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Free and open-source wiki software

Not to be confused with Wikimedia.

 

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• gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/core/

MediaWiki

Screenshot The Main Page of the English Wikipedia running an alpha version of MediaWiki 1.40
Original author(s)	Magnus Manske Lee Daniel Crocker
Developer(s)	Wikimedia Foundation
Initial release	January 25, 2002; 23 years ago (2002-01-25)
Stable release	1.43.0[1]  / 21 December 2024; 2 months ago (21 December 2024)
Repository
Written in	PHP[2]
Operating system	Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris
Size	79.05 MiB (compressed)
Available in	459[3] languages
Type	Wiki software
License	GPLv2+[4]
Website	mediawiki.org

MediaWiki is free and open-source wiki software originally developed by Magnus Manske for use on Wikipedia on January 25, 2002, and further improved by Lee Daniel Crocker,^[5][6] after which development has been coordinated by the Wikimedia Foundation. It powers several wiki hosting websites across the Internet, as well as most websites hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, Wikiquote, Meta-Wiki and Wikidata, which define a large part of the set requirements for the software.^[7] Besides its usage on Wikimedia sites, MediaWiki has been used as a knowledge management and content management system on websites such as Fandom, wikiHow and major internal installations like Intellipedia and Diplopedia.

MediaWiki is written in the PHP programming language and stores all text content into a database. The software is optimized to efficiently handle large projects, which can have terabytes of content and hundreds of thousands of views per second.^[7][8] Because Wikipedia is one of the world's largest and most visited websites, achieving scalability through multiple layers of caching and database replication has been a major concern for developers. Another major aspect of MediaWiki is its internationalization; its interface is available in more than 400 languages.^[9] The software has hundreds of configuration settings^[10] and more than 1,000 extensions available for enabling various features to be added or changed.^[11]

Key features

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MediaWiki provides a rich core feature set and a mechanism to attach extensions to provide additional functionality.

Internationalization and localisation

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Due to the strong emphasis on multilingualism in the Wikimedia projects, internationalization and localization has received significant attention by developers. The user interface has been fully or partially translated into more than 400 languages on translatewiki.net,^[9] and can be further customized by site administrators (the entire interface is editable through the wiki).

Several extensions, most notably those collected in the MediaWiki Language Extension Bundle, are designed to further enhance the multilingualism and internationalization of MediaWiki.

Installation and configuration

[edit]

Installation of MediaWiki requires that the user have administrative privileges on a server running both PHP and a compatible type of SQL database. Some users find that setting up a virtual host is helpful if the majority of one's site runs under a framework (such as Zope or Ruby on Rails) that is largely incompatible with MediaWiki.^[12] Cloud hosting can eliminate the need to deploy a new server.^[13]

An installation PHP script is accessed via a web browser to initialize the wiki's settings. It prompts the user for a minimal set of required parameters, leaving further changes, such as enabling uploads,^[14] adding a site logo,^[15] and installing extensions, to be made by modifying configuration settings contained in a file called LocalSettings.php.^[16] Some aspects of MediaWiki can be configured through special pages or by editing certain pages; for instance, abuse filters can be configured through a special page,^[17] and certain gadgets can be added by creating JavaScript pages in the MediaWiki namespace.^[18] The MediaWiki community publishes a comprehensive installation guide.^[19]

Markup

[edit]

One of the earliest differences between MediaWiki (and its predecessor, UseModWiki) and other wiki engines was the use of "free links" instead of CamelCase. When MediaWiki was created, it was typical for wikis to require text like "WorldWideWeb" to create a link to a page about the World Wide Web; links in MediaWiki, on the other hand, are created by surrounding words with double square brackets, and any spaces between them are left intact, e.g. [[World Wide Web]]. This change was logical for the purpose of creating an encyclopedia, where accuracy in titles is important.

MediaWiki uses an extensible^[20] lightweight wiki markup designed to be easier to use and learn than HTML. Tools exist for converting content such as tables between MediaWiki markup and HTML.^[21] Efforts have been made to create a MediaWiki markup spec, but a consensus seems to have been reached that Wikicode requires context-sensitive grammar rules.^[22][23] The following side-by-side comparison illustrates the differences between wiki markup and HTML:

MediaWiki syntax (the "behind the scenes" code used to add formatting to text)	HTML equivalent (another type of "behind the scenes" code used to add formatting to text)	Rendered output (seen onscreen by a site viewer)
====A dialogue==== "Take some more [[tea]]," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. "I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I can't take more." "You mean you can't take ''less''," said the Hatter: "it's '''very''' easy to take ''more'' than nothing."	<h4>A dialogue</h4> <p>"Take some more <a href="/wiki/Tea" title="Tea">tea</a>," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.</p> <br> <p>"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I can't take more."</p> <br> <p>"You mean you can't take <i>less</i>," said the Hatter: "it's <b>very</b> easy to take <i>more</i> than nothing."</p>	A dialogue "Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. "I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I can't take more." "You mean you can't take less," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more than nothing."

(Quotation above from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll)

Editing interface

[edit]

MediaWiki's default page-editing tools have been described as somewhat challenging to learn.^[24] A survey of students assigned to use a MediaWiki-based wiki found that when they were asked an open question about main problems with the wiki, 24% cited technical problems with formatting, e.g. "Couldn't figure out how to get an image in. Can't figure out how to show a link with words; it inserts a number."^[25]

To make editing long pages easier, MediaWiki allows the editing of a subsection of a page (as identified by its header). A registered user can also indicate whether or not an edit is minor. Correcting spelling, grammar or punctuation are examples of minor edits, whereas adding paragraphs of new text is an example of a non-minor edit.

Sometimes while one user is editing, a second user saves an edit to the same part of the page. Then, when the first user attempts to save the page, an edit conflict occurs. The second user is then given an opportunity to merge their content into the page as it now exists following the first user's page save.

MediaWiki's user interface has been localized in many different languages. A language for the wiki content itself can also be set, to be sent in the "Content-Language" HTTP header and "lang" HTML attribute.

VisualEditor has its own integrated wikitext editing interface known as 2017 wikitext editor, the older editing interface is known as 2010 wikitext editor.

MediaWiki has an extensible web API (application programming interface) that provides direct, high-level access to the data contained in the MediaWiki databases. Client programs can use the API to log in, get data, and post changes. The API supports thin web-based JavaScript clients and end-user applications (such as vandal-fighting tools). The API can be accessed by the backend of another web site.^[26] An extensive Python bot library, Pywikibot,^[27] and a popular semi-automated tool called AutoWikiBrowser, also interface with the API.^[28] The API is accessed via URLs such as https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=recentchanges. In this case, the query would be asking Wikipedia for information relating to the last 10 edits to the site. One of the perceived advantages of the API is its language independence; it listens for HTTP connections from clients and can send a response in a variety of formats, such as XML, serialized PHP, or JSON.^[29] Client code has been developed to provide layers of abstraction to the API.^[30]

Among the features of MediaWiki to assist in tracking edits is a Recent Changes feature that provides a list of recent edits to the wiki. This list contains basic information about those edits such as the editing user, the edit summary, the page edited, as well as any tags (e.g. "possible vandalism")^[31] added by customizable abuse filters and other extensions to aid in combating unhelpful edits.^[32] On more active wikis, so many edits occur that it is hard to track Recent Changes manually. Anti-vandal software, including user-assisted tools,^[33] is sometimes employed on such wikis to process Recent Changes items. Server load can be reduced by sending a continuous feed of Recent Changes to an IRC channel that these tools can monitor, eliminating their need to send requests for a refreshed Recent Changes feed to the API.^[34][35]

Another important tool is watchlisting. Each logged-in user has a watchlist to which the user can add whatever pages he or she wishes. When an edit is made to one of those pages, a summary of that edit appears on the watchlist the next time it is refreshed.^[36] As with the recent changes page, recent edits that appear on the watchlist contain clickable links for easy review of the article history and specific changes made.

There is also the capability to review all edits made by any particular user. In this way, if an edit is identified as problematic, it is possible to check the user's other edits for issues.

MediaWiki allows one to link to specific versions of articles. This has been useful to the scientific community, in that expert peer reviewers could analyse articles, improve them and provide links to the trusted version of that article.^[37]

Navigation through the wiki is largely through internal wikilinks. MediaWiki's wikilinks implement page existence detection, in which a link is colored blue if the target page exists on the local wiki and red if it does not. If a user clicks on a red link, they are prompted to create an article with that title. Page existence detection makes it practical for users to create "wikified" articles—that is, articles containing links to other pertinent subjects—without those other articles being yet in existence.

Interwiki links function much the same way as namespaces. A set of interwiki prefixes can be configured to cause, for instance, a page title of wikiquote:Jimbo Wales to direct the user to the Jimbo Wales article on Wikiquote.^[38] Unlike internal wikilinks, interwiki links lack page existence detection functionality, and accordingly there is no way to tell whether a blue interwiki link is broken or not.

Interlanguage links are the small navigation links that show up in the sidebar in most MediaWiki skins that connect an article with related articles in other languages within the same Wiki family. This can provide language-specific communities connected by a larger context, with all wikis on the same server or each on its own server.^[39]

Previously, Wikipedia used interlanguage links to link an article to other articles on the same topic in other editions of Wikipedia. This was superseded by the launch of Wikidata.^[40]

Page tabs are displayed at the top of pages. These tabs allow users to perform actions or view pages that are related to the current page. The available default actions include viewing, editing, and discussing the current page. The specific tabs displayed depend on whether the user is logged into the wiki and whether the user has sysop privileges on the wiki. For instance, the ability to move a page or add it to one's watchlist is usually restricted to logged-in users. The site administrator can add or remove tabs by using JavaScript or installing extensions.^[41]

Each page has an associated history page from which the user can access every version of the page that has ever existed and generate diffs between two versions of his choice. Users' contributions are displayed not only here, but also via a "user contributions" option on a sidebar. In a 2004 article, Carl Challborn and Teresa Reimann noted that "While this feature may be a slight deviation from the collaborative, 'ego-less' spirit of wiki purists, it can be very useful for educators who need to assess the contribution and participation of individual student users."^[42]

MediaWiki provides many features beyond hyperlinks for structuring content. One of the earliest such features is namespaces. One of Wikipedia's earliest problems had been the separation of encyclopedic content from pages pertaining to maintenance and communal discussion, as well as personal pages about encyclopedia editors. Namespaces are prefixes before a page title (such as "User:" or "Talk:") that serve as descriptors for the page's purpose and allow multiple pages with different functions to exist under the same title. For instance, a page titled "[[The Terminator]]", in the default namespace, could describe the 1984 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, while a page titled "[[User:The Terminator]]" could be a profile describing a user who chooses this name as a pseudonym. More commonly, each namespace has an associated "Talk:" namespace, which can be used to discuss its contents, such as "User talk:" or "Template talk:". The purpose of having discussion pages is to allow content to be separated from discussion surrounding the content.^[43][44]

Namespaces can be viewed as folders that separate different basic types of information or functionality. Custom namespaces can be added by the site administrators. There are 16 namespaces by default for content, with 2 "pseudo-namespaces" used for dynamically generated "Special:" pages and links to media files. Each namespace on MediaWiki is numbered: content page namespaces have even numbers and their associated talk page namespaces have odd numbers.^[45]

Users can create new categories and add pages and files to those categories by appending one or more category tags to the content text. Adding these tags creates links at the bottom of the page that take the reader to the list of all pages in that category, making it easy to browse related articles.^[46] The use of categorization to organize content has been described as a combination of:

• Collaborative tagging systems like del.icio.us and
• Hierarchical classifications like the Dewey Decimal Classification.^[47]

In addition to namespaces, content can be ordered using subpages. This simple feature provides automatic breadcrumbs of the pattern [[Page title/Subpage title]] from the page after the slash (in this case, "Subpage title") to the page before the slash (in this case, "Page title").

