Forum:Mobile skins and native apps

23:33, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I learnt today that by the year 2014 more webpage visits/hits/accesses/what-have-you will be done by mobile phones/tablets then by web browsers. Given the future it would be nice if we had a mobile skin. I know wikipedia is trialling one, but that is more geared to the content pages rather than discussion pages. Also it would be nice to have a WIGO native app. Anyone know how to do these? -  π     03:25, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * They say app-hacking is as easy as "1, 2, 3" these days, which is more than they said of the not-insurmountable task of setting up a Linux installation, so I might look into it (no promises). 06:39, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Go to preferences, Appearance
 * Select MySkin
 * Click save
 * Click the Custom CSS link next to MySkin
 * PROFIT! -- Nx  / talk 08:04, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * LMAO Nx. 14:03, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah but that would be a "mobile" skin all the time, so a) it wouldn't work for non-registered users and b) registered users would need a separate mobile account. Something ought to be done server-side, eventually, like Simple mobile skin auto change. We could design our own mobile skin. 17:19, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Writing a simple skin-switcher extension that detects mobile and selects the mobile skin is a piece of cake. Writing a mobile skin is not. -- Nx  / talk 17:33, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * That's true, but none of the existing skins really work for mobile. Writing our own would be challenging but not insurmountable, especially if we take a minimalist approach and/or modify an existing mobile skin like this one. 17:47, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Can't you just copy what Wikipedia has done or something?  Flucked  talk to me :D   17:21, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * WP's mobile site doesn't support page editing, so I doubt it would be very useful here. 17:31, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * (ec) No, because it's a completely separate thing written in Ruby I think, would be too much work. -- Nx  / talk 17:33, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
 * (ec) No, because it's a completely separate thing written in Ruby I think, would be too much work. -- Nx  / talk 17:33, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Will a mobile skin make our articles less hideous on tiny screens? Because that bugs me every time I edit from my phone. 06:28, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Although I would not edit the Wiki from a phone, Wikipedia's mobile version certainly makes it easier to read articles from one. 06:41, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the difficulty of writing a mobile skin should prevent us from doing it. It would clearly do a lot to move RW forward as internet usage paradigms progress. 22:58, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Are you volunteering to bell the cat, then? 03:07, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I could work on a template from which to derive a CSS protocol. I'll admit I'm not very familiar with MediaWiki skins in PHP at the moment, but I could probably pick up on it. 20:22, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
 * You don't have to. All that you have to do is take the unskinned output (that's MySkin), and write your own css (and js). -- Nx  / talk 20:24, 2 December 2011 (UTC)