Falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole can be a dizzying experience. Out of my love for Wikipedia, I began working on a browser extension in June of 2018 to help improve the information architecture of Wiki pages.
The primary difference is that the Table of Contents (ToC) was moved from the body of the page into a sticky sidebar which allows the user to maintain a high-level overview of the page content while they scroll
Shoutout to my friend Jon Senterfitt for his help on the code side of things. He’s a brilliant developer. Here's our project on GitHub.
Milestones
We made the sidebar width-adjustable, so that's cool.
2021 update: iPad
A few years after building this side project (and admittedly, not maintaining it or improving it), I discovered that Wikipedia's iPad app actually employed a sticky sidebar model. I’m not sure when this was actually developed or released, but I noticed it sometime in 2021.
I suppose this is an example of multiple discovery, or convergent evolution ... we both thought this was a good idea!
Now all the MediaWiki team needs to do is to add this functionality to the Desktop sidebar!
2022 update: Web
In May of 2022, I noticed that English Wikipedia rolled out with a new style which included a somewhat glitchy sticky ToC sidebar.
At the time of writing, I’m still trying to work out the kinks. For example, it doesn’t show up on all pages. Here’s a screen capture of one of the few pages I did encounter it on, though.
Smooth scrolling would be nice, but I’ll take what I can get. ❤️
2023: WeWrite
In 2023, I began embarking on creating my own wiki app to compete with MediaWiki.
What's funny is that despite all my above fanfare about the wonderful Table of Contents, I'm actually subtly moving away from it.
On WeWrite, the ToC won't be a separate element, but it will be an emergent phenomena of collapsible headers. Let me explain.
In WeWrite, tapping a header will collapse all of its content. Double tapping a header will collapse all of them.
This will thus allow users to turn a page into a Table of Contents view, without needing to navigate to a separate Table of Contents.
Falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole can be a dizzying experience. Out of my love for Wikipedia, I began working on a browser extension in June of 2018 to help improve the information architecture of Wiki pages.
The primary difference is that the Table of Contents (ToC) was moved from the body of the page into a sticky sidebar which allows the user to maintain a high-level overview of the page content while they scroll
Shoutout to my friend Jon Senterfitt for his help on the code side of things. He’s a brilliant developer. Here's our project on GitHub.
Milestones
We made the sidebar width-adjustable, so that's cool.
2021 update: iPad
A few years after building this side project (and admittedly, not maintaining it or improving it), I discovered that Wikipedia's iPad app actually employed a sticky sidebar model. I’m not sure when this was actually developed or released, but I noticed it sometime in 2021.
I suppose this is an example of multiple discovery, or convergent evolution ... we both thought this was a good idea!
Now all the MediaWiki team needs to do is to add this functionality to the Desktop sidebar!
2022 update: Web
In May of 2022, I noticed that English Wikipedia rolled out with a new style which included a somewhat glitchy sticky ToC sidebar.
At the time of writing, I’m still trying to work out the kinks. For example, it doesn’t show up on all pages. Here’s a screen capture of one of the few pages I did encounter it on, though.
Smooth scrolling would be nice, but I’ll take what I can get. ❤️
2023: WeWrite
In 2023, I began embarking on creating my own wiki app to compete with MediaWiki.
What's funny is that despite all my above fanfare about the wonderful Table of Contents, I'm actually subtly moving away from it.
On WeWrite, the ToC won't be a separate element, but it will be an emergent phenomena of collapsible headers. Let me explain.
In WeWrite, tapping a header will collapse all of its content. Double tapping a header will collapse all of them.
This will thus allow users to turn a page into a Table of Contents view, without needing to navigate to a separate Table of Contents.
Falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole can be a dizzying experience. Out of my love for Wikipedia, I began working on a browser extension in June of 2018 to help improve the information architecture of Wiki pages.
The primary difference is that the Table of Contents (ToC) was moved from the body of the page into a sticky sidebar which allows the user to maintain a high-level overview of the page content while they scroll
Shoutout to my friend Jon Senterfitt for his help on the code side of things. He’s a brilliant developer. Here's our project on GitHub.
Milestones
We made the sidebar width-adjustable, so that's cool.
2021 update: iPad
A few years after building this side project (and admittedly, not maintaining it or improving it), I discovered that Wikipedia's iPad app actually employed a sticky sidebar model. I’m not sure when this was actually developed or released, but I noticed it sometime in 2021.
I suppose this is an example of multiple discovery, or convergent evolution ... we both thought this was a good idea!
Now all the MediaWiki team needs to do is to add this functionality to the Desktop sidebar!
2022 update: Web
In May of 2022, I noticed that English Wikipedia rolled out with a new style which included a somewhat glitchy sticky ToC sidebar.
At the time of writing, I’m still trying to work out the kinks. For example, it doesn’t show up on all pages. Here’s a screen capture of one of the few pages I did encounter it on, though.
Smooth scrolling would be nice, but I’ll take what I can get. ❤️
2023: WeWrite
In 2023, I began embarking on creating my own wiki app to compete with MediaWiki.
What's funny is that despite all my above fanfare about the wonderful Table of Contents, I'm actually subtly moving away from it.
On WeWrite, the ToC won't be a separate element, but it will be an emergent phenomena of collapsible headers. Let me explain.
In WeWrite, tapping a header will collapse all of its content. Double tapping a header will collapse all of them.
This will thus allow users to turn a page into a Table of Contents view, without needing to navigate to a separate Table of Contents.
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