If the feature is enabled, users can customize their stylesheets and configure client-side JavaScript to be executed with every pageview. On Wikipedia, this has led to a large number of additional tools and helpers developed through the wiki and shared among users. For instance, navigation popups is a custom JavaScript tool that shows previews of articles when the user hovers over links and also provides shortcuts for common maintenance tasks.^[48]

The entire MediaWiki user interface can be edited through the wiki itself by users with the necessary permissions (typically called "administrators"). This is done through a special namespace with the prefix "MediaWiki:", where each page title identifies a particular user interface message. Using an extension,^[49] it is also possible for a user to create personal scripts, and to choose whether certain sitewide scripts should apply to them by toggling the appropriate options in the user preferences page.

The "MediaWiki:" namespace was originally also used for creating custom text blocks that could then be dynamically loaded into other pages using a special syntax. This content was later moved into its own namespace, "Template:".

Templates are text blocks that can be dynamically loaded inside another page whenever that page is requested. The template is a special link in double curly brackets (for example "date=October 2018"), which calls the template (in this case located at Template:Disputed) to load in place of the template call.

Templates are structured documents containing attribute–value pairs. They are defined with parameters, to which are assigned values when transcluded on an article page. The name of the parameter is delimited from the value by an equals sign. A class of templates known as infoboxes is used on Wikipedia to collect and present a subset of information about its subject, usually on the top (mobile view) or top right-hand corner (desktop view) of the document.

Pages in other namespaces can also be transcluded as templates. In particular, a page in the main namespace can be transcluded by prefixing its title with a colon; for example, :MediaWiki transcludes the article "MediaWiki" from the main namespace. Also, it is possible to mark the portions of a page that should be transcluded in several ways, the most basic of which are:^[50]

• <noinclude>...</noinclude>, which marks content that is not to be transcluded;
• <includeonly>...</includeonly>, which marks content that is not rendered unless it is transcluded;
• <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude>, which marks content that is to be the only content transcluded.

A related method, called template substitution (called by adding subst: at the beginning of a template link) inserts the contents of the template into the target page (like a copy and paste operation), instead of loading the template contents dynamically whenever the page is loaded. This can lead to inconsistency when using templates, but may be useful in certain cases, and in most cases requires fewer server resources (the actual amount of savings can vary depending on wiki configuration and the complexity of the template).

Templates have found many different uses. Templates enable users to create complex table layouts that are used consistently across multiple pages, and where only the content of the tables gets inserted using template parameters. Templates are frequently used to identify problems with a Wikipedia article by putting a template in the article. This template then outputs a graphical box stating that the article content is disputed or in need of some other attention, and also categorize it so that articles of this nature can be located. Templates are also used on user pages to send users standard messages welcoming them to the site,^[51] giving them awards for outstanding contributions,^[52][53] warning them when their behavior is considered inappropriate,^[54] notifying them when they are blocked from editing,^[55] and so on.

MediaWiki offers flexibility in creating and defining user groups. For instance, it would be possible to create an arbitrary "ninja" group that can block users and delete pages, and whose edits are hidden by default in the recent changes log. It is also possible to set up a group of "autoconfirmed" users that one becomes a member of after making a certain number of edits and waiting a certain number of days.^[56] Some groups that are enabled by default are bureaucrats and sysops. Bureaucrats have the power to change other users' rights. Sysops have power over page protection and deletion and the blocking of users from editing. MediaWiki's available controls on editing rights have been deemed sufficient for publishing and maintaining important documents such as a manual of standard operating procedures in a hospital.^[57]

MediaWiki comes with a basic set of features related to restricting access, but its original and ongoing design is driven by functions that largely relate to content, not content segregation. As a result, with minimal exceptions (related to specific tools and their related "Special" pages), page access control has never been a high priority in core development and developers have stated that users requiring secure user access and authorization controls should not rely on MediaWiki, since it was never designed for these kinds of situations. For instance, it is extremely difficult to create a wiki where only certain users can read and access some pages.^[58] Here, wiki engines like Foswiki, MoinMoin and Confluence provide more flexibility by supporting advanced security mechanisms like access control lists.

The MediaWiki codebase contains various hooks using callback functions to add additional PHP code in an extensible way. This allows developers to write extensions without necessarily needing to modify the core or having to submit their code for review. Installing an extension typically consists of adding a line to the configuration file, though in some cases additional changes such as database updates or core patches are required.

Five main extension points were created to allow developers to add features and functionalities to MediaWiki. Hooks are run every time a certain event happens; for instance, the ArticleSaveComplete hook occurs after a save article request has been processed.^[59] This can be used, for example, by an extension that notifies selected users whenever a page edit occurs on the wiki from new or anonymous users.^[60] New tags can be created to process data with opening and closing tags (<newtag>...</newtag>).^[61] Parser functions can be used to create a new command (...).^[62] New special pages can be created to perform a specific function. These pages are dynamically generated. For example, a special page might show all pages that have one or more links to an external site or it might create a form providing user submitted feedback.^[63] Skins allow users to customize the look and feel of MediaWiki.^[64] A minor extension point allows the use of Amazon S3 to host image files.^[65]

Among the most popular extensions is a parser function extension, ParserFunctions, which allows different content to be rendered based on the result of conditional statements.^[66] These conditional statements can perform functions such as evaluating whether a parameter is empty, comparing strings, evaluating mathematical expressions, and returning one of two values depending on whether a page exists. It was designed as a replacement for a notoriously inefficient template called Qif.^[67] Schindler recounts the history of the ParserFunctions extension as follows:^[68]

In 2006 some Wikipedians discovered that through an intricate and complicated interplay of templating features and CSS they could create conditional wiki text, i.e. text that was displayed if a template parameter had a specific value. This included repeated calls of templates within templates, which bogged down the performance of the whole system. The developers faced the choice of either disallowing the spreading of an obviously desired feature by detecting such usage and explicitly disallowing it within the software or offering an efficient alternative. The latter was done by Tim Starling, who announced the introduction of parser functions, wiki text that calls functions implemented in the underlying software. At first, only conditional text and the computation of simple mathematical expressions were implemented, but this already increased the possibilities for wiki editors enormously. With time further parser functions were introduced, finally leading to a framework that allowed the simple writing of extension functions to add arbitrary functionalities, like e.g. geo-coding services or widgets. This time the developers were clearly reacting to the demand of the community, being forced either to fight the solution of the issue that the community had (i.e. conditional text), or offer an improved technical implementation to replace the previous practice and achieve an overall better performance.

Another parser functions extension, StringFunctions, was developed to allow evaluation of string length, string position, and so on. Wikimedia communities, having created awkward workarounds to accomplish the same functionality,^[69] clamored for it to be enabled on their projects.^[70] Much of its functionality was eventually integrated into the ParserFunctions extension,^[71] albeit disabled by default and accompanied by a warning from Tim Starling that enabling string functions would allow users "to implement their own parsers in the ugliest, most inefficient programming language known to man: MediaWiki wikitext with ParserFunctions."^[72]

Since 2012 an extension, Scribunto, has existed that allows for the creation of "modules"—wiki pages written in the scripting language Lua—which can then be run within templates and standard wiki pages. Scribunto has been installed on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites since 2013 and is used heavily on those sites. Scribunto code runs significantly faster than corresponding wikitext code using ParserFunctions.^[73]

Another very popular extension is a citation extension that enables footnotes to be added to pages using inline references.^[74] This extension has, however, been criticized for being difficult to use and requiring the user to memorize complex syntax. A gadget called RefToolbar attempts to make it easier to create citations using common templates. MediaWiki has some extensions that are well-suited for academia, such as mathematics extensions^[75] and an extension that allows molecules to be rendered in 3D.^[76]

A generic Widgets extension exists that allows MediaWiki to integrate with virtually anything. Other examples of extensions that could improve a wiki are category suggestion extensions^[77] and extensions for inclusion of Flash Videos,^[78] YouTube videos,^[79] and RSS feeds.^[80] Metavid, a site that archives video footage of the U.S. Senate and House floor proceedings, was created using code extending MediaWiki into the domain of collaborative video authoring.^[81]

There are many spambots that search the web for MediaWiki installations and add linkspam to them, despite the fact that MediaWiki uses the nofollow attribute to discourage such attempts at search engine optimization.^[82] Part of the problem is that third party republishers, such as mirrors, may not independently implement the nofollow tag on their websites, so marketers can still get PageRank benefit by inserting links into pages when those entries appear on third party websites.^[83] Anti-spam extensions have been developed to combat the problem by introducing CAPTCHAs,^[84] blacklisting certain URLs,^[85] and allowing bulk deletion of pages recently added by a particular user.^[86]

MediaWiki comes pre-installed with a standard text-based search. Extensions exist to let MediaWiki use more sophisticated third-party search engines, including Elasticsearch (which since 2014 has been in use on Wikipedia), Lucene^[87] and Sphinx.^[88]

Various MediaWiki extensions have also been created to allow for more complex, faceted search, on both data entered within the wiki and on metadata such as pages' revision history.^[89][90] Semantic MediaWiki is one such extension.^[91][92]

Various extensions to MediaWiki support rich content generated through specialized syntax. These include mathematical formulas using LaTeX, graphical timelines over mathematical plotting, musical scores and Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The software supports a wide variety of uploaded media files, and allows image galleries and thumbnails to be generated with relative ease. There is also support for Exif metadata. MediaWiki operates the Wikimedia Commons, one of the largest free content media archives.

