Wikipedia's New Look and Feel Plus a Bunch of New or Improved Features Now Online
We said on Tuesday that changes were imminent and right now they are in the process of going live with the new look and feel and a bunch of new or improved features.
Fast Facts
+ 500,000+ Beta Testers
+ Usability Initiative More than One Year Old
+ According the Wikimedia blog, "people around the world will now experience an easier to use, and more importantly, easier to edit Wikipedia."
Note: The following is from an interview with Jimmy Wales from the Yale Daily News in early Octber, 2009. This question helps answer why making editing easier so important.
Q What is Wikipedia doing to try to get a more diverse group of contributors?
A We’re very global; there are people all over the world editing Wikipedia, mostly in their own home language. But there’s a certain geek culture that transcends national cultures; there’s a homogeneity in that. The main thing we’re doing is the useability project. We have a $950,000 grant from the Stanton Foundation that’s specifically targeted at finding the points in the software that are off-putting to people that aren’t computer geeks. There are lots of people that are geeks, but not computer geeks. I always give the example of a stay-at-home mom with a master’s degree. So, this is a very educated person, someone who is already on the Internet and sharing information, but probably not participating in Wikipedia, because she’s not a computer geek.
+ The new features will be rolling out across the world over the next few weeks.
Look and feel: We’ve introduced a new theme we call “Vector” which makes essential functions easier to find.
Navigation: We’ve improved the navigation for reading and editing pages. Now, the tabs at the top of each page more clearly define whether you’re reading or editing a page. There’s also a collapsible navigation for the left sidebar that hides items that aren’t used often, but allows them to continue to be easily accessible.
Editing improvements: We’ve reorganized the editing toolbar to make it easier to use. Now, formatting pages is simpler and more intuitive. And we’ve introduced a table wizard to make creating tables easier. You’ll also discover a new find and replace feature to simplify page editing.
Link wizard: An easy-to-use tool allows you to add links to other pages on Wikipedia, or to pages on external sites.
Search improvements: Search suggestions are now improved to get you to the page you are looking for more quickly.
Pediapress book creator: Create a book by selecting Wikipedia articles and adding them to the Book Creator. Your articles will be turned into a PDF (or OpenDocument) file so you can easily take Wikipedia wherever you go.
Note: As we pointed out on Tuesday you can use the book creator without having to pay for printing and binding. Gather your pages and instead of sending them to the printer select either PDF or (Open Doc), make sure your printer is ready and go. The amount of time it takes depends on your printer and how many pages you've selected.
Updated Puzzle globe and wordmark: The well-known Wikipedia globe and wordmark have been enhanced and improved. We’ve introduced Linux Libertine, an open source typeface to help support the creation of hundreds of localized Wikipedia wordmarks, and the internationally-recognized puzzle globe has been recreated in 3D and includes even more languages.
After you've tried the new features and tools and just don't like it you can switch back to the old interface. Here's how to do it.
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