The importance of the Wikipedia is difficult to express in a paragraph or two: according to Alexa Internet, the Wikipedia website is the world’s seventh most popular website as measured by overall visitor traffic. Almost half a billion people read the website every month and across the world, August 2015 saw eighteen billion page views. The chances are, then, that our readers are aware of the Wikipedia website, but as a refresh it is an online, free to use and free to edit encyclopedia. Although there are control measures in place, the same audience who read articiles also contribute to the site: it is a resource of contributions from millions and read by millions.
Wikipedia was originally designed for a full desktop class browser but over the years, the website has built a mobile version and later a mobile application, although other mobile applications are available. The mobile app has steadily been improved and has just been updated with improved functionality and, in the words of the developer, it has “fixed a metric ton of bugs and crashes.” It’s good to see the reliability of mobile applications improving with updated versions! Of the new features, one is reserved for devices running Android 6.0 Marshmallow or later, which is that when highlighting a word, the application has introduced a “Search Wikipedia” option along with the cut, copy and paste menu. The three other improvements are the inclusion of the “Nearby” option in the navigation menu, which pops up an interactive map showing Wikipedia articles on objects and places close by. This map can be scrolled so that users can find articles for a place he or she may be visiting at some point in the future. The Wikipedia app developers have also updated the link preview design and implemented a change whereby when deleting the browsing history, it also clears open tabs.
The update is being rolled out across the Google Play Store and so if you are a user, you may have already received the download notification. If you, you can visit the app in the Play Store and update it here, or sit tight and it will arrive at your device in due course.