For WYSIWYG editing, VisualEditor is available to use in MediaWiki which simplifying editing process for editors and has been bundled since MediaWiki 1.35.^[93] Other extensions exist for handling WYSIWYG editing to different degrees.^[94]

MediaWiki can use either the MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL or SQLite relational database management system. Support for Oracle Database and Microsoft SQL Server has been dropped since MediaWiki 1.34.^[95] A MediaWiki database contains several dozen tables, including a page table that contains page titles, page ids, and other metadata;^[96] and a revision table to which is added a new row every time an edit is made, containing the page id, a brief textual summary of the change performed, the user name of the article editor (or its IP address the case of an unregistered user) and a timestamp.^[97][98]

In a 4½ year period prior to 2008, the MediaWiki database had 170 schema versions.^[99] Possibly the largest schema change was done in 2005 with MediaWiki 1.5, when the storage of metadata was separated from that of content, to improve performance flexibility. When this upgrade was applied to Wikipedia, the site was locked for editing, and the schema was converted to the new version in about 22 hours. Some software enhancement proposals, such as a proposal to allow sections of articles to be watched via watchlist, have been rejected because the necessary schema changes would have required excessive Wikipedia downtime.^[100]

Because it is used to run one of the highest-traffic sites on the Web, Wikipedia, MediaWiki's performance and scalability have been highly optimized.^[101] MediaWiki supports Squid, load-balanced database replication, client-side caching, memcached or table-based caching for frequently accessed processing of query results, a simple static file cache, feature-reduced operation, revision compression, and a job queue for database operations. MediaWiki developers have attempted to optimize the software by avoiding expensive algorithms, database queries, etc., caching every result that is expensive and has temporal locality of reference, and focusing on the hot spots in the code through profiling.^[102]

MediaWiki code is designed to allow for data to be written to a read-write database and read from read-only databases, although the read-write database can be used for some read operations if the read-only databases are not yet up to date. Metadata, such as article revision history, article relations (links, categories etc.), user accounts and settings can be stored in core databases and cached; the actual revision text, being more rarely used, can be stored as append-only blobs in external storage. The software is suitable for the operation of large-scale wiki farms such as Wikimedia, which had about 800 wikis as of August 2011. However, MediaWiki comes with no built-in GUI to manage such installations.

Empirical evidence shows most revisions in MediaWiki databases tend to differ only slightly from previous revisions. Therefore, subsequent revisions of an article can be concatenated and then compressed, achieving very high data compression ratios of up to 100×.^[102]

For more information on the architecture, such as how it stores wikitext and assembles a page, see External links.

The parser serves as the de facto standard for the MediaWiki syntax, as no formal syntax has been defined. Due to this lack of a formal definition, it has been difficult to create WYSIWYG editors for MediaWiki, although several WYSIWYG extensions do exist, including the popular VisualEditor.

MediaWiki is not designed to be a suitable replacement for dedicated online forum or blogging software,^[103] although extensions do exist to allow for both of these.^[104][105]

It is common for new MediaWiki users to make certain mistakes, such as forgetting to sign posts with four tildes (~~~~),^[106] or manually entering a plaintext signature,^[107] due to unfamiliarity with the idiosyncratic particulars involved in communication on MediaWiki discussion pages. On the other hand, the format of these discussion pages has been cited as a strength by one educator, who stated that it provides more fine-grain capabilities for discussion than traditional threaded discussion forums. For example, instead of 'replying' to an entire message, the participant in a discussion can create a hyperlink to a new wiki page on any word from the original page. Discussions are easier to follow since the content is available via hyperlinked wiki page, rather than a series of reply messages on a traditional threaded discussion forum. However, except in few cases, students were not using this capability, possibly because of their familiarity with the traditional linear discussion style and a lack of guidance on how to make the content more 'link-rich'.^[108]

MediaWiki by default has little support for the creation of dynamically assembled documents, or pages that aggregate data from other pages. Some research has been done on enabling such features directly within MediaWiki.^[109] The Semantic MediaWiki extension provides these features. It is not in use on Wikipedia, but in more than 1,600 other MediaWiki installations.^[110] The Wikibase Repository and Wikibase Repository client are however implemented in Wikidata and Wikipedia respectively, and to some extent provides semantic web features, and linking of centrally stored data to infoboxes in various Wikipedia articles.

Upgrading MediaWiki is usually fully automated, requiring no changes to the site content or template programming. Historically troubles have been encountered when upgrading from significantly older versions.^[111]

MediaWiki developers have enacted security standards, both for core code and extensions.^[112] SQL queries and HTML output are usually done through wrapper functions that handle validation, escaping, filtering for prevention of cross-site scripting and SQL injection.^[113] Many security issues have had to be patched after a MediaWiki version release,^[114] and accordingly MediaWiki.org states, "The most important security step you can take is to keep your software up to date" by subscribing to the announcement mailing list and installing security updates that are announced.^[115]

Support for MediaWiki users consists of:

• MediaWiki.org, including the Support Desk.
• An official mailing list, Mediawiki-l.
• Several books have been written about MediaWiki administration,^[116] including some free online books.^[117][118]

MediaWiki is free and open-source and is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or any later version. Its documentation, located at its official website at www.mediawiki.org, is released under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license, with a set of help pages intended to be freely copied into fresh wiki installations and/or distributed with MediaWiki software in the public domain instead to eliminate legal issues for wikis with other licenses.^[119][120] MediaWiki's development has generally favored the use of open-source media formats.^[121]

MediaWiki has an active volunteer community for development and maintenance. MediaWiki developers are spread around the world, though with a majority in the United States and Europe. Face-to-face meetings and programming sessions for MediaWiki developers have been held once or several times a year since 2004.^[122]

Anyone can submit patches to the project's Git/Gerrit repository.^[123] There are also paid programmers who primarily develop projects for the Wikimedia Foundation. MediaWiki developers participate in the Google Summer of Code by facilitating the assignment of mentors to students wishing to work on MediaWiki core and extension projects.^[124] During the year prior to November 2012, there were about two hundred developers who had committed changes to the MediaWiki core or extensions.^[125] Major MediaWiki releases are generated approximately every six months by taking snapshots of the development branch, which is kept continuously in a runnable state;^[126] minor releases, or point releases, are issued as needed to correct bugs (especially security problems). MediaWiki is developed on a continuous integration development model, in which software changes are pushed live to Wikimedia sites on regular basis.^[126] MediaWiki also has a public bug tracker, phabricator.wikimedia.org, which runs Phabricator. The site is also used for feature and enhancement requests.

When Wikipedia was launched in January 2001, it ran on an existing wiki software system, UseModWiki. UseModWiki is written in the Perl programming language, and stores all wiki pages in text (.txt) files. This software soon proved to be limiting, in both functionality and performance. In mid-2001, Magnus Manske—a developer and student at the University of Cologne, as well as a Wikipedia editor—began working on new software that would replace UseModWiki, specifically designed for use by Wikipedia. This software was written in the PHP scripting language, and stored all of its information in a MySQL database. The new software was largely developed by August 24, 2001, and a test wiki for it was established shortly thereafter.

The first full implementation of this software was the new Meta Wikipedia on November 9, 2001. There was a desire to have it implemented immediately on the English-language Wikipedia.^[127] However, Manske was apprehensive about any potential bugs harming the nascent website during the period of the final exams he had to complete immediately prior to Christmas;^[128] this led to the launch on the English-language Wikipedia being delayed until January 25, 2002. The software was then, gradually, deployed on all the Wikipedia language sites of that time. This software was referred to as "the PHP script" and as "phase II", with the name "phase I", retroactively given to the use of UseModWiki.

Increasing usage soon caused load problems to arise again, and soon after, another rewrite of the software began; this time being done by Lee Daniel Crocker, which became known as "phase III". This new software was also written in PHP, with a MySQL backend, and kept the basic interface of the phase II software, but with the added functionality of a wider scalability. The "phase III" software went live on Wikipedia in July 2002.

The Wikimedia Foundation was announced on June 20, 2003. In July, Wikipedia contributor Daniel Mayer suggested the name "MediaWiki" for the software, as a play on "Wikimedia".^[129] The MediaWiki name was gradually phased in, beginning in August 2003. The name has frequently caused confusion due to its (intentional) similarity to the "Wikimedia" name (which itself is similar to "Wikipedia").^[130] The first version of MediaWiki, 1.1, was released in December 2003.

The old product logo was created by Erik Möller, using a flower photograph taken by Florence Nibart-Devouard, and was originally submitted to the logo contest for a new Wikipedia logo, held from July 20 to August 27, 2003.^[131][132] The logo came in third place, and was chosen to represent MediaWiki rather than Wikipedia, with the second place logo being used for the Wikimedia Foundation.^[133] The double square brackets ([[ ]]) symbolize the syntax MediaWiki uses for creating hyperlinks to other wiki pages; while the sunflower represents the diversity of content on Wikipedia, its constant growth, and the wilderness.^[134]

Later, Brooke Vibber, the chief technical officer of the Wikimedia Foundation,^[135] took up the role of release manager.^[136][101]

Major milestones in MediaWiki's development have included: the categorization system (2004); parser functions, (2006); Flagged Revisions, (2008);^[68] the "ResourceLoader", a delivery system for CSS and JavaScript (2011);^[137] and the VisualEditor, a "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) editing platform (2013).^[138]

The contest of designing a new logo was initiated on June 22, 2020, as the old logo was a bitmap image and had "high details", leading to problems when rendering at high and low resolutions, respectively. After two rounds of voting, the new and current MediaWiki logo designed by Serhio Magpie was selected on October 24, 2020, and officially adopted on April 1, 2021.^[139]

MediaWiki's most famous use has been in Wikipedia and, to a lesser degree, the Wikimedia Foundation's other projects. Fandom, a wiki hosting service formerly known as Wikia, runs on MediaWiki. Other public wikis that run on MediaWiki include wikiHow and SNPedia. WikiLeaks began as a MediaWiki-based site, but is no longer a wiki.

A number of alternative wiki encyclopedias to Wikipedia run on MediaWiki, including Citizendium, Metapedia, Scholarpedia and Conservapedia. MediaWiki is also used internally by a large number of companies, including Novell and Intel.^[140][141]

Notable usages of MediaWiki within governments include Intellipedia, used by the United States Intelligence Community, Diplopedia, used by the United States Department of State, and milWiki, a part of milSuite used by the United States Department of Defense. United Nations agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme and INSTRAW chose to implement their wikis using MediaWiki, because "this software runs Wikipedia and is therefore guaranteed to be thoroughly tested, will continue to be developed well into the future, and future technicians on these wikis will be more likely to have exposure to MediaWiki than any other wiki software."^[142]

The Free Software Foundation uses MediaWiki to implement the LibrePlanet site.^[143]

Users of online collaboration software are familiar with MediaWiki's functions and layout due to its noted use on Wikipedia. A 2006 overview of social software in academia observed that "Compared to other wikis, MediaWiki is also fairly aesthetically pleasing, though simple, and has an easily customized side menu and stylesheet."^[144] However, in one assessment in 2006, Confluence was deemed to be a superior product due to its very usable API and ability to better support multiple wikis.^[76]

A 2009 study at the University of Hong Kong compared TWiki to MediaWiki. The authors noted that TWiki has been considered as a collaborative tool for the development of educational papers and technical projects, whereas MediaWiki's most noted use is on Wikipedia. Although both platforms allow discussion and tracking of progress, TWiki has a "Report" part that MediaWiki lacks. Students perceived MediaWiki as being easier to use and more enjoyable than TWiki. When asked whether they recommended using MediaWiki for knowledge management course group project, 15 out of 16 respondents expressed their preference for MediaWiki giving answers of great certainty, such as "of course", "for sure".^[145] TWiki and MediaWiki both have flexible plug-in architecture.^[146]

A 2009 study that compared students' experience with MediaWiki to that with Google Docs found that students gave the latter a much higher rating on user-friendly layout.^[147]

A 2021 study conducted by the Brazilian Nuclear Engineering Institute compared a MediaWiki-based knowledge management system against two others that were based on DSpace and Open Journal Systems, respectively.^[148] It highlighted ease of use as an advantage of the MediaWiki-based system, noting that because the Wikimedia Foundation had been developing MediaWiki for a site aimed at the general public (Wikipedia), "its user interface was designed to be more user-friendly from start, and has received large user feedback over a long time", in contrast to DSpace's and OJS's focus on niche audiences.^[148]

• List of content management systems
• List of wiki software
• BlueSpice
• Semantic MediaWiki
• XOWA – for viewing Wikipedia and other wikis offline
• PHP – a programming language that powers MediaWiki

• MediaWiki homepage

Creation and maintenance of websites

Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design (UI design); authoring, including standardised code and proprietary software; user experience design (UX design); and search engine optimization. Often many individuals will work in teams covering different aspects of the design process, although some designers will cover them all.^[1] The term "web design" is normally used to describe the design process relating to the front-end (client side) design of a website including writing markup. Web design partially overlaps web engineering in the broader scope of web development. Web designers are expected to have an awareness of usability and be up to date with web accessibility guidelines.

