[Design] Winter: not right rail

[Amir E. Aharoni]

Hi,

This is a follow-up to Brandon's Wikimania talk about Winter.

Winter has an important concept of "the right rail". I like the "rail" part
of the name, because it's a nice departure from "bar", but the "right" part
is wrong for several reasons:

1. It's "left" in Arabic.

2. It can be misunderstood as "correct".

3. Most importantly, it doesn't say what is the rail for.

What is it for, really? Data, tools, info, navigation, aids, knowledge,
gallery? I don't have a strongly preferred name myself. "Tools" is pretty
close, but an infobox is not exactly a tool. Other suggestion are welcome.

I should also mention that we have a pretty similar bar (rail? column?) in
the ContentTranslation extension. It shows information about words,
translations, and tools to control the machine translation. In the Language
team we usually call it the "tools column".

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · א־מ֮י׹ אֱל֎ישׁ֞ע אַהֲךוֹנ֎י
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
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[May Tee-Galloway]

That space, currently called right rail, is for supplementary knowledge
that accompany an article a user is interacting with. It could be education
on how to edit, info from other sister projects, or even current hot
conversations in Flow page, etc.

Apart from just article page, this can also be available for Flow boards,
edit interfaces, or any other pages where supplementary information is
relevant, needed, and helpful. I would call it supplementary information
rail but that's long winded and generic.

mm

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 6:20 PM, Amir E. Aharoni <

Post by Amir E. Aharoni
Hi,
This is a follow-up to Brandon's Wikimania talk about Winter.
Winter has an important concept of "the right rail". I like the "rail"
part of the name, because it's a nice departure from "bar", but the "right"
1. It's "left" in Arabic.
2. It can be misunderstood as "correct".
3. Most importantly, it doesn't say what is the rail for.
What is it for, really? Data, tools, info, navigation, aids, knowledge,
gallery? I don't have a strongly preferred name myself. "Tools" is pretty
close, but an infobox is not exactly a tool. Other suggestion are welcome.
I should also mention that we have a pretty similar bar (rail? column?) in
the ContentTranslation extension. It shows information about words,
translations, and tools to control the machine translation. In the Language
team we usually call it the "tools column".
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · א־מ֮י׹ אֱל֎ישׁ֞ע אַהֲךוֹנ֎י
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
_______________________________________________
Design mailing list
Design at lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design

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[Jared Zimmerman]

I think your right about the rail but let's not call it something so utilitarian as tools. Too boring. Also the content translation rail is based on the same concept that the design team arrived at a while back. So it's just a pattern we're all using.

Sent while mobile

Post by Amir E. Aharoni
Hi,
This is a follow-up to Brandon's Wikimania talk about Winter.
1. It's "left" in Arabic.
2. It can be misunderstood as "correct".
3. Most importantly, it doesn't say what is the rail for.
What is it for, really? Data, tools, info, navigation, aids, knowledge, gallery? I don't have a strongly preferred name myself. "Tools" is pretty close, but an infobox is not exactly a tool. Other suggestion are welcome.
I should also mention that we have a pretty similar bar (rail? column?) in the ContentTranslation extension. It shows information about words, translations, and tools to control the machine translation. In the Language team we usually call it the "tools column".
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · א־מ֮י׹ אֱל֎ישׁ֞ע אַהֲךוֹנ֎י
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
_______________________________________________
Design mailing list
Design at lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design

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[Guillaume Paumier]

Hi,

During the session, someone called it "the side rail".

Pros: It's directionality-agnostic, and can refer both to layout and "side
content".

Con: It might be too similar to the existing "sidebar", especially after it
passes through the localization process.

A similar possibility would be "the aside", with the same pros, not the
con, and the added consistency with the HTML5 tag.

Post by Jared Zimmerman
I think your right about the rail but let's not call it something so
utilitarian as tools. Too boring. Also the content translation rail is
based on the same concept that the design team arrived at a while back. So
it's just a pattern we're all using.
Sent while mobile
On Aug 8, 2014, at 6:20 PM, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni at mail.huji.ac.il
Hi,
This is a follow-up to Brandon's Wikimania talk about Winter.
Winter has an important concept of "the right rail". I like the "rail"
part of the name, because it's a nice departure from "bar", but the "right"
1. It's "left" in Arabic.
2. It can be misunderstood as "correct".
3. Most importantly, it doesn't say what is the rail for.
What is it for, really? Data, tools, info, navigation, aids, knowledge,
gallery? I don't have a strongly preferred name myself. "Tools" is pretty
close, but an infobox is not exactly a tool. Other suggestion are welcome.
I should also mention that we have a pretty similar bar (rail? column?) in
the ContentTranslation extension. It shows information about words,
translations, and tools to control the machine translation. In the Language
team we usually call it the "tools column".
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · א־מ֮י׹ אֱל֎ישׁ֞ע אַהֲךוֹנ֎י
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
_______________________________________________
Design mailing list
Design at lists.wikimedia.org
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','Design at lists.wikimedia.org');>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/design

