Wikipedia talk:Main page 2020.01 technical update

Roll out test failed
An attempt to roll this out failed, most of the failure condition can be seen here: Special:PermaLink/939044305 still. Additionally, the mobile view dropped the "In the news" section that is currently on the normal main page mobile view. May be CSS collisions? — xaosflux  Talk 00:41, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Ping to . — xaosflux  Talk 00:41, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * "In the news" is in the mobile view but squeezed into a tall column on the far screen right. Stephen 00:50, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * thanks for that, sounding more and more like CSS issues, if anyone has feedback on that it would be most welcome. — xaosflux  Talk 00:51, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * The template styles were not loaded properly. TemplateStyles must be loaded from a template or project namespace for security reasons. Template:Main_Page/styles.css was included, not Main Page/styles.css. Please update the former with the contents of the latter and try again. Jdlrobson (talk) 02:04, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * From mw:Extension:TemplateStyles "the value of the  attribute on the tag is the title of the page, defaulting to the Template namespace. For example,   will load the page "Template:Example/styles.css". Jdlrobson (talk) 02:06, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * thanks for the note, the preview of the old version looks better now as well (CSS has been moved). I'll leave a note on talk:mp and try another attempt tomorrow evening again - want to make sure it is during a time when I can watch for any reports for several hours in a row at least. — xaosflux  Talk 03:18, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Roll out live
The roll out has occurred, the talk page thread is at Talk:Main_Page/Archive_198. — xaosflux  Talk 00:08, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

2nd attempt expectations
After the initial rollout failure, some changes have been made to Main_page_2020.01_technical_update to limit the changes to the minimum possible.

Why
1) English Wikipedia is using a long deprecated feature in MobileFrontend that predates TemplateStyles. This will be phased out during the course of the year. Without these technical changes this will cause huge readability problems with the existing mobile experience (a testurl showing the potential damage will be available from Thursday 20th February providing no train blockers).

2) English Wikipedia's mobile main page only displays "From today's featured article" and "In the news". This technical change will provide the launchpad necessary to display other sections and bring the mobile main page in line with desktop.

3) Timeless relies on a gadget MediaWiki:Gadget-responsiveContentBaseTimeless.css to display content in a responsive manner. This fix will remove the need for this gadget.

How
The Main_page_2020.01_technical_update will introduce TemplateStyles to the main page. Using styling rules that target the mw:Skin:MinervaNeue skin, it will

What
Care has been taken after the last round of feedback to avoid any changes on any skin other than the mobile skin MinervaNeue. There are no expected visual changes on Monobook, Vector, Timeless, CologneBlue or Modern.

This technical change will however cause the following visual changes in mw:Skin:MinervaNeue:
 * Users of the MinervaNeue desktop site on screen resolutions less than 720px, will now only see the sections "From today's featured article" and "In the news". Other MainPage sections must be temporarily re-enabled using the user style . We hope to restore these sections in a later iteration (however we have a "chicken/egg" situation here!
 * When using the mobile site on a screen resolution 720px e.g tablet the main page will now show content side by side.

After these changes have been expected we will communicate further changes and improvements. Jdlrobson (talk) 03:29, 10 February 2020 (UTC)




 * Looking at the feedback, it sounds like one concern was Timeless and Responsive Monobook also began to miss anything other than TFA and ITN, at least at screen widths. They and or others also changed to a 2x1 (or 4x1) at low screen widths. Do I understand correctly that this won't happen anymore? Nil Einne (talk) 05:13, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Correct. This has been avoided in this latest change. This will be limited (unavoidably) to Minerva. I'm not sure if User:Xaosflux has a new update in mind. Jdlrobson (talk) 07:22, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I don't really care either way (and actually do thing the inconsistency is the mobile targeted skins is a bit weird), but it was one area of concern for some. And the more it's a case of purely technical change so for those not working on the coding even if they use unusual skins, they won't even know things changed, the less opportunity there is for objection in general. Minerva is the opposite as I understand it. Since it's what users of the mobile site have experience basically for ever, so needs to preserve the missing TFA & ITN and single column layout to avoid there being an obvious functional and appearance change.. Nil Einne (talk) 02:02, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

2020.01.2
are these the versions that are proposed:
 * 1) Special:PermaLink/940020731 from Main page 2020.01 technical update ==> Main Page
 * 2) Special:PermaLink/940029177 from Main page 2020.01 technical update/styles.css to (what we will fix to be Main Page/styles.css
 * ? — xaosflux  Talk 14:06, 12 February 2020 (UTC)


 * yep! That's correct. Allowing some testing leading up to the change with a specific eye for went wrong last time would also be really helpful given the issues we had last time. Jdlrobson (talk) 22:54, 12 February 2020 (UTC)


 * could we have another go at this? I'd need to add the new coronavirus template changes, but it's of the utmost important I get english wikipedia updated. Many other wikis are using the exact same templates so an update on English would likely lead to many other projects updating and as a result many projects will have more engaging and performant main pages. Let me know what I can do to help move this forward. Jdlrobson (talk) 14:38, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Also Jdlrobson (talk) 14:39, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I think we certainly should, and there will certainly be people screaming about things again....will need to advertise that it is going to happen, then do it, then have a short feedback period for any UNBREAKNOW type problems. Let's go over the plan - need to define:


 * 1) Where is the current "What to expect" documentation?
 * 2) Where are the current versions of on-wiki changes needed?
 * 3) Who will make the back-end change?
 * 4) What is the fall-back plan for the back end change for issues?
 * — xaosflux  Talk 14:57, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , I've replied on Talk:Main_Page I wasn't aware of that thread and that solution seems much less risky. Jdlrobson (talk) 18:30, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * What is the issue with my css changes? I tested them with other skins I saw no issues. – Brandon XLF  (talk) 18:05, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Hey. That template was stacking the content on Vector. Sadly a bunch of people complained about this and that's what led to the last change being rolled back. I suggest we go with Main_Page/sandbox for now and then iterate from there. Having a stylesheet will allow us to do things piecemeal e.g. stacking boxes on small screens of Vector and unstacking them on Minerva tablet. Jdlrobson (talk) 18:32, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Changes
I've made a few changes to this page and the styles.css page: – Brandon XLF  (talk) 05:09, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
 * More sections on mobile (although DYK is before ITN)
 * Mobile is always one columns (text is always wide enough to support this)
 * Allow other skins to become one column if compressed
 * Enabled responsive banner
 * Mini banner on mobile
 * Add colour to minerva (under the h2s)


 * It should be noted that the :not CSS selectors do not work with older versions of IE. – Brandon XLF  (talk) 16:01, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Archived Main Page discussion
For the record:. —⁠andrybak (talk) 09:53, 17 May 2020 (UTC)