[Mediawiki-l] Comment on inteface design

Wed Jun 29 14:45:34 UTC 2005

I wrote:

>> First thing I always do after a version upgrade is hack the login page in
>> to something that looks like this:
>> http://bird.net.au/bird/index.php?title=Special:Userlogin
>> It isn't pretty, but at least it is easier for new non-geek users to
>> understand.

In reply, Phil wrote:

>Looks pretty enough to me. Why don't you submit something similar for the
> official release?

Thanks Phil. Several reasons apply.

1: I'm on 1.45, so it might not work with 1.5. (No plans to upgrade my wiki to
1.5 anytime soon. Upgrading takes a truly horrible amount of admin time, so
I'll probably wait for 1.6.)
2: I got tired of hacking the code about every time I upgraded, so this time
(for the upgrade to 1.45) I did a real quick and dirty job on it, complete with
nasty hard-coded HTML in the php.
3: I have no idea if it works with Monobook or not. Probably not.
4: It would be a trivially easy task for any of the php gurus around here to
duplicate the general look and feel of my login page, but code it better.

On the basic idea of the layout, though, I think that something along the
general lines of my example page would be a good thing.

Splitting the log-on/create account function off into two pages is something I
often thought about, but there are also good reasons to do it all-in-one. The
current MediaWiki standard arrangement is good because:

* A single screen is easy for regular users: one link takes you straight to the
login page: click, click, done. No need to decide if you need the login page or
the create account page: it's all one.
* New users get to see the same screen that they will see when they (hopefully)
come back later, after they have created an account. (Giving new users one form
to fill in the first time and then a *different* form the second and subsequent
times really confuses them. I've seen this in action quite a few times now - my
users are not computer savvy; many are elderly.

But the current arrangement is also bad because:

* Too much clutter confuses people, even returning users to begin with.
* New users figure out the username and password part, but often don't get the
need to put the password in twice. Then they come back the next day and try to
put it in twice *again*. It confuses the hell out of them.

That's why I kept the single page, but laid the screen out as you see, with
those gentle hints here and there. "I have an account already" next to the log
in button, for example. So far, it seems to have been a success. I've trialled
it on a couple of new users (i.e., watched over their shoulder and not prompted
them, just let them work stuff out for themselves) and it seems to work much
better than the MediaWiki default or the other versions I've tried out.

Tony