Wonder on the web: Surprise me and Five a day in a browser

A small, friendly web version of Wonder by Zaweba lives at zaweba.com/wonder. It brings two of the desktop app's favourite ideas to any browser: a Surprise me card with an article's title, picture and first paragraph, and the same Five a day that the desktop app shows. It works on a phone as well as a computer.

The desktop Wonder is the full encyclopedia, an offline reader for an edition of Wikipedia you download once from Kiwix. The web version is lighter. It needs no download and no setup, which makes it a good way to try the idea, or to keep it going when you are away from your own PC.

What you see

The page is built to be mobile-friendly. The Surprise me card shows one article at a time with its title, a picture and its first paragraph, which is often all you need to decide whether a subject is worth a proper read.

Below that is Five a day: five articles from five different subjects, chosen for the date. The first time you visit, a disclaimer appears over the page before you begin, setting out where the content comes from.

Where the content comes from

The web version uses Wikipedia's own summaries. They are fetched by the Zaweba server and cached, rather than by your browser directly. Some kinds of page are skipped because they make poor surprises: disambiguation pages, lists and summaries only a line long.

The page also works without JavaScript. If you browse with scripts turned off, or on an older or very simple device, it still shows its cards.

The same five as the desktop

Five a day is the link between the two. The five articles are the same for everyone on the same date, and the same as on zaweba.com/wonder. They are chosen by a fixed method from 8 hand-picked lists of 65 well-known titles, with no randomness and no network involved, which is why a phone and a PC on the same day agree.

There is one small difference. The desktop app takes the first title on each list that its edition actually has, so a smaller edition may occasionally show a different article. On the web the summaries come from Wikipedia itself.

This makes Five a day a nice thing to share. A family can each look on their own phone, or a class can open the page together, and everyone is reading about the same five things.

When to use which

The web version is good for a quick moment of curiosity: a coffee break, a bus stop, a few minutes before school. You get a surprise, a picture and a paragraph, and the day's five.

The desktop app is for when you want to stay a while. It has the full articles in a clean reading view with light, dark or sepia themes, Follow a random link with a trail bar to retrace your steps, On this day, subject shelves, a journey map of your week's reading, Bookmarks, Read later and History. All of it works with no internet once an edition is on your PC.

Getting the most from both

Treat the web page as a taster. If a card catches your eye and you have Wonder at home, search for the article there and follow its links, or press Ctrl+L to take a random one. If you don't have the desktop app yet, the web version shows you the spirit of it in a minute.

Either way, the idea is the same. Wonder by Zaweba is about wandering, and the web version is the shortest walk into it.