Minerva has various styles which improve user generated content on Wikimedia projects on mobile devices. It was recently expanded to improve display of night mode. These styles can currently be disabled by projects by wgMinervaApplyKnownTemplateHacks. The styles themselves live here: https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-skins-MinervaNeue/blob/master/resources/skins.minerva.base.styles/content/hacks.less
We want to eventually apply these changes to Vector 2022 as we are running up against these same issues now in the Vector 2022 skin. Minerva is no longer a good fit for these.
Sequence of tasks
- [Sprint 6] T360386: We will create a new module inside WikimediaMessages
- [Sprint 6] All styles in Minerva files called hacks.less will be moved to WikimediaMessages. As part of this task we will review if any styles inside this module are needed. Any styles that are no longer relevant will not be upstreamed to WikimediaMessages.
- [Sprint 6] We will remove any styles in hacks.less that are no longer relevant: T360387
- [Sprint 1] T360388: We will upstream any styles in hacks.less that are useful to desktop too.
- [Sprint 1] We will migrate Minerva to use the new module. This will involve a configuration change that disables $wgMinervaApplyKnownTemplateHacks and adds minerva to WikimediaStylesSkins.
- [Sprint 2] We will enable the module to the Vector 2022 skin.
- [Sprint 2] We will remove wgMinervaApplyKnownTemplateHacks and associated code.
- [Sprint 2] We will notify communities that they can cherry pick the styles they want by modifying a MediaWiki message. >>> Done in T363932
Sign off
We hope that we can use the night mode project to create inertia for projects to define these styles locally instead of relying on this stylesheet. Create a task to explore if communities want this and what we could do instead.
For example the English Wikipedia created a gadget for Timeless based on these styles, but none for Minerva?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Gadget-responsiveContentBaseTimeless.css