Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to our second technical update blog for June! For the returning readers, feel free to skip the intro as you know what I'll be saying. For the new readers though, glad to have you join us for our bi-weekly (every two weeks for clarity) tech blog in which I'll be sharing a selection of user-relevant bug fixes, experiments, and platform changes to keep you updated on what lives on the Fandom site. Any comments and questions you may have, let me know in the comments. That's enough recap from me, here are the updates from the past two weeks!
The "Recent Images", "Popular Pages", and "Others Like You Also Viewed" in their new light and dark design
Fandom offers several widgets in the right rail to help users discover the wiki content, such as the "Recent Images", "Popular Pages", and "Others Like You Also Viewed" widgets. A recurring user feedback was that these elements were not distinct enough from user-curated wiki content and even ads. To remedy that, as well as have an increased brand awareness, these widgets received a makeover to now all have the same design that prominently features the Fandom brand colors and heart icon. However, communities can tweak the default use of the brand colors to something more to their liking if desired. The User Experience team experimented with the new design to ensure it didn't discourage users from engaging with articles. After the data showed a slight increase in pageviews (0.21% for Popular Pages and 0.36% for Recent Images), the redesign for all three widgets was rolled out site-wide earlier this week. Read more about the redesign of the "Popular Pages", "Recent Images" and "Others Like You Viewed" widgets.
Recent Fixes[]
On historically Gamepedia wikis with anon editing disabled, anonymous users will again see the pencil icon rather than "editedit source" as the header entry point.
You can again properly save changes made to the user namespace on the desktop on mobile layout.
The space on the left side of the lists on the RecentChanges, History, and Contributions pages has been reduced.
Fixed the bug in the discussion service that prevented showing post history entries if only the attachment was changed.
Users will no longer lose focus on the selected marker after entering/closing the full screen option with Interactive Maps.
Thanks to the community testing, we could already fix some bugs related to the new embedded Maps feature:
A security vulnerability was detected and fixed.
The embedded version of the map did not update after an edit.
Fixes in Development[]
When there are a lot of references contained within a scroll box, clicking a reference link to one within this box currently does not work properly. We're working to remedy this.
More a change than a bug fix, but we're working on supporting YouTube Shorts URLs to be used within the EmbedVideo template. Right now, the only way to embed YouTube Shorts is by taking its ID and formatting it in the normal YouTube URL, though this extra step will soon be unnecessary.
[Experiment Done] Maps Progress Tracking redesign: Having tested out several designs for marker progress markers on gaming wikis, we'll now be processing the data to decide on 1. a winning design to move forward with and 2. the options to scale out this feature to all wikis using Interactive Maps. Right now, all markers where this feature is enabled have a button to check said marker as āmark as completeā. Some of the things we're looking into is providing the map creators with the option to decide on a map-by-map basis whether that map needs progress marking, as well as the ability to change the wording of the button. Read more about the Maps Progress Tracking redesign experiment
[Test Ongoing] Maps Embeds: Since last Thursday, selected wiki communities have the option to embed their Interactive Maps in more defined ways than the default full view. These live-tests allow for a close collaboration between Fandom and the users to gather feedback, fix bugs, and add new features based on user suggestions. More work now remains to be done due to this successful relationship before we can release these embed options site-wide. Read more about the potential ways to embed an Interactive Map.
[Security Improvement] Forcing https urls by applying HSTS test: It's been years since we started using encrypted https urls as the primary to serve content. However, http links were still accepted, evaluated, and sometimes used to present content over unencrypted connections. We now plan to change this by enabling HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS). This web security policy and web server directive forces the website to load on HTTPS protocol and disregards any script calling to load any of the website content over HTTP protocol. We are testing this change in stages over the course of weeks, starting with the smaller wikis, then medium, and end with our big hitters. We will be monitoring for potential side-effects, though this test is in the background and should normally pass you by unnoticed.
Example of the structured quote syntax with its output
[Test Ongoing] Structured Quotes: With structured data and the ability to be able to machine-read the content provided becoming more and more important on the internet these days, our work on providing Structured Quotes continues with the help of several users from different communities. Thanks to their invaluable input, we have already weeded out some bugs and added some necessary improvements to ensure this is a tool to the utmost liking of our userbase, though further testing is needed. You can find more details about this in the last tech blog and anyone new to this, don't hesitate to check out the very aptly named Structured Quotes TEST Wiki, where you're free to create your own structured quote and play around with it. Read the Structured Quotes help page for more information.
[Test Expanded] Testing CodeMirror on the 2017 Visual Editor - source mode: We've referenced the CodeMirror update in several tech blogs throughout this year already. As a reminder, it is an extension providing syntax highlighting in MediaWiki's wikitext editor. This update proved more challenging than anticipated. For the 2010 source editor, we started testing more than a month ago with the help of some willing test communities. Thanks to their valuable feedback, we are now happy to report that the testing for the 2017 visual editor - source mode commenced earlier this week, bringing us all a step closer to a site-wide release.
The old (top) and preliminary mock of the new (bottom) design
[Update] Updating the "closed wiki" page: For years, the "closed wiki" page has been feeling like it doesn't belong on the current version of Fandom, even showing a mock of a wiki that isn't one but two skins ago. We're not the only ones who noticed, so acting on the feedback we received from you all about this lately, we're giving this page the much needed updated it required. Read more about the "Closed Wiki" page redesign.
[Experiment Expanded] Other variants for the Mobile Drawer: Continuing our efforts to declutter the mobile reading experience through a "drawer" that contains all Fandomās "non-wiki" features and advertisements, we'll be testing out two other variants. One variant will have the drawer be collapsed upon page load to open up when the page is scrolled down midway through the first paragraph. The second variant will have the drawer be collapsed upon page load, and it will stay collapsed unless it is interacted with.
That's it for the past weeks! Per usual, if you encounter something that feels off about the platform, please report it by sending in a bug report, reach out to your Community Manager, contact the Product Support Owner on their Wall/talk page, or just simply sound off in the comments here. As always, thank you for helping us by continuing to communicate. Happy editing and Happy Pride, everyone!
Lostris is a Wiki Team member at Fandom. When not online, she lives to travel, play roller derby, and escape the world by watching anything that has a good plot, good acting, and preferably a ton of sassy one-liners.
