Thursday, April 14, 2011

He will not fix your computer but #MediaWiki #mobile

The #Wikimedia Foundation hired in Patrick Reilly as a senior software developer. His task will be to make MediaWiki a platform that is inclusive of support for mobile devices.

The current mobile platform for Wikipedia is doing a great job for generating traffic. However it is dedicated to supporting Wikipedia, it is written in Ruby on Rails and it is in effect a read only rewrite of the MediaWiki code.

The next generation of mobile support will be written in PHP and integrated in MediaWiki itself. As the PHP Evangelism Team Leader Patrick is bound to bring both the expertise and the enthusiasm to make this work.

With mobile support for Wikipedia doing spectacularly well, this transition will not only see Patrick involved. There is an ongoing collaborative study about mobile platforms. This is where the landscape for the new mobile environment is mapped.


It is a big job and with Patrick in a senior position, there is room enough for developers, for localisers and for anyone to get involved. Check out what is already there and make the map as rich as necessary to fit in all the requirements for our next generation mobile support.
Thanks,
       GerardM

No comments: