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Wikimedia Mobile engineering/India Hackathon 2011

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This page is an archive of the mobile features list for the Hackathon in Mumbai in November, 2011.

Help make mobile Wikipedia a world-class mobile experience. There is so much to do, and the results will directly benefit users in India. Here is a high-level summary:

  • Participatory features and apps - Make mobile Wikipedia editing-friendly and more engaging, in ways that really make sense on mobile devices. These features are among the most groundbreaking in the Mediawiki world - help our mission of retaining and growing the editor user base!
  • Carrier solutions - Wikimedia staff are actively engaging carriers around the world in groundbreaking projects such as WIkipedia Zero, which gives mobile users in developing countries free access to Wikipedia - that includes India!
  • UI and Usability - Our UI experts will be on hand to help you craft some exciting changes to the overall user experience and any new ideas you may have.
  • Languages on mobile - Among other vital tasks, help create the page visitors see when they access Wikipedia in India - feature Indic languages and tailor the design to an Indian audience.

Key resources

[edit]

Please use bug reports to track progress and make comments.

Features that were worked on at the Hackathon are prefixed with H.

Participatory features and apps

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Most of these features rely on mobile login, which is in progress.

H * Articles near me missing photos - part of the Weekend of Code challenge

H * Photo upload

    • Depends on improved photo handling, see UI
    • Weekend of Code submissions
      • "Share with Commons" app:
        • On Android Market: [1]
        • On github: [2]
        • The application adds a "Share with Wikimedia Commons" option to the "Share with" menu that's available in the Android Gallery app. That is, when you're viewing a picture on your phone, you can easily upload that particular picture to Commons through the same process that's used for Picasa and other websites. It doesn't prompt for categories and the license selection is basically just a template field, but it gets the job done. Images uploaded using the app are added to this category: [3]
    • bugzilla:33428 - Smooth upload workflow starting with article
    • bugzilla:31979 - Android app
    • bugzilla:32286 - Mobile Web
    • bugzilla:31978 - HTML5 Support
    • bugzilla:24387 - Login
    • bugzilla:32292 - Notifications system - jeblad prototype and notes
    • Yubi on Android

H * Share or "e-mail to friends"

  • Custom map apps
    • Having custom maps that can be developed using GPS data as well as generated and shared via mobile devices could open up contributions to content-specific maps on Wikimedia sites. These custom maps could be incredibly useful to view with articles on places, treks on topics such as hiking in the Himalayas or Alps, tracing historic battlegrounds, or trekking though wildlife sanctuaries. Android recently released an open source app named CustomMaps to help build such apps. Check out Google custom maps.
    • bugzilla:32274
  • Add GPS coordinates within a location-related category
    • Link up with desktop to refine
    • Needs some API support on main platform
    • bugzilla:32271

Carrier solutions

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  • Android app icon co-branding
    • Bottom 20% of icon will be carrier's design
    • App name will be customized
    • bugzilla:32763

H * Show English search result if none in other language

    • Required by notable operator in India
    • Falls back to English Wikipedia only
    • Top 5 languages in India are required, including local content
    • bugzilla:32541

H * RSS feed of Article of the Day

    • Requested by most operators
    • Easy way to include Wikipedia in the carrier's portal
    • Should we make this like a "self-serve" option?
    • bugzilla:32699
  • Top 20 articles by country RSS feed
    • Requested by most operators
    • Also regional if languages differ within a country by region

H * J2ME app

    • This is clearly required in parts of the world where smartphones are not prevalent
    • One Indian operator requested keeping the article history in the app
    • bugzilla:32700
  • New WAP view
    • Change initial page into intro (of long but constrained length), simple infobox extract, and Table of Contents as simple links (this is a top request from the India and Brazil research)
    • bugzilla:31714

H * SMS/USSD gateway for Wikipedia access (simple search at first)

    • Related to New WAP view bugzilla:31714
    • Can push Featured Articles (possibly by carrier)
    • Virtual server on Labs
    • txtWeb sample app
    • bugzilla:31614
    • Tata set up short code and USSD connection
    • Jeremy Thurgood, Praekelt - USSD app plus final output by SMS
    • txtWeb - enhanced SMS app (infobox, TOC, intelligent summary)
    • API for plain text needed

