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Comment by manchmalscott | Hacker News Reader

Oh thank god, the new theme makes me so angry. I did the math, and 41.6% of my monitor's width is just blank padding. I don't want to make another account on a website just to have it be usable again.

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Note that there is a button in the bottom right of the window that expands the article's width to take up much more of the page.

There's also a feature request and proof-of-concept patch to implement persistent preferences for viewers who aren't logged in. The proof-of-concept already remembers whether the max width toggle is enabled: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T321498

What button are you referring to?

Perhaps it hasn't rolled out to everyone, but if I go to any Wikipedia article, there is a rectangular button in the lower right with the alt text "Toggle limited content width". Clicking it removes most of the margins on either side of the article.

It's tied to page zoom and viewport so it wouldn't show for me.

If your viewport is >1600px wide you should see a small square gray button resembling a full-screen toggle in the bottom-right corner of the browser. Click it and the max-width limit on content is reverted and fills the viewport width.

Images: https://imgur.com/a/UMxtP61

I had zoom on at 150% and it doesn't show that button. Thanks.

Is there a way to make it sticky? I have to repress the button on every new article I open.

There's a feature request for that: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T321498

There needs to be a way to persist this setting. It is maddening to have to click it on every new page I visit.

They made the preference for article previews persist, why did they not do the same for this?

Seems to make articles more readable to me.

I did simpler mathematics than you, and I count three hamburger menus on one page...

People who love to talk about how it's objectively better to have tons of whitespace should research how often people ever use (or even notice) hamburger menus.

I'd ban those. Gimme normal menus back!

For me, it seems that just making the general tables wide makes a huge difference.

    .wikitable {
        width: 100%;
    }

Hah I came to type exactly "Oh thank god" -seriously was hoping something like this would come out.

I haven't had to have an account to use wikipedia for the last 20 years and there's no good reason at all to begin using one now.

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