[Design] Living style guide

[MZMcBride]

Hi.

Re: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Design/Living_style_guide

This page is kind of sad right now. It references
<http://tools.wmflabs.org/styleguide> pretty heavily, but my understanding
from <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T88036> is that
<http://living-style-guide.wmflabs.org> is the actual style guide now? I'm
not really sure and I'm worried that if I can't keep up, nobody else
stands a chance! ;-) But really, we want to make sure everyone is
discussing the same project.

It would be great if someone more knowledgable than me (about the living
style guide!) could update the wiki page and the description of
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/living-style-guide/>, at least with
the best URL, if tools.wmflabs.org/styleguide is no longer it.

MZMcBride

[Ryan Kaldari]

The whole point of having a living style guide was to prevent the endless
proliferation of outdated MediaWiki style guides (as we were creating about
1 a year for a while). Now we're somehow doing the same thing yet again. Is
it really impossible for us to stick to a single style guide?

Post by MZMcBride
Hi.
Re: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Design/Living_style_guide
This page is kind of sad right now. It references
<http://tools.wmflabs.org/styleguide> pretty heavily, but my understanding
from <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T88036> is that
<http://living-style-guide.wmflabs.org> is the actual style guide now? I'm
not really sure and I'm worried that if I can't keep up, nobody else
stands a chance! ;-) But really, we want to make sure everyone is
discussing the same project.
It would be great if someone more knowledgable than me (about the living
style guide!) could update the wiki page and the description of
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/living-style-guide/>, at least with
the best URL, if tools.wmflabs.org/styleguide is no longer it.
MZMcBride
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[Erik Moeller]

This has actually been a long time coming, and will be the canonical LSG.
It's built into MediaWiki, supports live controls and code snippets, and
uses OOjs UI. There's still a lot of stuff missing and neither design nor
content are final.

With that said, we can do a better job proactively communicating the
progress of this effort, deprecating old content, and keeping the wiki
up-to-date. I would ask all members of the UX team to help with that.

Erik

[Ryan Kaldari]

I'm all for updating the style guide. But what I don't understand is why we
have to keep setting up competing style guides in different locations. This
does nothing but confuse people.

Post by Erik Moeller
This has actually been a long time coming, and will be the canonical LSG.
It's built into MediaWiki, supports live controls and code snippets, and
uses OOjs UI. There's still a lot of stuff missing and neither design nor
content are final.
With that said, we can do a better job proactively communicating the
progress of this effort, deprecating old content, and keeping the wiki
up-to-date. I would ask all members of the UX team to help with that.
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Product & Strategy, Wikimedia Foundation
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[Jared Zimmerman]

Ryan, we'll sort through and decommissioned all the other guides when we
launch this one, any help tracking all of the ones out there in the wild is
appreciated.
​

[MZMcBride]

Post by Jared Zimmerman
Ryan, we'll sort through and decommissioned all the other guides when we
launch this one, any help tracking all of the ones out there in the wild
is appreciated.

​
My goal at the moment is to get these two pages updated:

* https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Design/Living_style_guide
* https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/living-style-guide/

We're a few replies deep in this thread and I still don't know where the
One True Living Style Guide lives. :-/ Every instance of the living style
guide's documentation should include links to the living style guide and
its source code, in my opinion. There's too much confusion here currently
and we want to (try to) ensure we're all talking about the same project.

MZMcBride

[S Page]

Post by MZMcBride
We're a few replies deep in this thread and I still don't know where the
One True Living Style Guide lives. :-/

Yes it's confusing. The other discussion on the design list, in
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/design/2015-February/002246.html is
helpful.

Post by MZMcBride
* https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Design/Living_style_guide

this now mentions both.

I also edited https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/OOjs_UI to mention the
MediaWiki theme in 1.25, and https://living-style-guide.wmflabs (Andrew,
Prateek, Trevor, it's your call when to remove the "early draft" caveats.)

The reality is some forms in core, 16 extensions, and an unknown number of
on-wiki gadgets use the mediawiki.ui* modules, so IMO we shouldn't
eliminate a fine generated demonstration of how it works. But we should be
clear that going forward, using OOjs UI will be the way to UX consistency.
(I'm still unclear about the timing of "going forward" and "will".)

Every instance of the living style guide's documentation should include

Post by MZMcBride
links to the living style guide and its source code, in my opinion.

I'm not sure what you mean, but that sounds right.

More to do:
* revamping https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_UI , I've made a few
edits already
* mention OOjs UI in the mediawiki.ui LSG (gerrit patch to
resources/src/mediawiki.ui welcome)

Thanks for caring!

[Erik Moeller]

Post by S Page
* mention OOjs UI in the mediawiki.ui LSG (gerrit patch to
resources/src/mediawiki.ui welcome)

What's the source for the https://tools.wmflabs.org/styleguide/
landing page so we can make it not-awful if we're going to keep it
around for a while longer while mediawiki.ui is still in use?