History

[edit]

See also: History of the World Wide Web

1988–2001

[edit]

Although web design has a fairly recent history, it can be linked to other areas such as graphic design, user experience, and multimedia arts, but is more aptly seen from a technological standpoint. It has become a large part of people's everyday lives. It is hard to imagine the Internet without animated graphics, different styles of typography, backgrounds, videos and music. The web was announced on August 6, 1991; in November 1992, CERN was the first website to go live on the World Wide Web. During this period, websites were structured by using the <table> tag which created numbers on the website. Eventually, web designers were able to find their way around it to create more structures and formats. In early history, the structure of the websites was fragile and hard to contain, so it became very difficult to use them. In November 1993, ALIWEB was the first ever search engine to be created (Archie Like Indexing for the WEB).^[2]

The start of the web and web design

[edit]

In 1989, whilst working at CERN in Switzerland, British scientist Tim Berners-Lee proposed to create a global hypertext project, which later became known as the World Wide Web. From 1991 to 1993 the World Wide Web was born. Text-only HTML pages could be viewed using a simple line-mode web browser.^[3] In 1993 Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, created the Mosaic browser. At the time there were multiple browsers, however the majority of them were Unix-based and naturally text-heavy. There had been no integrated approach to graphic design elements such as images or sounds. The Mosaic browser broke this mould.^[4] The W3C was created in October 1994 to "lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability."^[5] This discouraged any one company from monopolizing a proprietary browser and programming language, which could have altered the effect of the World Wide Web as a whole. The W3C continues to set standards, which can today be seen with JavaScript and other languages. In 1994 Andreessen formed Mosaic Communications Corp. that later became known as Netscape Communications, the Netscape 0.9 browser. Netscape created its HTML tags without regard to the traditional standards process. For example, Netscape 1.1 included tags for changing background colours and formatting text with tables on web pages. From 1996 to 1999 the browser wars began, as Microsoft and Netscape fought for ultimate browser dominance. During this time there were many new technologies in the field, notably Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript, and Dynamic HTML. On the whole, the browser competition did lead to many positive creations and helped web design evolve at a rapid pace.^[6]

Evolution of web design

[edit]

In 1996, Microsoft released its first competitive browser, which was complete with its features and HTML tags. It was also the first browser to support style sheets, which at the time was seen as an obscure authoring technique and is today an important aspect of web design.^[6] The HTML markup for tables was originally intended for displaying tabular data. However, designers quickly realized the potential of using HTML tables for creating complex, multi-column layouts that were otherwise not possible. At this time, as design and good aesthetics seemed to take precedence over good markup structure, little attention was paid to semantics and web accessibility. HTML sites were limited in their design options, even more so with earlier versions of HTML. To create complex designs, many web designers had to use complicated table structures or even use blank spacer .GIF images to stop empty table cells from collapsing.^[7] CSS was introduced in December 1996 by the W3C to support presentation and layout. This allowed HTML code to be semantic rather than both semantic and presentational and improved web accessibility, see tableless web design.

In 1996, Flash (originally known as FutureSplash) was developed. At the time, the Flash content development tool was relatively simple compared to now, using basic layout and drawing tools, a limited precursor to ActionScript, and a timeline, but it enabled web designers to go beyond the point of HTML, animated GIFs and JavaScript. However, because Flash required a plug-in, many web developers avoided using it for fear of limiting their market share due to lack of compatibility. Instead, designers reverted to GIF animations (if they did not forego using motion graphics altogether) and JavaScript for widgets. But the benefits of Flash made it popular enough among specific target markets to eventually work its way to the vast majority of browsers, and powerful enough to be used to develop entire sites.^[7]

End of the first browser wars

[edit]

In 1998, Netscape released Netscape Communicator code under an open-source licence, enabling thousands of developers to participate in improving the software. However, these developers decided to start a standard for the web from scratch, which guided the development of the open-source browser and soon expanded to a complete application platform.^[6] The Web Standards Project was formed and promoted browser compliance with HTML and CSS standards. Programs like Acid1, Acid2, and Acid3 were created in order to test browsers for compliance with web standards. In 2000, Internet Explorer was released for Mac, which was the first browser that fully supported HTML 4.01 and CSS 1. It was also the first browser to fully support the PNG image format.^[6] By 2001, after a campaign by Microsoft to popularize Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer had reached 96% of web browser usage share, which signified the end of the first browser wars as Internet Explorer had no real competition.^[8]

Since the start of the 21st century, the web has become more and more integrated into people's lives. As this has happened the technology of the web has also moved on. There have also been significant changes in the way people use and access the web, and this has changed how sites are designed.

Since the end of the browsers wars^[when?] new browsers have been released. Many of these are open source, meaning that they tend to have faster development and are more supportive of new standards. The new options are considered by many^{[weasel words]} to be better than Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

The W3C has released new standards for HTML (HTML5) and CSS (CSS3), as well as new JavaScript APIs, each as a new but individual standard.^[when?] While the term HTML5 is only used to refer to the new version of HTML and some of the JavaScript APIs, it has become common to use it to refer to the entire suite of new standards (HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript).

With the advancements in 3G and LTE internet coverage, a significant portion of website traffic shifted to mobile devices. This shift influenced the web design industry, steering it towards a minimalist, lighter, and more simplistic style. The "mobile first" approach emerged as a result, emphasizing the creation of website designs that prioritize mobile-oriented layouts first, before adapting them to larger screen dimensions.

Web designers use a variety of different tools depending on what part of the production process they are involved in. These tools are updated over time by newer standards and software but the principles behind them remain the same. Web designers use both vector and raster graphics editors to create web-formatted imagery or design prototypes. A website can be created using WYSIWYG website builder software or a content management system, or the individual web pages can be hand-coded in just the same manner as the first web pages were created. Other tools web designers might use include markup validators^[9] and other testing tools for usability and accessibility to ensure their websites meet web accessibility guidelines.^[10]

One popular tool in web design is UX Design, a type of art that designs products to perform an accurate user background. UX design is very deep. UX is more than the web, it is very independent, and its fundamentals can be applied to many other browsers or apps. Web design is mostly based on web-based things. UX can overlap both web design and design. UX design mostly focuses on products that are less web-based.^[11]

Marketing and communication design on a website may identify what works for its target market. This can be an age group or particular strand of culture; thus the designer may understand the trends of its audience. Designers may also understand the type of website they are designing, meaning, for example, that (B2B) business-to-business website design considerations might differ greatly from a consumer-targeted website such as a retail or entertainment website. Careful consideration might be made to ensure that the aesthetics or overall design of a site do not clash with the clarity and accuracy of the content or the ease of web navigation,^[12] especially on a B2B website. Designers may also consider the reputation of the owner or business the site is representing to make sure they are portrayed favorably. Web designers normally oversee all the websites that are made on how they work or operate on things. They constantly are updating and changing everything on websites behind the scenes. All the elements they do are text, photos, graphics, and layout of the web. Before beginning work on a website, web designers normally set an appointment with their clients to discuss layout, colour, graphics, and design. Web designers spend the majority of their time designing websites and making sure the speed is right. Web designers typically engage in testing and working, marketing, and communicating with other designers about laying out the websites and finding the right elements for the websites.^[13]

User understanding of the content of a website often depends on user understanding of how the website works. This is part of the user experience design. User experience is related to layout, clear instructions, and labeling on a website. How well a user understands how they can interact on a site may also depend on the interactive design of the site. If a user perceives the usefulness of the website, they are more likely to continue using it. Users who are skilled and well versed in website use may find a more distinctive, yet less intuitive or less user-friendly website interface useful nonetheless. However, users with less experience are less likely to see the advantages or usefulness of a less intuitive website interface. This drives the trend for a more universal user experience and ease of access to accommodate as many users as possible regardless of user skill.^[14] Much of the user experience design and interactive design are considered in the user interface design.

Advanced interactive functions may require plug-ins if not advanced coding language skills. Choosing whether or not to use interactivity that requires plug-ins is a critical decision in user experience design. If the plug-in doesn't come pre-installed with most browsers, there's a risk that the user will have neither the know-how nor the patience to install a plug-in just to access the content. If the function requires advanced coding language skills, it may be too costly in either time or money to code compared to the amount of enhancement the function will add to the user experience. There's also a risk that advanced interactivity may be incompatible with older browsers or hardware configurations. Publishing a function that doesn't work reliably is potentially worse for the user experience than making no attempt. It depends on the target audience if it's likely to be needed or worth any risks.

Progressive enhancement is a strategy in web design that puts emphasis on web content first, allowing everyone to access the basic content and functionality of a web page, whilst users with additional browser features or faster Internet access receive the enhanced version instead.

In practice, this means serving content through HTML and applying styling and animation through CSS to the technically possible extent, then applying further enhancements through JavaScript. Pages' text is loaded immediately through the HTML source code rather than having to wait for JavaScript to initiate and load the content subsequently, which allows content to be readable with minimum loading time and bandwidth, and through text-based browsers, and maximizes backwards compatibility.^[15]

As an example, MediaWiki-based sites including Wikipedia use progressive enhancement, as they remain usable while JavaScript and even CSS is deactivated, as pages' content is included in the page's HTML source code, whereas counter-example Everipedia relies on JavaScript to load pages' content subsequently; a blank page appears with JavaScript deactivated.

Part of the user interface design is affected by the quality of the page layout. For example, a designer may consider whether the site's page layout should remain consistent on different pages when designing the layout. Page pixel width may also be considered vital for aligning objects in the layout design. The most popular fixed-width websites generally have the same set width to match the current most popular browser window, at the current most popular screen resolution, on the current most popular monitor size. Most pages are also center-aligned for concerns of aesthetics on larger screens.

