Last modified: 2008-10-14 19:21:42 UTC
Hi. I'm not sure this is the right place to ask for a small minor fix. Anyway, I'm currently interested in having the front page default search-language set to whatever is in one's preferences. This is a great site and I'm here several times a week, but I'm a bit annoyed about the recent changes concerning the language. Many other sites does this, they use scripts that checks the country of the users origin and defaults the language after that (Not to mention all sites with advertisement!). This is very disturbing. For starters, after I choose English I have to click the search-form in order to begin typing. From the starter-page this is not required and one could just type away. I am one of very (too) few whom are actually using the keyboard as much as possible. Also I'm trying to invoke my brain too. Anywhoo, the layout on the next page (After choosing language) is cluttered with... Well, wouldn't wanna call it crap, but at first glance it does. First page is homogeneous, tranquil and generally good looking, but foremost it's search-form is center-paged.
The Wikipedia.org home page isn't part of the MetaWiki software, but it is possible to propose changes at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Www.wikipedia.org_portal#Design_of_Wikipedia.org_portal_and_Main_Page_praised What you propose should be relatively easy to do with a little bit of JavaScript and a cookie, I might even have a go (at proposing a change) myself. In the alternative, if you always want English you could just set your browser's default language to English. If this is a bit too much to bear there is a gadget in user preferences which will "[f]ocus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page." So you can go to http://en.wikipedia.org/ avert your eyes from the mess, type, press return and go.