[Ori Livneh]

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 8:20 PM, Amir E. Aharoni <

Post by Amir E. Aharoni
Hi,
This is a follow-up to Brandon's Wikimania talk about Winter.
Winter has an important concept of "the right rail". I like the "rail"
part of the name, because it's a nice departure from "bar", but the "right"
1. It's "left" in Arabic.

Can't it simply be known as "the left rail" in Arabic, then?
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[Amir E. Aharoni]

Post by Ori Livneh
On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 8:20 PM, Amir E. Aharoni <

Post by Amir E. Aharoni
Hi,
This is a follow-up to Brandon's Wikimania talk about Winter.
Winter has an important concept of "the right rail". I like the "rail"

part of the name, because it's a nice departure from "bar", but the "right"

Post by Ori Livneh

Post by Amir E. Aharoni
1. It's "left" in Arabic.

Can't it simply be known as "the left rail" in Arabic, then?

No, because a lot of speakers of RTL languages will read emails, blog posts
and village pump notifications about it in English and will try to
understand how it applies to their projects. Let's try to prevent the
confusion from the start.

Post by Ori Livneh
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[Isarra Yos]

בתאךיך 10 באוג 2014 23:01, "Ori Livneh" <ori at wikimedia.org

Post by Ori Livneh
Can't it simply be known as "the left rail" in Arabic, then?

No, because a lot of speakers of RTL languages will read emails, blog
posts and village pump notifications about it in English and will try
to understand how it applies to their projects. Let's try to prevent
the confusion from the start.

Do they not notice that the interface is flipped between LTR and RTL
languages? Intuitively it seems like that would be the assumption, that
right would simply become left.

That said, it does seem like a better solution would just be to refer to
the thing by its function rather than position anyway, mind you.
Functions are important, and if they're not important, well, that's a
problem all by itself.

-I
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[Amir E. Aharoni]

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · א־מ֮י׹ אֱל֎ישׁ֞ע אַהֲךוֹנ֎י
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬

Post by Amir E. Aharoni

Post by Ori Livneh
Can't it simply be known as "the left rail" in Arabic, then?

No, because a lot of speakers of RTL languages will read emails, blog posts
and village pump notifications about it in English and will try to
understand how it applies to their projects. Let's try to prevent the
confusion from the start.
Do they not notice that the interface is flipped between LTR and RTL
languages? Intuitively it seems like that would be the assumption, that
right would simply become left.

This requires considerable extra mental processing.

Post by Amir E. Aharoni
That said, it does seem like a better solution would just be to refer to

the

Post by Amir E. Aharoni
thing by its function rather than position anyway, mind you. Functions are
important, and if they're not important, well, that's a problem all by
itself.

Precisely. Function is by definition more meaningful that "left" and
"right".
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[Nihiltres]

Precisely. Function is by definition more meaningful that "left" and "right".

It seems to me like the right rail as I've seen it so far contains *metadata*, as contrasted with the older (left-hand in LTR) "sidebar", which seems more focused on *navigation*. "Metadata rail" isn't perfect, but it seems close enough based on what I understand it to contain so far: languages, interproject links, infoboxes, subject navboxes 
 stuff that's mostly not article content directly, but much closer to article content than the boilerplate navigation we'd expect in the sidebar.

[Jared Zimmerman]

Nihiltres,

I like that thinking, we're thinking of one aspect of the *rail being "enrichment" and "explorations" but metadata is partly covered in that, in some cases things like automated galleries from commons or wiktionary definitions aren't strictly metadata (more enrichment) but metarail is beginning to differentiate the content from a normal navigation component.

Sent while mobile

Post by Nihiltres

Precisely. Function is by definition more meaningful that "left" and "right".

It seems to me like the right rail as I've seen it so far contains *metadata*, as contrasted with the older (left-hand in LTR) "sidebar", which seems more focused on *navigation*. "Metadata rail" isn't perfect, but it seems close enough based on what I understand it to contain so far: languages, interproject links, infoboxes, subject navboxes 
 stuff that's mostly not article content directly, but much closer to article content than the boilerplate navigation we'd expect in the sidebar.
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[Brandon Harris]

Post by Jared Zimmerman
metarail

"Metarail" sounds like the name of a 1990s era action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and maybe someone from Full House.

---
Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation

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