Astute readers of AboutUs will notice that we changed our design a bit today, replacing the old layout with a slightly redesigned one.
Beyond just the aesthetic shifts (like site navigation moving to the left-hand side of the page), this move provides a foundation for a variety of improvements to the AboutUs experience, some of which you’ll notice right off, and with other features that we’ll be rolling out in the weeks and months to come.
For now, here are some of the things that have changed:
- Redesigned layout: The layout now is “three columns” with navigation on the left-hand side and “account information” splitting off and remaining on the right-hand side. Among other things, this shift allows for the “useful links/site navigation” to live in its own space without hiding in the drop-down box as with the previous layout.
- Fixed width: You’ll also note that AboutUs articles now are “fixed width” which allows WikiPages to maintain a consistent size, rather than having the article width scale depending on your monitor/window size. This provides a clarity of size and design across all the pages and fixes nagging issues when pages were designed to look good on laptop monitors suddenly breaking apart on 23″ or bigger screens (and vice-versa).
- Backend changes: With the new-look, AboutUs supports a new backend platform on top of which the existing MediaWiki engine sits. This will allow for us to offer a variety of non-MediaWiki features shortly. Stay tuned for more information and exciting features as we unveil them.
As with all change, there are bound to be a few unintended consequences or errors. We’ve been testing the new-look AboutUs for a couple of weeks, but if you see anything that isn’t working, is broken, or just seems off, please report it on our AboutUs Bugs page.
Thanks, and happy Wiki-ing! — The AboutUs Team
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