The Wikipedia Reader widget is a Web Runtime (WRT) application that solves a vexing problem in a simple, effective way.

The problem: Wikipedia, the Internet’s go-to source for information on just about everything, has never been formatted for the small screens of mobile devices. While the Wikimedia Foundation, the site’s owner, has done an excellent job on several fronts, creating a first-rate mobile interface has not been one of them.

For example, here’s how Wikipedia looks on the web browser of my test device, a Nokia N97. As you can see, only an annoyingly small portion of the Wikipedia page is visible at any one time:

To the rescue comes Wikipedia Reader. It is a free and open-source online app that reformats Wikipedia to fit the screen of any Nokia Symbian device. Also included are bookmarks, search history, collapsible sections, and beta support for all languages.

Right from the start, the app has been formatted for simplicity. The first screen could not be much cleaner or clearer:

To search, simply enter a search term in the top field, then select Search. As for the other commands, Bookmarks takes you to a list of your saved search results. History shows your most recent searches, arranged by date. And Language lets you select a language other than the app’s default, English.

To show how simple it is, here are the results of my search on ‘Nokia’. In this screenshot, I have entered ‘Nokia’ in the search field:

And here is the first results page. As it turns out, there are multiple entries for Nokia:

I select the first result, which is the main entry for Nokia:

From here I have several options. I can scroll through to simply read the article. I can click on any hyperlinked terms to see its Wikipedia entry. I can select a section to collapse it. The collapsed view presents a list of the Wikipedia article’s section headings. For example, on the Nokia page, the collapsed view includes Overview, History, Corporate affairs, Online services, etc. To open a section, I simply select its heading.

I can also bookmark any page. To do this, select Options > Add bookmark. Then, whenever I return to the Bookmarks page, the saved page will be among those listed. In the next screenshot, I have bookmarked a search on the U.S. state of Florida and Nokia. The display also shows the date and time when the pages were bookmarked. Later, I can delete a bookmark by selecting the appropriate trashcan icon to the right of the screen.

The History feature assumes that I will want to return to the results of recent Wikipedia searches. So it lists my latest searches, arranged in three categories: Last 24 hours, Last 7 days, and More than 7 days:

Overall, Wikipedia Reader worked quite well in my tests. But support for languages other than English is still so-so. Even the app’s Language page describes this feature as ‘experimental’. In fact, when I tried Wikipedia Reader in Spanish, I found that my searches were conducted in Spanish, but the articles themselves were often delivered in English.

I also would like larger text, especially on the app’s History and Bookmark pages. Because the current type size is so small, tapping the screen with my finger sometimes selected the wrong item. Using the device’s stylus helped. But larger type would help even more.

There is a good chance that future versions of Wikipedia Reader will address these issues, because the app itself draws on the power of online community. In fact, Wikipedia Reader was developed in response to a post on the ideas.symbian.org forum. The original post stated, ‘We need a Symbian Wikipedia app…something that makes searching, reading and editing easier than the mobile web page’. Just four months later, Wikipedia Reader was unveiled by another participant on ideas.symbian.org, Ivan Litoski. Talk about the power of the Internet!

Wikipedia Reader is available now on Ovi Store. It runs on all Nokia Symbian devices, and it is free.