Fluid layouts increased in popularity around 2000 to allow the browser to make user-specific layout adjustments to fluid layouts based on the details of the reader's screen (window size, font size relative to window, etc.). They grew as an alternative to HTML-table-based layouts and grid-based design in both page layout design principles and in coding technique but were very slow to be adopted.^{[note 1]} This was due to considerations of screen reading devices and varying windows sizes which designers have no control over. Accordingly, a design may be broken down into units (sidebars, content blocks, embedded advertising areas, navigation areas) that are sent to the browser and which will be fitted into the display window by the browser, as best it can. Although such a display may often change the relative position of major content units, sidebars may be displaced below body text rather than to the side of it. This is a more flexible display than a hard-coded grid-based layout that doesn't fit the device window. In particular, the relative position of content blocks may change while leaving the content within the block unaffected. This also minimizes the user's need to horizontally scroll the page.

Responsive web design is a newer approach, based on CSS3, and a deeper level of per-device specification within the page's style sheet through an enhanced use of the CSS @media rule. In March 2018 Google announced they would be rolling out mobile-first indexing.^[16] Sites using responsive design are well placed to ensure they meet this new approach.

Web designers may choose to limit the variety of website typefaces to only a few which are of a similar style, instead of using a wide range of typefaces or type styles. Most browsers recognize a specific number of safe fonts, which designers mainly use in order to avoid complications.

Font downloading was later included in the CSS3 fonts module and has since been implemented in Safari 3.1, Opera 10, and Mozilla Firefox 3.5. This has subsequently increased interest in web typography, as well as the usage of font downloading.

Most site layouts incorporate negative space to break the text up into paragraphs and also avoid center-aligned text.^[17]

The page layout and user interface may also be affected by the use of motion graphics. The choice of whether or not to use motion graphics may depend on the target market for the website. Motion graphics may be expected or at least better received with an entertainment-oriented website. However, a website target audience with a more serious or formal interest (such as business, community, or government) might find animations unnecessary and distracting if only for entertainment or decoration purposes. This doesn't mean that more serious content couldn't be enhanced with animated or video presentations that is relevant to the content. In either case, motion graphic design may make the difference between more effective visuals or distracting visuals.

Motion graphics that are not initiated by the site visitor can produce accessibility issues. The World Wide Web consortium accessibility standards require that site visitors be able to disable the animations.^[18]

Website designers may consider it to be good practice to conform to standards. This is usually done via a description specifying what the element is doing. Failure to conform to standards may not make a website unusable or error-prone, but standards can relate to the correct layout of pages for readability as well as making sure coded elements are closed appropriately. This includes errors in code, a more organized layout for code, and making sure IDs and classes are identified properly. Poorly coded pages are sometimes colloquially called tag soup. Validating via W3C^[9] can only be done when a correct DOCTYPE declaration is made, which is used to highlight errors in code. The system identifies the errors and areas that do not conform to web design standards. This information can then be corrected by the user.^[19]

There are two ways websites are generated: statically or dynamically.

A static website stores a unique file for every page of a static website. Each time that page is requested, the same content is returned. This content is created once, during the design of the website. It is usually manually authored, although some sites use an automated creation process, similar to a dynamic website, whose results are stored long-term as completed pages. These automatically created static sites became more popular around 2015, with generators such as Jekyll and Adobe Muse.^[20]

The benefits of a static website are that they were simpler to host, as their server only needed to serve static content, not execute server-side scripts. This required less server administration and had less chance of exposing security holes. They could also serve pages more quickly, on low-cost server hardware. This advantage became less important as cheap web hosting expanded to also offer dynamic features, and virtual servers offered high performance for short intervals at low cost.

Almost all websites have some static content, as supporting assets such as images and style sheets are usually static, even on a website with highly dynamic pages.

Dynamic websites are generated on the fly and use server-side technology to generate web pages. They typically extract their content from one or more back-end databases: some are database queries across a relational database to query a catalog or to summarise numeric information, and others may use a document database such as MongoDB or NoSQL to store larger units of content, such as blog posts or wiki articles.

In the design process, dynamic pages are often mocked-up or wireframed using static pages. The skillset needed to develop dynamic web pages is much broader than for a static page, involving server-side and database coding as well as client-side interface design. Even medium-sized dynamic projects are thus almost always a team effort.

When dynamic web pages first developed, they were typically coded directly in languages such as Perl, PHP or ASP. Some of these, notably PHP and ASP, used a 'template' approach where a server-side page resembled the structure of the completed client-side page, and data was inserted into places defined by 'tags'. This was a quicker means of development than coding in a purely procedural coding language such as Perl.

Both of these approaches have now been supplanted for many websites by higher-level application-focused tools such as content management systems. These build on top of general-purpose coding platforms and assume that a website exists to offer content according to one of several well-recognised models, such as a time-sequenced blog, a thematic magazine or news site, a wiki, or a user forum. These tools make the implementation of such a site very easy, and a purely organizational and design-based task, without requiring any coding.

Editing the content itself (as well as the template page) can be done both by means of the site itself and with the use of third-party software. The ability to edit all pages is provided only to a specific category of users (for example, administrators, or registered users). In some cases, anonymous users are allowed to edit certain web content, which is less frequent (for example, on forums - adding messages). An example of a site with an anonymous change is Wikipedia.

Usability experts, including Jakob Nielsen and Kyle Soucy, have often emphasised homepage design for website success and asserted that the homepage is the most important page on a website.^[21] Nielsen, Jakob; Tahir, Marie (October 2001), Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed, New Riders Publishing, ISBN 978-0-7357-1102-0^[22][23] However practitioners into the 2000s were starting to find that a growing number of website traffic was bypassing the homepage, going directly to internal content pages through search engines, e-newsletters and RSS feeds.^[24] This led many practitioners to argue that homepages are less important than most people think.^{[25][26][27][28]} Jared Spool argued in 2007 that a site's homepage was actually the least important page on a website.^[29]

In 2012 and 2013, carousels (also called 'sliders' and 'rotating banners') have become an extremely popular design element on homepages, often used to showcase featured or recent content in a confined space.^[30] Many practitioners argue that carousels are an ineffective design element and hurt a website's search engine optimisation and usability.^[30][31][32]

There are two primary jobs involved in creating a website: the web designer and web developer, who often work closely together on a website.^[33] The web designers are responsible for the visual aspect, which includes the layout, colouring, and typography of a web page. Web designers will also have a working knowledge of markup languages such as HTML and CSS, although the extent of their knowledge will differ from one web designer to another. Particularly in smaller organizations, one person will need the necessary skills for designing and programming the full web page, while larger organizations may have a web designer responsible for the visual aspect alone.

Further jobs which may become involved in the creation of a website include:

• Graphic designers to create visuals for the site such as logos, layouts, and buttons
• Internet marketing specialists to help maintain web presence through strategic solutions on targeting viewers to the site, by using marketing and promotional techniques on the internet
• SEO writers to research and recommend the correct words to be incorporated into a particular website and make the website more accessible and found on numerous search engines
• Internet copywriter to create the written content of the page to appeal to the targeted viewers of the site^[1]
• User experience (UX) designer incorporates aspects of user-focused design considerations which include information architecture, user-centred design, user testing, interaction design, and occasionally visual design.

Chat GPT and other AI models are being used to write and code websites making it faster and easier to create websites. There are still discussions about the ethical implications on using artificial intelligence for design as the world becomes more familiar with using AI for time-consuming tasks used in design processes.^[34]

• W3C consortium for web standards

Google's web mapping service (launched 2005)

 

This article's "criticism" or "controversy" section may compromise the article's neutrality. Please help rewrite or integrate negative information to other sections through discussion on the talk page. (June 2024)

Google Maps

Screenshot of Google Maps in a web browser
Type of site	Web mapping
Available in	74 languages
List of languages Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Indonesian, Malay, Bosnian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German (Germany), Estonian, English (United States), Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), Basque, Filipino, French (France), Galician, Croatian, Zulu, Icelandic, Italian, Swahili, Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Dutch, Norwegian, Uzbek, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Albanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Finnish, Swedish, Vietnamese, Turkish, Greek, Bulgarian, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Macedonian, Mongolian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Armenian, Hebrew, Urdu, Arabic, Persian, Amharic, Nepali, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Sinhala, Thai, Lao, Burmese, Khmer, Korean, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese
Owner	Google
URL	google.com/maps
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Optional, included with a Google Account
Launched	February 8, 2005; 20 years ago (2005-02-08)
Current status	Active
Written in	C++ (back-end), JavaScript, XML, Ajax (UI)

Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets (Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and route planning for traveling by foot, car, bike, air (in beta) and public transportation. As of 2020^[update], Google Maps was being used by over one billion people every month around the world.^[1]

Google Maps began as a C++ desktop program developed by brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen in Australia at Where 2 Technologies. In October 2004, the company was acquired by Google, which converted it into a web application. After additional acquisitions of a geospatial data visualization company and a real-time traffic analyzer, Google Maps was launched in February 2005.^[2] The service's front end utilizes JavaScript, XML, and Ajax. Google Maps offers an API that allows maps to be embedded on third-party websites,^[3] and offers a locator for businesses and other organizations in numerous countries around the world. Google Map Maker allowed users to collaboratively expand and update the service's mapping worldwide but was discontinued from March 2017. However, crowdsourced contributions to Google Maps were not discontinued as the company announced those features would be transferred to the Google Local Guides program,^[4] although users that are not Local Guides can still contribute.

Google Maps' satellite view is a "top-down" or bird's-eye view; most of the high-resolution imagery of cities is aerial photography taken from aircraft flying at 800 to 1,500 feet (240 to 460 m), while most other imagery is from satellites.^[5] Much of the available satellite imagery is no more than three years old and is updated on a regular basis, according to a 2011 report.^[6] Google Maps previously used a variant of the Mercator projection, and therefore could not accurately show areas around the poles.^[7] In August 2018, the desktop version of Google Maps was updated to show a 3D globe. It is still possible to switch back to the 2D map in the settings.

Google Maps for mobile devices was first released in 2006; the latest versions feature GPS turn-by-turn navigation along with dedicated parking assistance features. By 2013, it was found to be the world's most popular smartphone app, with over 54% of global smartphone owners using it.^[8] In 2017, the app was reported to have two billion users on Android, along with several other Google services including YouTube, Chrome, Gmail, Search, and Google Play.

History

[edit]

Acquisitions

[edit]

Google Maps first started as a C++ program designed by two Danish brothers, Lars and Jens Eilstrup Rasmussen, and Noel Gordon and Stephen Ma, at the Sydney-based company Where 2 Technologies, which was founded in early 2003. The program was initially designed to be separately downloaded by users, but the company later pitched the idea for a purely Web-based product to Google management, changing the method of distribution.^[9] In October 2004, the company was acquired by Google Inc.^[10] where it transformed into the web application Google Maps. The Rasmussen brothers, Gordon and Ma joined Google at that time.

