Wikipedia on handheld devices

[Smylers]

David Cantrell writes:

> My project for the last few days has been :
> 
>   http://wikiproxy.cantrell.org.uk/
> 
> This was prompted by Wikipedia being impossible to use on my Treo
> because the page layout assumes you have a large screen.

Hmmm, the HTML source of Wikipedia pages seems to include:

  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="handheld"
  href="/skins-1.5/monobook/handheld.css?80" />

So if your Treo is correctly identifying itself as a handheld device
then it should get that version rather than the one for full-sized
screens.

> This cuts out most of the rubbish surrounding the article, and also
> gets rid of editing, history, some pointless graphics, and so on.
> 
> I'm also finding it useful on a desktop because, without all the
> images and the complex page layout, pages load faster.

Looking at, say:

  http://wikiproxy.cantrell.org.uk/?.=Richard+Thompson

It seems quite similar to the effect you get merely by going to the
Wikipedia page then in Firefox choosing 'View' > 'Page Style' > 'No
Style':

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Thompson

And also similar to leaving CSS on but selecting the 'MySkin' skin,
which by default is empty and doesn't put any gubbins round the edge of
the content:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?useskin=myskin&title=Richard_Thompson

That link explicitly says to preview MySkin on that page (but not on
pages it links to).  To use MySkin on all pages without specifying it in
the URL, select it in 'my preferences' > 'Skin'.

You can then customize MySkin to remove any more stuff you don't want.
Create a subpage of your user page called myskin.css, for example:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DrHyde/myskin.css

And in there you can put things like:

  /* remove header, etc: */
  #mw-dismissable-notice, .firstHeading, #siteSub
  {
    display: none;
  }
  
  /* keep infoboxes in the main column: */
  .infobox
  {
    float: inherit;
  }

Save it, do a hard-refresh on an article, and it should take effect.
That yields something very similar to the output of your proxy.

Smylers