I am starting to work on designing (and creating) a completely new,
professional layout engine for all wikimedia websites that should be
launched with phase IV of the software.
First, from what I understand, the main idea for phase IV is that all
wikipedias sit on a single software installation (and that's great!), I
will add: (Just to give the general direction to tease you up)
* Layout should be separated completely from the PHP code. I will check
out a template engine like smarty (
http://smarty.php.net/) to see how to
do that effectively.
* Site look will be redesigned to fit the 21st century (new "kick-ass"
look, yes that's its name :) ). The main problem with all current
designs is that they basically still think in terms of "UseModWiki". ie.
sooooo 95' single content HTML with no color, dynamics, and no usability
features and even GodDamnHorribleCamelCase.
I think more in terms of making a Content Management System, dynamic
content type layout, which means:
* Boxes, structure and order. Everything on the page is structured
dynamically. (every editable box can have a cute "edit" and "print"
button on the top right corner, for example)
* Graphics, color, icons, friendliness, [put a cool thing here], ... (of
course not too much stickyness .. :-))
* A page can present more than just the article. Additional content may
be: TOC on the side box. Previous versions. Recent changes,
announcements, news, etc. (whatever we'll choose, or the user will
customize)
* No more dedicated stand-alone "special pages". These are important
features that deserve to be integrated (somehow) into the engine itself.
ie. forget those yellow backgrounds etc. etc.
* Discussions can be integrated into the layout. ie. they may sit after
the article itself like blogs do, and may or may not be a wiki. (just an
idea)
* Interface can change to whatever language the user specifies in their
preferences. A side effect of the single installation, a user will able
to work, say on an article in Swedish with the English interface..
(don't flame me for this, I don't know if technically it would be
viable, just giving a direction...)
* W3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional/CSS. A really basic one for a modern site
(I even use the strict XHTML 1.1 on my site). And yes, I will make sure
it uses features that are compatible with browsers from IE 4.0+ and
Netscape 6. See
http://www.w3.org/ and
http://www.w3schools.com/
* etc. etc. etc..
See
http://www22.brinkster.com/rotemdan/Wikipedia-Vorbis-site-rip.html
for a little inspiration of what I'm talking about. (I basically ripped
the vorbis site, pasted the seinfeld article and made some changes to
the text, there's still junk on the bottom and side).
This is an enormous task. But I really think this encyclopedia deserves
to look like a modern site. I predict it will take about 2-3 months to
formulate the main targets and to understand what I'm dealing with. (and
to have a small working version of the engine)
I have enough PHP skills (but not too much free time as I'm a full-time
student) to make a basic version of a content system. I was employed for
about about a year in a software company (a couple of years ago) and
worked with ASP and SQL a lot so I know a bit about dynamic content. (I
think I'm getting the PHP thing..)
If anyone is interested in working on this or a similar project, please
let me know. Also, please give me a complete list of the Phase IV design
targets so I can generally understand how exactly the new website would
be formed.
Cheers,
Rotem
P.S: please don't start coming with specific suggestions on how this and
that feature should/shouldn't be/look/behave. The time spent on
discussions should be put in actually writing the PHP/XML code (and
applying some common sense). Replying to long messages on mailing lists
is really time consuming for me. I would just rather work on a preview
version/design etc. get feedback, work, get feedback etc..