In the same month, Google acquired Keyhole, a geospatial data visualization company (with investment from the CIA), whose marquee application suite, Earth Viewer, emerged as the Google Earth application in 2005 while other aspects of its core technology were integrated into Google Maps.^[11] In September 2004, Google acquired ZipDash, a company that provided real-time traffic analysis.^[12]

2005–2010

[edit]

The launch of Google Maps was first announced on the Google Blog on February 8, 2005.^[13]

In September 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Google Maps quickly updated its satellite imagery of New Orleans to allow users to view the extent of the flooding in various parts of that city.^[14][15]

As of 2007, Google Maps was equipped with a miniature view with a draggable rectangle that denotes the area shown in the main viewport, and "Info windows" for previewing details about locations on maps.^[16] As of 2024, this feature had been removed (likely several years prior).

On November 28, 2007, Google Maps for Mobile 2.0 was released.^[17][18][19] It featured a beta version of a "My Location" feature, which uses the GPS / Assisted GPS location of the mobile device, if available, supplemented by determining the nearest wireless networks and cell sites.^[18][19] The software looks up the location of the cell site using a database of known wireless networks and sites.^[20][21] By triangulating the different signal strengths from cell transmitters and then using their location property (retrieved from the database), My Location determines the user's current location.^[22]

On September 23, 2008, coinciding with the announcement of the first commercial Android device, Google announced that a Google Maps app had been released for its Android operating system.^[23][24]

In October 2009, Google replaced Tele Atlas as their primary supplier of geospatial data in the US version of Maps and used their own data.^[25]

2011–2015

[edit]

On April 19, 2011, Map Maker was added to the American version of Google Maps, allowing any viewer to edit and add changes to Google Maps. This provides Google with local map updates almost in real-time instead of waiting for digital map data companies to release more infrequent updates.

On January 31, 2012, Google, due to offering its Maps for free, was found guilty of abusing the dominant position of its Google Maps application and ordered by a court to pay a fine and damages to Bottin Cartographer, a French mapping company.^[26] This ruling was overturned on appeal.^[27]

In June 2012, Google started mapping the UK's rivers and canals in partnership with the Canal and River Trust. The company has stated that "it would update the program during the year to allow users to plan trips which include locks, bridges and towpaths along the 2,000 miles of river paths in the UK."^[28]

In December 2012, the Google Maps application was separately made available in the App Store, after Apple removed it from its default installation of the mobile operating system version iOS 6 in September 2012.^[29]

On January 29, 2013, Google Maps was updated to include a map of North Korea.^[30] As of May 3, 2013^[update], Google Maps recognizes Palestine as a country, instead of redirecting to the Palestinian territories.^[31]

In August 2013, Google Maps removed the Wikipedia Layer, which provided links to Wikipedia content about locations shown in Google Maps using Wikipedia geocodes.^[32]

On April 12, 2014, Google Maps was updated to reflect the annexation of Ukrainian Crimea by Russia. Crimea is shown as the Republic of Crimea in Russia and as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in Ukraine. All other versions show a dotted disputed border.^[33]

In April 2015, on a map near the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, the imagery of the Android logo urinating on the Apple logo was added via Map Maker and appeared on Google Maps. The vandalism was soon removed and Google publicly apologized.^[34] However, as a result, Google disabled user moderation on Map Maker, and on May 12, disabled editing worldwide until it could devise a new policy for approving edits and avoiding vandalism.^[35]

On April 29, 2015, users of the classic Google Maps were forwarded to the new Google Maps with the option to be removed from the interface.^[36]

On July 14, 2015, the Chinese name for Scarborough Shoal was removed after a petition from the Philippines was posted on Change.org.^[37]

2016–2018

[edit]

On June 27, 2016, Google rolled out new satellite imagery worldwide sourced from Landsat 8, comprising over 700 trillion pixels of new data.^[38] In September 2016, Google Maps acquired mapping analytics startup Urban Engines.^[39]

In 2016, the Government of South Korea offered Google conditional access to the country's geographic database – access that already allows indigenous Korean mapping providers high-detail maps. Google declined the offer, as it was unwilling to accept restrictions on reducing the quality around locations the South Korean Government felt were sensitive (see restrictions on geographic data in South Korea).^[40]

On October 16, 2017, Google Maps was updated with accessible imagery of several planets and moons such as Titan, Mercury, and Venus, as well as direct access to imagery of the Moon and Mars.^[41][42]

In May 2018, Google announced major changes to the API structure starting June 11, 2018. This change consolidated the 18 different endpoints into three services and merged the basic and premium plans into one pay-as-you-go plan.^[43] This meant a 1400% price raise for users on the basic plan, with only six weeks of notice. This caused a harsh reaction within the developers community.^[44] In June, Google postponed the change date to July 16, 2018.

In August 2018, Google Maps designed its overall view (when zoomed out completely) into a 3D globe dropping the Mercator projection that projected the planet onto a flat surface.^[45]

2019–present

[edit]

In January 2019, Google Maps added speed trap and speed camera alerts as reported by other users.^[46][47]

On October 17, 2019, Google Maps was updated to include incident reporting, resembling a functionality in Waze which was acquired by Google in 2013.^[48]

In December 2019, Incognito mode was added, allowing users to enter destinations without saving entries to their Google accounts.^[49]

In February 2020, Maps received a 15th anniversary redesign.^[50] It notably added a brand-new app icon, which now resembles the original icon in 2005.

On September 23, 2020, Google announced a COVID-19 Layer update for Google maps, which is designed to offer a seven-day average data of the total COVID-19-positive cases per 100,000 people in the area selected on the map. It also features a label indicating the rise and fall in the number of cases.^[51]

In January 2021, Google announced that it would be launching a new feature displaying COVID-19 vaccination sites.^[52]

In January 2021, Google announced updates to the route planner that would accommodate drivers of electric vehicles. Routing would take into account the type of vehicle, vehicle status including current charge, and the locations of charging stations.^[53]

In June 2022, Google Maps added a layer displaying air quality for certain countries.^[54]

In September 2022, Google removed the COVID-19 Layer from Google Maps due to lack of usage of the feature.^[55]

Functionality

[edit]

Directions and transit

[edit]

Google Maps provides a route planner,^[56] allowing users to find available directions through driving, public transportation, walking, or biking.^[57] Google has partnered globally with over 800 public transportation providers to adopt GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification), making the data available to third parties.^[58][59] The app can indicate users' transit route, thanks to an October 2019 update. The incognito mode, eyes-free walking navigation features were released earlier.^[60] A July 2020 update provided bike share routes.^[61]

In February 2024, Google Maps started rolling out glanceable directions for its Android and iOS apps. The feature allows users to track their journey from their device's lock screen.^[62][63]

Traffic conditions

[edit]

In 2007, Google began offering traffic data as a colored overlay on top of roads and motorways to represent the speed of vehicles on particular roads. Crowdsourcing is used to obtain the GPS-determined locations of a large number of cellphone users, from which live traffic maps are produced.^[64][65][66]

Google has stated that the speed and location information it collects to calculate traffic conditions is anonymous.^[67] Options available in each phone's settings allow users not to share information about their location with Google Maps.^[68] Google stated, "Once you disable or opt out of My Location, Maps will not continue to send radio information back to Google servers to determine your handset's approximate location".^{[69][failed verification]}

Street View

[edit]

Main article: Google Street View

On May 25, 2007, Google released Google Street View, a feature of Google Maps providing 360° panoramic street-level views of various locations. On the date of release, the feature only included five cities in the U.S. It has since expanded to thousands of locations around the world. In July 2009, Google began mapping college campuses and surrounding paths and trails.

Street View garnered much controversy after its release because of privacy concerns about the uncensored nature of the panoramic photographs, although the views are only taken on public streets.^[70][71] Since then, Google has blurred faces and license plates through automated facial recognition.^[72][73][74]

In late 2014, Google launched Google Underwater Street View, including 2,300 kilometres (1,400 mi) of the Australian Great Barrier Reef in 3D. The images are taken by special cameras which turn 360 degrees and take shots every 3 seconds.^[75]

In 2017, in both Google Maps and Google Earth, Street View navigation of the International Space Station interior spaces became available.

3D imagery

[edit]

Google Maps has incorporated^[when?] 3D models of hundreds of cities in over 40 countries from Google Earth into its satellite view. The models were developed using aerial photogrammetry techniques.^[76][77]

At the I/O 2022 event, Google announced Immersive View, a feature of Google Maps which would involve composite 3D images generated from Street View and aerial images of locations using AI, complete with synchronous information. It was to be initially in five cities worldwide, with plans to add it to other cities later on.^[78] The feature was previewed in September 2022 with 250 photorealistic aerial 3D images of landmarks,^[79] and was full launched in February 2023.^[80] An expansion of Immersive View to routes was announced at Google I/O 2023,^[81] and was launched in October 2023 for 15 cities globally.^[82]

The feature uses predictive modelling and neural radiance fields to scan Street View and aerial images to generate composite 3D imagery of locations, including both exteriors and interiors, and routes, including driving, walking or cycling, as well as generate synchronous information and forecasts up to a month ahead from historical and environmental data about both such as weather, traffic and busyness.

Immersive View has been available in the following locations:^{[citation needed]}

Locations with Immersive View

Country	Locations
Argentina	Buenos Aires
Australia	Melbourne, Sydney
Austria	Vienna
Belgium	Brussels
Brazil	Brasília, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo
Canada	Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver
Chile	Santiago
Czech Republic	Prague
France	Nice, Paris
Germany	Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich
Greece	Athens
Hong Kong	Hong Kong
Hungary	Budapest
Italy	Florence, Milan, Rome, Venice
Japan	Kyoto, Nagoya, Osaka, Tokyo
Mexico	Guadalajara, Mexico City
Netherlands	Amsterdam
Norway	Oslo
Poland	Warsaw
Portugal	Lisbon, Porto
Romania	Bucharest
Singapore	Singapore
South Africa	Cape Town, Johannesburg
Spain	Barcelona, Madrid
Sweden	Stockholm
Switzerland	Zurich
Taiwan	Taichung, Taipei
United Kingdom	Edinburgh, London
United States	Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle
Vatican City	Vatican City

Google added icons of city attractions, in a similar style to Apple Maps, on October 3, 2019. In the first stage, such icons were added to 9 cities.^[83]

In December 2009, Google introduced a new view consisting of 45° angle aerial imagery, offering a "bird's-eye view" of cities. The first cities available were San Jose and San Diego. This feature was initially available only to developers via the Google Maps API.^[84] In February 2010, it was introduced as an experimental feature in Google Maps Labs.^[85] In July 2010, 45° imagery was made available in Google Maps in select cities in South Africa, the United States, Germany and Italy.^[86]

In February 2024, Google Maps incorporated a small weather icon on the top left corner of the Android and iOS mobile apps, giving access to weather and air quality index details.^[87]

