Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-03-29/Technology report


 * I am surprised to be the first to comment. I don't much mess with skins, partly because I teach newbies and they oughtn't bother their pretty heads by seeing a strange screen on my laptop. However, Timeless managed to get onto Signpost, which might mean it's important. I put it in Simple English WP only, which is my usual testbed.


 * I too shall first say what's good, then make a longer list of disappointments. Yes, it is attractive on a small screen, in my case the 10 inch iPad. The switch between having and not having a left panel is useful when it is made at the right time, which is usually. As a heavy Watchlist user I was surprised to have to bring up a menu to see that, but after a couple days it doesn't seem so strange. However, when I reach the Watchlist, that's where the disappointments start.
 * First little item, I am accustomed when looking at the Diff list of an article, to see the bullets at the left in different colors depending on whether the change happened before or after my last view of the page. Now the bullets are all black.
 * Bigger problem, the right panel. When using Contr-scroll (Windows) to shrink the font and see more items, suddenly the Watchlist acquires a right panel. The panel has very few items, but it squeezes the list, thus defeating my purpose. I'd rather there were no right panel, ever. Well, I don't much mind the right panel squeezing the text when reading an article, but on the other hand I never think the right panel is doing me any good. Everything ought to be on the left panel or the top. Of course, this is not just a little bug like the difflist color problem; I appreciate that it's a carefully designed feature. Surely someone besides the industrious designer thinks it a good feature; for me it's just an irritant.
 * Biggest problem for my use in Commons, there is no Hotcat. That's deadly for me, in that particular wiki where I spend close to half my editorial time. I assume that's another bug, perhaps more difficult to fix than the one about the difflist colors.
 * So, that's it for this evening. Two items that I call bugs, and one design decision with which I firmly disagree. Jim.henderson (talk) 01:20, 1 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I like the design of it, but there are some things that don't make any sense (perhaps an oversight). As an example, when on a user page there's no "User contributions" in either the left or right toolbar. Sincerely, InsaneHacker (💬) 21:02, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the article! I'm glad to see the skin being given some attention, since Timeless is by far my favorite skin among the Special:Preferences options and the one I use as my default. Overall, I have been very satisfied with the design (which I consider far more modern than Modern), though I have encountered some bugs with it. For example, sometimes the search prediction box overlay won't retract even when clicking off the search bar. Usually, however, deleting all text in the search bar solves that. Recently (and far more frustratingly), it appears that indenting for subsections in the table of contents on articles has disappeared entirely, at least for me, which has been a frequent annoyance that slows down navigation. I have even considered switching skins entirely due to this issue alone. Were it not for the fact that there is no clear and active place for me to report these issues, I would do so. They are basically my only complaints with an otherwise excellent skin. ―Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 15:51, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I have always used Monobook and when I venture out to test other skins they are extremely annoying and unsightly (at least to me). Many skins lose the Wikipedia symbol, others hide a great deal, and, of course, the mobile skins ban templates, categories, and other essential components of Wikipedia. Hard to fathom why Monobook isn't the default skin, but to each his own. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:56, 10 April 2018 (UTC)