Think of skins as putting on colored sunglasses—red, yellow, blue, or whatever. The world looks very different, but only to you. You can choose from one of eight separate skins, each of which creates a distinct look using different fonts, colors, and even positioning of links and images.
The choice of skins includes the standard Monobook. All the figures in this book were taken with the standard Monobook screen. Figure 20-5 shows a different skin, Nostalgia, to give you get a sense of how dramatic a change a skin can make.
Figure 20-5. Here’s the top of the Main Page in the Nostalgia skin rather than the usual Monobook. The Wikipedia logo appears on the right side of the page rather than the left, and the six standard links (username, “my talk”, My Preferences, and so on), normally in the upper-right corner, aren’t visible at all. You find them, along with a multitude of other links, in a drop-down menu.
Figure 20-6 shows the eight different skins that you can choose from.
Figure 20-6. In the Skin tab of your My Preferences page, you’ll see Monobook plus your seven other choices: Chick, Classic, Cologne Blue, Modern, MySkin, Nostalgia, and Simple. You can click on a link to see a preview.
If you pick either the Classic or Cologne Blue skin, you also get another tab in your My Preferences page, called Quickbar (Figure 20-7), which gives you even more flexibility in layout.
Figure 20-7. In the Classic and Cologne Blue skins, you can use the Quickbar tab to customize the links that usually appear on the left—you can put them on the right, have them always visible when you scroll down a long page, or hide them altogether. (The screenshot here is with the Classic skin; the Cologne Blue skin offers the same five options.)
Warning
If you select “None” for the Quickbar, only a small subset of editing links remains available, at the bottom the page. There’s no My Preferences link, so there’s no obvious way to change back if you decide you’ve made a mistake. To change this setting back to what it was, at the bottom of the page, type Special:Preferences in the Find box, and then click Go. Alternatively, at the upper right, click SPECIAL PAGES, and then My Preferences.
Which skin should you use? If you really like one of the skins other than Monobook, consider that JavaScript-based changes to your Wikipedia page, mentioned in the Power Users Clinic boxes in this book, mostly assume that you’re using Monobook. They may still work if you’re using another skin, but they may not. (See Chapter 21 for full instructions on using JavaScript with Wikipedia.)
If you’re not using JavaScript, then there’s no disadvantage in picking a skin that you really like. Or just stay with the Monobook, the skin that almost all editors use.
Note
If you change to a skin other than Monobook, decide to change back to Monobook, and run into a problem trying to do so, you’ve run into a known bug. The workaround is: Click “my preferences”; add ?useskin=monobook to the end of the URL; and then press Enter. Now you’re temporarily back to Monobook, and can go to the Skins tab and make the change permanent.