Previously called Search with Live View, Lens In Maps identifies shops, restaurants, transit stations and other street features with a phone's camera and places relevant information and a category pin on top, like closing/opening times, current busyness, pricing and reviews using AI and augmented reality. The feature, if available on the device, can be accessed through tapping the Lens icon in the search bar. It was expanded to 50 new cities in October 2023 in its biggest expansion yet, after initially being released in late 2022 in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, London, and Paris.^[88][89] Lens in Maps shares features with Live View, which also displays information relating to street features while guiding a user to a selected destination with virtual arrows, signs and guidance.^[90]

Google collates business listings from multiple on-line and off-line sources. To reduce duplication in the index, Google's algorithm combines listings automatically based on address, phone number, or geocode,^[91] but sometimes information for separate businesses will be inadvertently merged with each other, resulting in listings inaccurately incorporating elements from multiple businesses.^[92] Google allows business owners to create and verify their own business data through Google Business Profile (GBP), formerly Google My Business (GMB).^[93] Owners are encouraged to provide Google with business information including address, phone number, business category, and photos.^[94] Google has staff in India who check and correct listings remotely as well as support businesses with issues.^[95] Google also has teams on the ground in most countries that validate physical addresses in person.^[96] In May 2024, Google announced it would discontinue the chat feature in Google Business Profile. Starting July 15, 2024, new chat conversations would be disabled, and by July 31, 2024, all chat functionalities would end.^[97]

Google Maps can be manipulated by businesses that are not physically located in the area in which they record a listing. There are cases of people abusing Google Maps to overtake their competition by placing unverified listings on online directory sites, knowing the information will roll across to Google (duplicate sites). The people who update these listings do not use a registered business name. They place keywords and location details on their Google Maps business title, which can overtake credible business listings. In Australia in particular, genuine companies and businesses are noticing a trend of fake business listings in a variety of industries.^[98]

Genuine business owners can also optimize their business listings to gain greater visibility in Google Maps, through a type of search engine marketing called local search engine optimization.^[99]

In March 2011, indoor maps were added to Google Maps, giving users the ability to navigate themselves within buildings such as airports, museums, shopping malls, big-box stores, universities, transit stations, and other public spaces (including underground facilities). Google encourages owners of public facilities to submit floor plans of their buildings in order to add them to the service.^[100] Map users can view different floors of a building or subway station by clicking on a level selector that is displayed near any structures which are mapped on multiple levels.

My Maps is a feature in Google Maps launched in April 2007 that enables users to create custom maps for personal use or sharing. Users can add points, lines, shapes, notes and images on top of Google Maps using a WYSIWYG editor.^[101] An Android app for My Maps, initially released in March 2013 under the name Google Maps Engine Lite, was available until its removal from the Play Store in October 2021.^{[102][103][104]}

Google Local Guides is a volunteer program launched by Google Maps^[105] to enable users to contribute to Google Maps when registered. It sometimes provides them additional perks and benefits for their collaboration. Users can achieve Level 1 to 10, and be awarded with badges. The program is partially a successor to Google Map Maker as features from the former program became integrated into the website and app.^[106]

The program consists of adding reviews, photos, basic information, and videos; and correcting information such as wheelchair accessibility.^[107][108] Adding reviews, photos, videos, new places, new roads or providing useful information gives points to the users.^[109] The level of users is upgraded when they get a certain amount of points.^[110][111] Starting with Level 4, a star is shown near the avatar of the user.^[111]

Earth Timelapse, released in April 2021, is a program in which users can see how the earth has been changed in the last 37 years. They combined the 15 million satellite images (roughly ten quadrillion pixels) to create the 35 global cloud-free Images for this program.^[112]

If a user shares their location with Google, Timeline summarises this location for each day on a Timeline map.^[113] Timeline estimates the mode of travel used to move between places and will also show photos taken at that location. In June 2024, Google started progressively removing access to the timeline on web browsers, with the information instead being stored on a local device.^[114][115]

As the user drags the map, the grid squares are downloaded from the server and inserted into the page. When a user searches for a business, the results are downloaded in the background for insertion into the side panel and map; the page is not reloaded. A hidden iframe with form submission is used because it preserves browser history. Like many other Google web applications, Google Maps uses JavaScript extensively.^[116] The site also uses protocol buffers for data transfer rather than JSON, for performance reasons.

The version of Google Street View for classic Google Maps required Adobe Flash.^[117] In October 2011, Google announced MapsGL, a WebGL version of Maps with better renderings and smoother transitions.^[118] Indoor maps use JPG, .PNG, .PDF, .BMP, or .GIF, for floor plans.^[119]

Users who are logged into a Google Account can save locations so that they are overlaid on the map with various colored "pins" whenever they browse the application. These "Saved places" can be organized into default groups or user named groups and shared with other users. "Starred places" is one default group example. It previously automatically created a record within the now-discontinued product Google Bookmarks.

The Google Maps terms and conditions^[120] state that usage of material from Google Maps is regulated by Google Terms of Service^[121] and some additional restrictions. Google has either purchased local map data from established companies, or has entered into lease agreements to use copyrighted map data.^[122] The owner of the copyright is listed at the bottom of zoomed maps. For example, street maps in Japan are leased from Zenrin. Street maps in China are leased from AutoNavi.^[123] Russian street maps are leased from Geocentre Consulting and Tele Atlas. Data for North Korea is sourced from the companion project Google Map Maker.

Street map overlays, in some areas, may not match up precisely with the corresponding satellite images. The street data may be entirely erroneous, or simply out of date: "The biggest challenge is the currency of data, the authenticity of data," said Google Earth representative Brian McClendon. As a result, in March 2008 Google added a feature to edit the locations of houses and businesses.^[124][125]

Restrictions have been placed on Google Maps through the apparent censoring of locations deemed potential security threats. In some cases the area of redaction is for specific buildings, but in other cases, such as Washington, D.C.,^[126] the restriction is to use outdated imagery.

Google Maps API, now called Google Maps Platform, hosts about 17 different APIs, which are themed under the following categories: Maps, Places and Routes.^[127]

After the success of reverse-engineered mashups such as chicagocrime.org and housingmaps.com, Google launched the Google Maps API in June 2005^[128] to allow developers to integrate Google Maps into their websites. It was a free service that did not require an API key until June 2018 (changes went into effect on July 16), when it was announced that an API key linked to a Google Cloud account with billing enabled would be required to access the API.^[129] The API currently^[update] does not contain ads, but Google states in their terms of use that they reserve the right to display ads in the future.^[130]

By using the Google Maps API, it is possible to embed Google Maps into an external website, onto which site-specific data can be overlaid.^[131] Although initially only a JavaScript API, the Maps API was expanded to include an API for Adobe Flash applications (but this has been deprecated), a service for retrieving static map images, and web services for performing geocoding, generating driving directions, and obtaining elevation profiles. Over 1,000,000^[132] web sites use the Google Maps API, making it the most heavily used web application development API.^[133] In September 2011, Google announced it would deprecate the Google Maps API for Flash.^[134]

The Google Maps API was free for commercial use, provided that the site on which it is being used is publicly accessible and did not charge for access, and was not generating more than 25,000 map accesses a day.^[135][136] Sites that did not meet these requirements could purchase the Google Maps API for Business.^[137]

As of June 21, 2018, Google increased the prices of the Maps API and requires a billing profile.^[138]

Due to restrictions on geographic data in China, Google Maps must partner with a Chinese digital map provider in order to legally show Chinese map data. Since 2006, this partner has been AutoNavi.^[123]

Within China, the State Council mandates that all maps of China use the GCJ-02 coordinate system, which is offset from the WGS-84 system used in most of the world. google.cn/maps (formerly Google Ditu) uses the GCJ-02 system for both its street maps^[139] and satellite imagery.^[140] google.com/maps also uses GCJ-02 data for the street map, but uses WGS-84 coordinates for satellite imagery,^[141] causing the so-called China GPS shift problem.

Frontier alignments also present some differences between google.cn/maps and google.com/maps. On the latter, sections of the Chinese border with India and Pakistan are shown with dotted lines, indicating areas or frontiers in dispute. However, google.cn shows the Chinese frontier strictly according to Chinese claims with no dotted lines indicating the border with India and Pakistan. For example, the South Tibet region claimed by China but administered by India as a large part of Arunachal Pradesh is shown inside the Chinese frontier by google.cn, with Indian highways ending abruptly at the Chinese claim line. Google.cn also shows Taiwan and the South China Sea Islands as part of China. Google Ditu's street map coverage of Taiwan no longer omits major state organs, such as the Presidential Palace, the five Yuans, and the Supreme Court.^{[142][additional citation(s) needed]}

Feature-wise, google.cn/maps does not feature My Maps. On the other hand, while google.cn displays virtually all text in Chinese, google.com/maps displays most text (user-selectable real text as well as those on map) in English.^{[citation needed]} This behavior of displaying English text is not consistent but intermittent – sometimes it is in English, sometimes it is in Chinese. The criteria for choosing which language is displayed are not known publicly.^{[citation needed]}

There are cases where Google Maps had added out-of-date neighborhood monikers. Thus, in Los Angeles, the name "Brooklyn Heights" was revived from its 1870s usage^[143] and "Silver Lake Heights" from its 1920s usage,^[144] or mistakenly renamed areas (in Detroit, the neighborhood "Fiskhorn" became "Fishkorn").^[145] Because many companies utilize Google Maps data, these previously obscure or incorrect names then gain traction; the names are often used by realtors, hotels, food delivery sites, dating sites, and news organizations.

Google has said it created its maps from third-party data, public sources, satellites, and users, but many names used have not been connected to any official record.^[143][145] According to a former Google Maps employee (who was not authorized to speak publicly), users can submit changes to Google Maps, but some submissions are ruled upon by people with little local knowledge of a place, such as contractors in India. Critics maintain that names likes "BoCoCa" (for the area in Brooklyn between Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens), are "just plain puzzling" or simply made up.^[145] Some names used by Google have been traced to non-professionally made maps with typographical errors that survived on Google Maps.^[145]

In 2005 the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) complained about the potential for terrorists to use the satellite images in planning attacks, with specific reference to the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor; however, the Australian Federal government did not support the organization's concern. At the time of the ANSTO complaint, Google had colored over some areas for security (mostly in the U.S.), such as the rooftop of the White House and several other Washington, D.C. buildings.^{[146][147][148]}

In October 2010, Nicaraguan military commander Edén Pastora stationed Nicaraguan troops on the Isla Calero (in the delta of the San Juan River), justifying his action on the border delineation given by Google Maps. Google has since updated its data which it found to be incorrect.^[149]

On January 27, 2014, documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA and the GCHQ intercepted Google Maps queries made on smartphones, and used them to locate the users making these queries. One leaked document, dating to 2008, stated that "[i]t effectively means that anyone using Google Maps on a smartphone is working in support of a GCHQ system."^[150]

In May 2015, searches on Google Maps for offensive racial epithets for African Americans such as "nigger", "nigger king", and "nigger house" pointed the user to the White House; Google apologized for the incident.^[151][152]

In December 2015, 3 Japanese netizens were charged with vandalism after they were found to have added an unrelated law firm's name as well as indecent names to locations such as "Nuclear test site" to the Atomic Bomb Dome and "Izumo Satya" to the Izumo Taisha.^[153][154]

