Wikipedia Gets a Makeover. Should It Look More Like Google?
We all love Wikipedia — some of us more than others.
But have you ever felt like it could do with a redesign? Something to make it look a little easier on the eye, with more white space — you know, more Google-ish?
That’s exactly what designers at a Lithuanian creative agency called New! set out to do. You can see the results here, at a site called Wikipedia Redefined — and in the gallery below.
This isn’t an officially sanctioned redesign, and there’s no word on whether the Wikimedia Foundation (owners of the nonprofit site) have shown any interest. We’d like to think so, though, as this version of the site seems a lot more user-friendly. Not to mention a lot more research-friendly: check out the quoting, highlighting and article-tabbing options.
Check out the screenshots, and let us know in the comments: would you prefer Wikipedia if it looked this way?
1. Logo
The designers took the "world of knowledge" jigsaw puzzle logo and turned it into something very simple.
Remind you of any search engine?
Instead of taking up much of the page, the language options (with number of articles in each) become a color bar at the top of the page.
Other user-edited sites in the Wiki world have been displayed at the bottom. Click on any of them ...
... and you get taken to their page, which looks similar to the Wikipedia design.
The design adds a whole lot of interactive functions; you're no longer just reading Wikipedia.
Ever wished you could keep tabs on a number of Wikipedia articles, right in the page you're currently on?
Call out the important parts of an article as if you had a felt pen. Bonus: no one will shout at you for marking up an encyclopedia.
Those highlighted sections are saved for later, complete with annotations and links. Students, meet wiki-Nirvana.
Want a visual representation of where the Wikipedia page is, and what's connected to it? This design has you covered.
Changing a page becomes much more user friendly.
But if you really want to get down and dirty with the code, it's still all there.
The site's English-language portal, en.wikipedia.org, gets a more minimal look -- and a color bar showing the distribution of kinds of articles.
What do you think of This Post ? Let us know in the comments.
0 comments:
Post a Comment