Anyonecanedit.org

I absolutely love Vector. I think it’s a fantastic refresh of the classic Monobook skin and I wouldn’t mind seeing it as the default skin for MW one day. However, I think it was written very poorly.

The Mediawiki skin system sucks donkey balls. Once upon a time, we had a base skin class called Skin. New skins extended this class and customized the portions they need. Then along came Monobook and the absolute hell that is SkinTemplate. The skin system is now a hybrid: some older skins directly subclass Skin (which is technically correct) and anything more recent (Monobook, Modern, Vector) all subclass SkinTemplate. The problem with SkinTemplate is that it basically forked the skin system. We now have 2 ways to make skins–subclassing either Skin or SkinTemplate–neither of which are terribly intuitive for new users. When Modern was written, it basically made a copy of Monobook, changed a few things and called it a skin.

When the Usability Team set out to write a new skin this was the prime time to make this whole system make sense. Refactoring as much as possible out of the custom skins and unifying the UI across skins as much as possible would be awesome. Killing SkinTemplate with fire would be even better. Sadly, we got another skin built in the same crappy way using SkinTemplate. Even more work to whatever poor soul finally decides to tackle making a sane skin system.

Yesterday I went down to the river with my friend to enjoy the absolutely wonderful weather. It was in the mid-80s, low humidity and the sun was shining. Sat out on the rocks and had a great afternoon. Until we leave.

On the way back, I slipped on a rock and dropped my shirt in the water and got pretty wet. Otherwise ok, I got up and proceeded on. Not ten feet away, I slipped again. This time much harder. I dropped everything in the water, including my phone. I fished it out about 30 seconds later, but it was already off. Now, some 15 hours later, it still wont turn on (but it makes a rather loud buzzing sound when you try to put the battery in). I have declared my G1 dead.

This morning, I remembered I still had my crappy Motorola KRZR lying around. Found it, popped in the SIM card (after some struggling, I couldn’t remember where the SIM card went) and plugged it up–thank god for universal mini-USB chargers these days. Can’t find the battery, so I’ll hop over to T-Mobile later today and buy a fresh one. Hopefully this will all hold together until I can afford a new G1. I don’t like the MyTouch, so I’d rather stick with the G1 for now–unless the Hero comes out soon.

Oh yeah, and I woke up kinda sick this morning. Figures.

I promised some screenshots of Tim’s new installer branch that I’ve been poking at. Here they are.

The first one I’d like to show off (and I think many people will applaud) is that the installer is now able to be translated! Here we’ve got a screenshot of the language selection screen in the installer.

The second image I’d like to show off is the the Database setup screen. It’s gotten a visual overhaul, and only displays the appropriate settings for your particular database of choice.

After selecting the very basic options like a wiki name, we give the user the option to skip the rest and install. This should make life easier for many people who just need a quick-and-dirty setup without all of the extra bells and whistles.

We also display the Release Notes, Readme and License in the actual installer, rather than telling people to read them in a text editor. I did some playing with this the other day, and it’s got a nice clean wiki output. The bug numbers link to the appropriate Bugzilla pages, and the $wgVariables link to their Manual pages on Mediawiki.org. Both I think are nice, if subtle, touches.

The new-installer branch still has a way to go. There’s a list of known issues over at MW.org. School starts back on Thursday, so I won’t be able to pour as much time into this branch as I’d really like over the coming weeks.