In February 2020, the artist Simon Weckert^[155] used 99 cell phones to fake a Google Maps traffic jam.^[156]

In September 2024, several schools in Taiwan and Hong Kong were altered to incorrect labels, such as "psychiatric hospitals" or "prisons". Initially, it was believed to be the result of hacker attacks. However, police later revealed that local students had carried out the prank. Google quickly corrected the mislabeled entries. Education officials in Taiwan and Hong Kong expressed concern over the incident.^{[157][158][159]}

In August 2023, a woman driving from Alice Springs to the Harts Range Racecourse was stranded in the Central Australian desert for a night after following directions provided by Google Maps.^[160][161] She later discovered that Google Maps was providing directions for the actual Harts Range instead of the rodeo. Google said it was looking into the naming of the two locations and consulting with "local and authoritative sources" to solve the issue.^[160]

In February 2024, two German tourists were stranded for a week after Google Maps directed them to follow a dirt track through Oyala Thumotang National Park and their vehicle became trapped in mud.^[162][163] Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service ranger Roger James said, "People should not trust Google Maps when they're travelling in remote regions of Queensland, and they need to follow the signs, use official maps or other navigational devices."^[162]

In June 2019, Google Maps provided nearly 100 Colorado drivers an alternative route that led to a dirt road after a crash occurred on Peña Boulevard. The road had been turned to mud by rain, resulting in nearly 100 vehicles being trapped.^[164][161] Google said in a statement, "While we always work to provide the best directions, issues can arise due to unforeseen circumstances such as weather. We encourage all drivers to follow local laws, stay attentive, and use their best judgment while driving."^[164]

In September 2023, Google was sued by a North Carolina resident who alleged that Google Maps had directed her husband over the Snow Creek Bridge in Hickory the year prior, resulting in him drowning. According to the lawsuit, multiple people had notified Google about the state of the bridge, which collapsed in 2013, but Google had not updated the route information and continued to direct users over the bridge.^{[165][166][161]} At the time of the man's death, the barriers placed to block access to the bridge had been vandalized.^[167][168]

In November 2023, a hiker was rescued by helicopter on the backside of Mount Fromme in Vancouver. North Shore Rescue stated on its Facebook page that the hiker had followed a non-existent hiking trail on Google Maps. This was also the second hiker in two months to require rescuing after following the same trail. The fake trail has since been removed from the app.^[169][170]

Also in November 2023, Google apologized after users were directed through desert roads after parts of Interstate 15 were closed due to a dust storm.^[171] Drivers became stranded after following the suggested detour route, which was a "bumpy dirt trail".^[172] Following the incident, Google stated that Google Maps would "no longer route drivers traveling between Las Vegas and Barstow down through those roads."^[171]

In 2020, a teenage motorist was found frozen to death while his passenger was still alive but suffered from severe frostbite after using Google Maps, which had led them to a shorter but abandoned section of the R504 Kolyma Highway, where their Toyota Chaser became disabled.^[173]

In 2024, three men from Uttar Pradesh died after their car fell from an under-construction bridge. They were using Google Maps for driving which misdirected them and the car fell into the Ramganga river.^[174][175]

In February 2025, as a response to Donald Trump's Executive Order 14172, the Gulf of Mexico was renamed to "Gulf of America" for US users and "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)" elsewhere, except for Mexico itself where it remained the Gulf of Mexico. The decision received criticism, with Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum asking Google to reconsider its decision.^[176] Google subsequently blocked and deleted negative reviews of the gulf after the name change occurred.^[177][178]

Google Latitude was a feature that let users share their physical locations with other people. This service was based on Google Maps, specifically on mobile devices. There was an iGoogle widget for desktops and laptops as well.^[179] Some concerns were expressed about the privacy issues raised by the use of the service.^[180] On August 9, 2013, this service was discontinued,^[181] and on March 22, 2017, Google incorporated the features from Latitude into the Google Maps app.^[182]

In areas where Google Map Maker was available, for example, much of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe as well as the United States and Canada, anyone who logged into their Google account could directly improve the map by fixing incorrect driving directions, adding biking trails, or adding a missing building or road. General map errors in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, and the United States could be reported using the Report a Problem link in Google Maps and would be updated by Google.^[183] For areas where Google used Tele Atlas data, map errors could be reported using Tele Atlas map insight.^[184]

If imagery was missing, outdated, misaligned, or generally incorrect, one could notify Google through their contact request form.^[185]

In November 2016, Google announced the discontinuation of Google Map Maker as of March 2017.^[186]

Screenshot

Screenshot of Google Maps on Android 14

Google Maps

Original author(s)	Google
Initial release	2006; 19 years ago (2006)
Stable release(s) [±]
Preview release(s) [±]
Operating system	Android iOS KaiOS Wear OS WatchOS Web Fitbit OS Formerly: Java ME, Symbian, Windows Mobile

Google Maps is available as a mobile app for the Android and iOS mobile operating systems. The first mobile version of Google Maps (then known as Google Local for Mobile) was launched in beta in November 2005 for mobile platforms supporting J2ME.^{[194][195][196]} It was released as Google Maps for Mobile in 2006.^[197] In 2007 it came preloaded on the first iPhone in a deal with Apple.^[198] A version specifically for Windows Mobile was released in February 2007^[199] and the Symbian app was released in November 2007.^[200]

Version 2.0 of Google Maps Mobile was announced at the end of 2007, with a stand out My Location feature to find the user's location using the cell towers, without needing GPS.^{[201][202][203]} In September 2008, Google Maps was released for and preloaded on Google's own new platform Android.^[204][205]

Up until iOS 6, the built-in maps application on the iOS operating system was powered by Google Maps. However, with the announcement of iOS 6 in June 2012, Apple announced that they had created their own Apple Maps mapping service,^[206] which officially replaced Google Maps when iOS 6 was released on September 19, 2012.^[207] However, at launch, Apple Maps received significant criticism from users due to inaccuracies, errors and bugs.^[208][209] One day later, The Guardian reported that Google was preparing its own Google Maps app,^[210] which was released on December 12, 2012.^[211][212] Within two days, the application had been downloaded over ten million times.^[213]

The Google Maps apps for iOS and Android have many of the same features, including turn-by-turn navigation, street view, and public transit information.^[214][215] Turn-by-turn navigation was originally announced by Google as a separate beta testing app exclusive to Android 2.0 devices in October 2009.^[216][217] The original standalone iOS version did not support the iPad,^[215] but tablet support was added with version 2.0 in July 2013.^[218] An update in June 2012 for Android devices added support for offline access to downloaded maps of certain regions,^[219][220] a feature that was eventually released for iOS devices, and made more robust on Android, in May 2014.^[221][222]

At the end of 2015 Google Maps announced its new offline functionality,^[223] but with various limitations – downloaded area cannot exceed 120,000 square kilometers^[224][225] and require a considerable amount of storage space.^[226] In January 2017, Google added a feature exclusively to Android that will, in some U.S. cities, indicate the level of difficulty in finding available parking spots,^[227] and on both Android and iOS, the app can, as of an April 2017 update, remember where users parked.^[228][229] In August 2017, Google Maps for Android was updated with new functionality to actively help the user in finding parking lots and garages close to a destination.^[230] In December 2017, Google added a new two-wheeler mode to its Android app, designed for users in India, allowing for more accessibility in traffic conditions.^[231][232] In 2019 the Android version introduced the new feature called live view that allows to view directions directly on the road thanks to augmented reality.^[233] Google Maps won the 2020 Webby Award for Best User Interface in the category Apps, Mobile & Voice.^[234] In March 2021, Google added a feature in which users can draw missing roads.^[235] In June 2022, Google implemented support for toll calculation. Both iOS and Android apps report how much the user has to pay in tolls when a route that includes toll roads is input. The feature is available for roads in the US, India, Japan and Indonesia with further expansion planned. As per reports the total number of toll roads covered in this phase is around 2000.^[236]

USA Today welcomed the application back to iOS, saying: "The reemergence in the middle of the night of a Google Maps app for the iPhone is like the return of an old friend. Only your friend, who'd gone missing for three months, comes back looking better than ever."^[237] Jason Parker of CNET, calling it "the king of maps", said, "With its iOS Maps app, Google sets the standard for what mobile navigation should be and more."^[238] Bree Fowler of the Associated Press compared Google's and Apple's map applications, saying: "The one clear advantage that Apple has is style. Like Apple devices, the maps are clean and clear and have a fun, pretty element to them, especially in 3-D. But when it comes down to depth and information, Google still reigns superior and will no doubt be welcomed back by its fans."^[239] Gizmodo gave it a ranking of 4.5 stars, stating: "Maps Done Right".^[240] According to The New York Times, Google "admits that it's [iOS app is] even better than Google Maps for Android phones, which has accommodated its evolving feature set mainly by piling on menus".^[241]

Google Maps' location tracking is regarded by some as a threat to users' privacy, with Dylan Tweney of VentureBeat writing in August 2014 that "Google is probably logging your location, step by step, via Google Maps", and linked users to Google's location history map, which "lets you see the path you've traced for any given day that your smartphone has been running Google Maps". Tweney then provided instructions on how to disable location history.^[242] The history tracking was also noticed, and recommended disabled, by editors at CNET^[243] and TechCrunch.^[244] Additionally, Quartz reported in April 2014 that a "sneaky new privacy change" would have an effect on the majority of iOS users. The privacy change, an update to the Gmail iOS app that "now supports sign-in across Google iOS apps, including Maps, Drive, YouTube and Chrome", meant that Google would be able to identify users' actions across its different apps.^[245]

The Android version of the app surpassed five billion installations in March 2019.^[246] By November 2021, the Android app had surpassed 10 billion installations.^[247]

Google Maps Go, a version of the app designed for lower-end devices, was released in beta in January 2018.^[248] By September 2018, the app had over 10 million installations.^[249]

The German "geo-novel" Senghor on the Rocks (2008) presents its story as a series of spreads showing a Google Maps location on the left and the story's text on the right. Annika Richterich explains that the "satellite pictures in Senghor on the Rocks illustrate the main character's travel through the West-African state of Senegal".^[250]

Artists have used Google Street View in a range of ways. Emilio Vavarella's The Google Trilogy includes glitchy images and unintended portraits of the drivers of the Street View cars.^[251] The Japanese band group inou used Google Street View backgrounds to make a music video for their song EYE.^[252] The Canadian band Arcade Fire made a customized music video that used Street View to show the viewer their own childhood home.^[253][254]

• Azure Maps
• Apple Maps
• Bing Maps
• Comparison of web map services
• GeoGuessr
• Google Earth
• Google Maps Road Trip, live-streaming documentary
• Here WeGo
• MapQuest
• OpenStreetMap
• Terravision (computer program)
• Wikiloc, a mashup that shows trails and waypoints on Google Maps
• Wikimapia, a mashup combining Google Maps and a wiki aimed at "describing the whole planet earth"
• Yandex Maps, popular in Russia and CIS