[Design] MediaWiki UI is broken - let's fix it.

[Jon Robson]

tldr: Help me find a way forward to get the inadequacies of MediaWiki
UI in front of people and get those issues addressed so we have a more
consistent MediaWiki;

####
I wrote a patch which applies MediaWiki UI everywhere and got merged [1].
It highlights lots of issues [2] with it in existing form.

I've enabled it by default on MobileFrontend for mobile pages [3],
since most pages didn't load any styles by default for desktop special
pages.

I'm getting early indication this is a useful technique as already I'm
hearing issues about certain pages from Matt Flaschen.

I would thus like to find a way to get this global enabled safely in a
desktop environment. My hunch is that if we make these issues more
visible to developers, designers and product owners, on the long term
we will get much more consistency.

There are 4 ways we can do this desktop enabling:
1) Create a beta feature that turns the styles on. e.g. UI refresh
2) Enable it on betalabs, so we are constantly reminded about the
brokenness. e.g. https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/154972
3) Run on a separate test instance.
4) Drop the global and just do it in desktop

My worry about 3 is it won't get used, bugs won't get filed. Nothing
will change.

Matt raised a valid concern about 2 in that betalabs should reflect
our code going out to production, but I personally think it is the
best place to do this and since we are only changing classes I believe
disruption will be relatively minimal.
1 has the advantage of getting us feedback from more people and for
projects to begin using it on content pages if they so wish.
4 is scary and is likely to be a bumpy ride as there are lots of
issues, although on the plus side I imagine would trigger lots of
follow up patches. It is not an approach we have ever tried in
conservative MediaWiki land :)

[1] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/150635
[2] Issues:
* Certain elements have been designed for a specific use case and
don't really work outside that use case e.g. the mediawiki ui
checkboxes are too big, especially when used alongside others.
* The blue bar on the left of input fields sometimes
* We've never done an audit of forms to clarify which forms are
destructive or constructive.
* Some forms have unnecessary buttons e.g. the cancel button in
http://en.m.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:ChangeEmail
* Some forms have constructive buttons instead of destructive.
* Certain elements are not featured in mediawiki ui (select elements
and radio inputs most notably)
[3] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/150636

[Matthew Flaschen]

Post by Jon Robson
1) Create a beta feature that turns the styles on. e.g. UI refresh

I have concerns about a BetaFeature for this type of change.

Post by Jon Robson
2) Enable it on betalabs, so we are constantly reminded about the
brokenness. e.g. https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/154972

Jon summarized my issues with this well.

Post by Jon Robson
3) Run on a separate test instance.

Done, at http://mwui.wmflabs.org/wiki/Main_Page . Please test (don't
worry about breaking the wiki, it's purely a test wiki, so click around
and do what you want).

Post by Jon Robson
4) Drop the global and just do it in desktop

Obviously, we want to do this sooner rather than later. I expect we'll
have worked out the most obvious kinks before this, but a couple will
slip through and that's life.

Post by Jon Robson
* The blue bar on the left of input fields sometimes

What do you mean this is an issue? Are you referring to the WikiEditor
bad interaction?

Post by Jon Robson
* We've never done an audit of forms to clarify which forms are
destructive or constructive.

We've actually started this (mostly Jared), but it's true most of the
pages aren't done.. See
https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/MediaWiki_UI_Standardization_hack4.
Mostly that's an audit of where MW UI is already used, but you can see
earlier efforts to implement a couple pages (e.g. edit).

Post by Jon Robson
* Some forms have unnecessary buttons e.g. the cancel button in
http://en.m.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:ChangeEmail
* Some forms have constructive buttons instead of destructive.

We may want to revisit how we're doing defaults, and default to neutral,
rather than constructive. Either way, we'll have overrides. The only
difference is what happens if we miss one.

Post by Jon Robson
* Certain elements are not featured in mediawiki ui (select elements
and radio inputs most notably)
[3] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/150636

There are also portions of the spec that aren't implemented, which is
problematic in some cases (e.g. the checkboxes are a little
green-overwhelming when there's more than one) due to
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69200 .

Matt Flaschen