Forum:Changes to skin preferences

Hi everyone,

We are making a change to the skin chooser this week and we want to let you know what will be happening. Currently we support browsing the site with either Monaco or Monobook. However, the skin chooser in Special:Preferences presents a number of unsupported skins which we are no longer testing to ensure compatibility with new software. These skins also don't support a customizable personal sidebar, broadcast messaging, spotlights and a number of other important tools. For these reasons, we will be removing Quartz, CologneBlue, Modern, MySkin, Simple, and Standard from the skin chooser by the end of the week.

If you are currently using an unsupported skin, you can continue to do so. In addition, if you want to see what a page looks like in an unsupported skin, you can still append ?useskin=fooskin to the end of a page url. However, if you switch to Monaco or Monobook using the skin chooser, you will not be able to return to using any of the skins mentioned above.

Thanks! --KyleH (talk) 01:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Comments

 * The Quartz was long overdue the rest is more of a nostalgic of what a wiki can offer...
 * But I'm in a paradox with MySkin, at the same time I understand and I don't understand why it's removal.
 * I dont understand because the idea of MySkin is a blank skin where one can code its own skin via CSS. And the possibility of freedom is being remove.
 * I do understand because many of wikias JS inserted features are CSS configure inside the JS that insert them and some in CSS main pages. sometimes giving headaches to tweak them with other skin modifications.


 * Why is it Monaco and Monobook are both supported? A bunch of wikis customize one much more than the other and the result is the users who prefer the other not getting the full experience.   06:59, 20 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Regarding Monobook: we continue to support this as it is the default MediaWiki skin, and is used on a great number of other wiki sites. 12:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Cizagna, there are two primary reasons we are removing MySkin and some of the other special-use skins: 1) many newer users experiment with different skins in Special:Preferences by choosing them and saving the preference rather than hitting preview, and the result can be confusing ... some users have difficulty getting back to a skin that makes sense to them after doing this. And 2) we believe that these skins provide a sub-optimal user experience.  We are not developing new features with them in mind, nor are we actually testing these skins.  So, while we are happy to allow those who have already selected them to continue using them, we don't want new users to be tempted to select them.  --KyleH (talk) 16:56, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

If someone hacks the preferences page to manually (or using JavaScript) insert the radiobuttons to select those removed skins, we could change our skin to any of those? In other words: the change would be only to hide them from preferences instead of disabling them? --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 18:08, 20 May 2009 (UTC)


 * We're basically just adding all of the unsupported skins to $wgSkipSkin, and making a small modification so that if you edit your preferences with one of the unsupported skins selected, it will not reset your skin preference. I believe that modifying the form using javascript will work, but I'm not certain--it's not something I have tested. --KyleH (talk) 18:16, 20 May 2009 (UTC)


 * It doesn't reset the preference; nevertheless, the skin doesn't work. The user will get monobook instead, because of the initial check against $wgSkipSkin. Ironically, this cannot be overridden by useskin= because the check for that comes after the check for $wgSkipSkin. I understand this is being addressed, but it should really have been tested before rolling out such a change. --GreenReaper(talk) 06:52, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Technically, they dont get monobook, they get the site's default skin, what ever it may be. but that should be fixed soon (we hope) --Uberfuzzy 17:00, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I gotta admit, this seems kind of stupid. To be honest, Quartz looked pretty nice. Modern was also good for me for a more minimalist skin than Monobook or Monaco. But what do I know? :/ IsabellaZeledon 02:37, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * A note about the history of Quartz: it was the precursor to Monaco. While it had good elements, it was a pain for users to customize and the sidebar took up too much of the page for many users. 14:50, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Regarding "If you are currently using an unsupported skin, you can continue to do so" &mdash; this appears to be at least partly false. I've been using the standard skin (as I like the simplicity of it) but what I see now is the default skin. At first I thought I had just been logged out of Wikia, but no, I'm logged in, my preferences still list "standard" as my skin, and I see Monaco. --The Krit 20:15, 28 May 2009 (UTC)


 * ¿Have you unchecked the Let the admins override my skin choice. (recommended)? --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 20:31, 28 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes. (That was the first thing I tried once I realized I was not seeing an artifact of being logged out.) --The Krit 23:55, 28 May 2009 (UTC)