Bringing back wiki the way what it was meant to be.
The core value of wiki are the openness and its coeditable property. As people tried to beautify the pages, too often that the wiki becomes merely a work handled by one person. It digresses from the core value of wiki. Therefore, to bring back its role, we build a system not only more user-friendly and eye-pleasing but also coeditable and smart.
We believe that wiki is a platform for the iGEMers and the future iGEMers. It stands for sharing. It is meant for cooperation. It ought to be a stage that brings people together for knowledge and the value that lies with people.
Utilizing wiki markup language and BioBricks registry
To layout the pages, the wiki site is often completely written by HTML rather than the expected wiki markup language. We believe that wiki language encourages users to be more involved into the project since it's easy to use. Thus, we build a website letting users to edit contents by wiki language but at the same time have a cleaner layout by HTML.
What's more, for the Biobricks page, the table is directly fetched from the Biobrick Registry website. Not only it gets timely updates when new parts are registered, but it intertwines wiki and part wiki into a unique iGEM-centric system.
Responsible design that re-layouts for different resolution
Our wiki site implements a more modern method to create the layout. As the window size changes, text reflows and layout rearranges accordingly. It supports various screen size down from smartphones and up to computers. To be future-proof, it's touch-friendly and can even support large-width devices such as 4KTV!
Contents in wiki are easily editable
When iGEMers log into 2014.igem.org, "Edit" link for each sections appears automatically. Users can click into specific section to modify it. The history log of the page (link located at the top of the screen) can show the section modified and the user who modified it. Since editing contents becomes so straight-forward, our team members edit it spontaneously. We believe the coeditability suggests the spirit of cooperating and sharing, which are what wiki ought to be and the reason why iGEM lets us show our project upon wiki. Please check out the history log of our project page.
User-friendly functions
To elevate the user experience, we introduce a submenu that fix on the screen when scrolling though the page. It serves as a normal menu that links to each section. So what's special about it? It is so smart that it shows the place we're currently browsing, and the links to sub-section that collapsed at first will expand automatically.
We also introduce buttons for changing the font size and a button that can back to the top of the page when page is scrolled down. This wiki is also friendly for blind and visually impaired people that use screen reading softwares.
Auto-generated menu that powered by wiki system
The submenus in our wiki are auto-generated by the Mediawiki system. Since we use the wiki markup language to make our content a hierarchic structure, the system can read our structure and generate a menu correspondingly. We took a step forward and made the menu even smarter. It can now collapse and expand according to our mouse and the place we're browsing. We believe that this is what a good customization should be.
Following wiki requirements for iGEM 2014
Our wiki follows the requirements announced by iGEM. We understand that wiki serves as a resource for current and future iGEMers, so our code, images and files are all hosted on the 2014.igem.org server to prevent from data losing.
Plus, we not only put the user editing menu on the top of the screen, we also place the footer box on the bottom of every page, including creative commons logo, mediawiki logo and some links, because these are useful information that shouldn't be hidden.
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Bringing back wiki the way what it was meant to be.
The core value of wiki are the openness and its coeditable property. As people tried to beautify the pages, too often that the wiki becomes merely a work handled by one person. It digresses from the core value of wiki. Therefore, to bring back its role, we build a system not only more user-friendly and eye-pleasing but also coeditable and smart.
We believe that wiki is a platform for the iGEMers and the future iGEMers. It stands for sharing. It is meant for cooperation. It ought to be a stage that brings people together for knowledge and the value that lies with people.
Utilizing wiki markup language and BioBricks registry
To layout the pages, the wiki site is often completely written by HTML rather than the expected wiki markup language. We believe that wiki language encourages users to be more involved into the project since it's easy to use. Thus, we build a website letting users to edit contents by wiki language but at the same time have a cleaner layout by HTML.
What's more, for the Biobricks page, the table is directly fetched from the Biobrick Registry website. Not only it gets timely updates when new parts are registered, but it intertwines wiki and part wiki into a unique iGEM-centric system.
Responsible design that re-layouts for different resolution
Our wiki site implements a more modern method to create the layout. As the window size changes, text reflows and layout rearranges accordingly. It supports various screen size down from smartphones and up to computers. To be future-proof, it's touch-friendly and can even support large-width devices such as 4KTV!
Contents in wiki are easily editable
When iGEMers log into 2014.igem.org, "Edit" link for each sections appears automatically. Users can click into specific section to modify it. The history log of the page (link located at the top of the screen) can show the section modified and the user who modified it. Since editing contents becomes so straight-forward, our team members edit it spontaneously. We believe the coeditability suggests the spirit of cooperating and sharing, which are what wiki ought to be and the reason why iGEM lets us show our project upon wiki. Please check out the history log of our project page.
User-friendly functions
To elevate the user experience, we introduce a submenu that fix on the screen when scrolling though the page. It serves as a normal menu that links to each section. So what's special about it? It is so smart that it shows the place we're currently browsing, and the links to sub-section that collapsed at first will expand automatically.
We also introduce buttons for changing the font size and a button that can back to the top of the page when page is scrolled down. This wiki is also friendly for blind and visually impaired people that use screen reading softwares.
Auto-generated menu that powered by wiki system
The submenus in our wiki are auto-generated by the Mediawiki system. Since we use the wiki markup language to make our content a hierarchic structure, the system can read our structure and generate a menu correspondingly. We took a step forward and made the menu even smarter. It can now collapse and expand according to our mouse and the place we're browsing. We believe that this is what a good customization should be.
Following wiki requirements for iGEM 2014
Our wiki follows the requirements announced by iGEM. We understand that wiki serves as a resource for current and future iGEMers, so our code, images and files are all hosted on the 2014.igem.org server to prevent from data losing.
Plus, we not only put the user editing menu on the top of the screen, we also place the footer box on the bottom of every page, including creative commons logo, mediawiki logo and some links, because these are useful information that shouldn't be hidden.