allow mediawiki.org users to contribute some testing and potentially feedback. I would give it a try and even use it as default if it's not utterly broken.
I've actually begun porting Zurb Foundation to be a MW skin, so in spirit I support this idea. Agora is actually being implemented in SASS/Compass (like Foundation). We need to move to a grid-based interface, we need to have standardized UI components, and we need to make it easier for developers to use them without ambiguity or ever having to roll their own elements. In practice, however, Bootstrap has a lot of things that will make people unhappy. No semicolons in the JS, non-standard element coercion (<i> is used for icons, for example). Nothing that actually breaks the experience since Bootstrap is pretty solid across browsers, but lots of issues to nitpick over. And that's just from a developer standpoint. Regardless, I'm a +1 on this while saying it should be clearly marked as EXPERIMENTAL and INSPIRATIONAL only :-)
I've done a review of the code (and also did quite a bit of fixes to it), but it still needs a security review. There's one major reason I didn't enable this on wikitech. It adds the bootstrap css, but only for that one skin. The CSS can be used in page contents, but will only modify content layout when that skin is used. It's possible that people will negatively affect the content by thinking they can use the bootstrap css in the content. I'd like to see some framework like bootstrap, but we need to support it in all skins if we're going to support it.
I don't have a special preference for Strapping, Foundation or anything else. The point of my request is to enable a experimental skin in mediawiki.org to let heavy users like me help with real testing. I actually don't mind how unstable and pre-alpha the skin is. I'm for enabling it as soon as it goes through a security check, is label as EXPERIMENTAL and is functional enough to allow users to revert back to Vector. :)
Strapping will work for that. It's also possible that we can enable it on wikitech, rather than mediawiki.org, if that makes things easier.
Is there any post-Vector skin being developed currently?
Some things going on slightly related to this request: Ori, Steven and Jon are pushing an RFC to have LESS support in MediaWiki core. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/LESS Rob is interested in seeing one day Bootstrap support in MediaWiki. In the meantime we have got an independent release process for MediaWiki. Would a possibility be to start considering the strapping-mediawiki skin for the tarball release? This would potentially increase the usage, testing and hopefully development of this skin, regardless of the Wikimedia plans.
I love bootstrap, use it in my tools on labs - it would simplify converting them to plugins if a bootstrap skin was enabled. So I support this
To get it included in the tar ball, code review in gerritt would be good.
I have it in a repo in gerrit, but it's maintained by an upstream on github. Maybe we can ask him to use gerrit?
(In reply to comment #9) > Maybe we can ask him to use gerrit? Done: https://github.com/OSAS/strapping-mediawiki/issues/43
(In reply to comment #2) > I'd like to see some framework like bootstrap, but we need to support it in > all skins if we're going to support it. FYI WMF designer Pau Giner is working on a grid layout, http://pauginer.github.io/agora-grid/ (Agora is not a skin, it is new designs for elements within a skin.)
(In reply to comment #11) > > FYI WMF designer Pau Giner is working on a grid layout, > http://pauginer.github.io/agora-grid/ (Agora is not a skin, it is new > designs > for elements within a skin.) This is going to be a grid system implemented from scratch? Is there any reason why bootstrap isn't being considered instead? Using bootstrap means a lot of immediately reusable themes via swatch and wrap.
https://github.com/pauginer/invisible-gradient-technique/commits/master doesn look that active. Is this just Pau's experiment or something we are planning to push and maintain?
Sorry, the right repo is https://github.com/pauginer/agora-grid/commits/master and it does have more activity.
The strapping-mediawiki skin needs a few updates to comply with MediaWiki 1.17+ standards such as using ResourceLoader.
(In reply to comment #15) > The strapping-mediawiki skin needs a few updates to comply with MediaWiki > 1.17+ > standards such as using ResourceLoader. Hm. I could have sworn I did that. Maybe it was partially reverted?
On a related note, Stephan Gambke is developing a skin based in Bootstrap 3 [[mw:Skin:Chameleon]] Stephan says: "I updated it to Bootstrap 3 a few days ago. Right now I have a working version here that will allow you to add your own customizations on top of Bootstrap, e.g. change colors and fonts from your LocalSettings.php. I'll check that in this evening. Next steps will include caching stuff and enabling further customization." http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-October/072426.html
The fact is that, after almost a year, there hasn't been any progress in this front, and including strapping-mediawiki seems not to be in anybody's plans. Resolving as WONTFIX in order to clean a bit after my own proposals. If you disagree feel free to reopen. PS: my motivation was to request an optional skin marked as EXPERIMENTAL, for testing purposes. Now we have beta features, Typography refresh, Winter, the mobile experiments... Still not an alternative to Vector for the sake of diversity of skins in MediaWiki, but at least something to play with.