Erik

[Ryan Kaldari]

Post by Erik Moeller

Post by S Page
* mention OOjs UI in the mediawiki.ui LSG (gerrit patch to
resources/src/mediawiki.ui welcome)

What's the source for the https://tools.wmflabs.org/styleguide/
landing page so we can make it not-awful if we're going to keep it
around for a while longer while mediawiki.ui is still in use?

It's in the 'styleguide' project on tools labs, which is maintained by S,
Prateek, JonR, and MattF.

Kaldari

[Prateek Saxena]

Sorry for the late reply.

Post by MZMcBride
* https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Design/Living_style_guide
* https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/living-style-guide/

I updated these pages after S's initial edits. I added the
technologies being used and the topics we are planning to cover. Is
there anything else that I should add?

Post by MZMcBride
I'm all for updating the style guide. But what I don't understand is why we
have to keep setting up competing style guides in different locations. This
does nothing but confuse people.

I don't think they are competing style guides, they are just different
for different technologies (the mediawiki.ui LESS files and the
MediaWiki theme in OOjs UI). They still have (or at least strive to
have) the same design. The reason we setup a new one was due to the
limitations of KSS. OOjs UI has JavaScript widgets that can't be
documented with KSS. We also wanted to add non-CSS documentation like
a primer on typography and iconography but KSS allows for only on
Markdown file in the introduction, making it difficult to achieve
this.

I agree that it confuses people :( I hope documentation helps! I am
happy to clarify anywhere else you might think it'll help.

Post by MZMcBride
What's the source for the https://tools.wmflabs.org/styleguide/
landing page so we can make it not-awful if we're going to keep it
around for a while longer while mediawiki.ui is still in use?

Its not-awful now.


—prtksxna

[Erik Moeller]

Post by Prateek Saxena

Post by Erik Moeller
What's the source for the https://tools.wmflabs.org/styleguide/
landing page so we can make it not-awful if we're going to keep it

Its not-awful now.

Thanks for prettying it up a little. Could you make the following
additional changes:

- Add introduction: "This page describes the use of the mediawiki.ui styles
available as LESS files in MediaWiki core. Longer term, the goal is to
convert controls over to the use of <a href="
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/OOjs_UI">OOjs UI</a>, which is a library
available in PHP and JavaScript, and which supplies multiple themes,
including a MediaWiki theme consistent with these styles. A living style
guide based on OOjs UI can be found <a href="
http://living-style-guide.wmflabs.org/wiki/Main_Page">here</a>."

Obviously feel free to tweak the language if anything is inaccurate.

- Remove the "Coming" section, unless there's relevant content (currently
it leads to a 404).

Ironically, the "mobile" section is currently not mobile-friendly. Is it
still relevant?

Thanks,

Erik

[Ryan Kaldari]

Post by Erik Moeller
- Add introduction: "This page describes the use of the mediawiki.ui
styles available as LESS files in MediaWiki core. Longer term, the goal is
to convert controls over to the use of <a href="
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/OOjs_UI">OOjs UI</a>, which is a library
available in PHP and JavaScript, and which supplies multiple themes,
including a MediaWiki theme consistent with these styles. A living style
guide based on OOjs UI can be found <a href="
http://living-style-guide.wmflabs.org/wiki/Main_Page">here</a>."

I was about to suggest the same thing.

Ironically, the "mobile" section is currently not mobile-friendly. Is it

Post by Erik Moeller
still relevant?

Yes, this is still the primary style guide used for mobile development.

I created a Phabricator task for the various style inconsistencies between
mediawiki.ui and OOjs UI: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T88449. It
looks like Prateek and May are already working on it :) Thanks guys!

Kaldari

[Prateek Saxena]

Post by Erik Moeller
- Add introduction: "This page describes the use of the mediawiki.ui styles
available as LESS files in MediaWiki core. Longer term, the goal is to
convert controls over to the use of <a
href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/OOjs_UI">OOjs UI</a>, which is a
library available in PHP and JavaScript, and which supplies multiple themes,
including a MediaWiki theme consistent with these styles. A living style
guide based on OOjs UI can be found <a
href="http://living-style-guide.wmflabs.org/wiki/Main_Page">here</a>."

Done. Thanks Erik!

Post by Erik Moeller
- Remove the "Coming" section, unless there's relevant content (currently it
leads to a 404).

S, do you know how these were being generated?

[S Page]

Post by Erik Moeller

Post by Erik Moeller
- Remove the "Coming" section, unless there's relevant content

(currently it

Post by Erik Moeller
leads to a 404).

I removed it. That was when Flow's UI was in advance of the styles in core.

Post by Erik Moeller
S, do you know how these were being generated?

Adjust the files in the styleguide project on tools-login.wmflabs.org to
build something different, copy the generated core/docs/kss/static/
somewhere, add a link to public_html/index.html

I manually rebuilt the MobileFrontend KSS. The automated script needs a
newer version of npm than is on tools-login,
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T89093

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

The possibly-living (or not) style guide.

Nemo

[Max]

Schrodinger's Styleguide

max

Post by Federico Leva (Nemo)
The possibly-living (or not) style guide.
Nemo
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