H * Wikipedia Zero heading banner

    • Simple branded banner for an operator running the Zero program
    • To be added when we detect access from a limited number of known IP addresses
    • Includes basic text of operator name in limited font styles
    • Browser view is without images and WAP view must be supported
    • bugzilla:32001
    • Abhishek

H * Wikipedia Zero warning

    • When the user selects to view images or an external link, the heading banner changes color to red and a warning message appears, similar to: "You have selected an action that requires a charge for data access, click to continue"
    • bugzilla:32002
    • Abhishek

H * Wikipedia.org should detect mobile browser and locale

    • A mobile-specific version of this page must be created, or country-specific landing pages
    • Squid layer, med difficulty, Ops support
    • Readers study says people often go straight to Wikipedia.org on mobile, as opposed to Google search, especially in Brazil and India - both quantitative and qualitative
    • Could also use MaxMind for country detection
    • bugzilla:30389
    • Bob and Deval?
    • Requires opt-in until privacy policy is revised to include geolocation
      • Could be combined with selection of language preference

H * Country-specific landing pages

    • India in particular (English and links to other Indic language versions)
    • See Page views by country
    • Related to Wikipedia.org feature under UI and usability, above
    • Once implemented, instructions could be similar to: Mobile homepage
    • bugzilla:28815
    • Ramakrishnan and Shashand
  • Mobile data usage per person per month
    • To help operators define data usage caps per country or region

UI and usability

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  • Horizontal scrolling enabled when content exceeds screen width, typically photos or tables
  • "Did you mean" corrections for search
  • Font sizes preference for Wikipedia Mobile
  • Improved photo handling 1
    • Scale photos to screen width or nearest standard size in the main article view
    • When a photo is clicked and the photo is larger than the screen width, allow horizontal scrolling
    • bugzilla:31931
  • Improved photo handling 2
    • Filter info page to show a subset of information
    • Allow click to open to show original image at screen width but user can use zoom and scroll as supported natively
    • bugzilla:31933
  • Wikipedia menu
    • Turn icon into Home link
    • Include Random and inter-language links
    • Some menu items are general Wikipedia features, some are specific to the article
    • bugzilla:31399
  • Featured Articles (important in India) - or Featured Pictures in Wikipedia menu
    • With inter-language links and other Wikipedia menu items
    • bugzilla:32269

H * Articles trending on landing page

    • Could be combined with country-specific landing page, below
    • Ramakrishnan

H * Create article stubs offline

    • Like Evernote app
    • ?

The following three ideas are in mock-ups by Nishank, Vishvwamitra, Maharshi and Sumit from BITS:

H * Related Random using links

    • As opposed to general random, how about related random using links, both from and to
    • Results in more focused discovery
    • bugzilla:32542

H * Show relationship

    • Two terms, like names of famous people
    • Show links that connect the terms, including the sentences the terms appear in
    • bugzilla:32543

H * Ranked related links

    • Show from and to links, sorted by various ranking methods, such as:
      • Number of page views
      • Ratings (Article feedback)
      • Last edited
      • Relevance (not currently defined)
    • bugzilla:32544
  • Saving content for offline reading, and possibly offline editing (Editors and Readers study)
    • Can we use printable version and PDF?
    • HTML 5 and apps for sure
    • Kiwix app is a proof of concept
    • bugzilla:32270

Languages on mobile

[edit]

H * Localize Android app, format needs to be integrated in translatewiki

  • Language prefs in inter-wiki links
    • Tiering languages so most likely languages are at the top of the list, or save most recent languages visited
    • bugzilla:32254

H * Test Narayam on mobile, which phones don't have jQuery support

H * Transliteration input extension

    • Currently appears on Hindi Wikipedia
    • Works on iPhone
    • Manish / Mayur mayurdce at gmail dot com
    • Localization team made progress on this with Narayam

H * Dynamic fonts support in mobile gateway

    • Narayam not yet Android 2.3X, rendering engine required
    • bugzilla:28515

H * Universal language selector and keyboard

  • QRpedia
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