stop using deprecated library jquery.ui / front end rewrite

[NovemLinguae]

WMF wants everything off of jquery.ui and upgraded to ooui or codex. AFCH is using jquery.ui, including jquery.chosen and jquery.spinner. If we choose to comply with this, it will likely mean a front end rewrite at some point. Not sold on this yet, but creating this ticket to brainstorm and discuss.

[primefac]

Where have they indicated this? I'm curious as to whether this is for uniformity in appearance or ease of integration (or something else).

[NovemLinguae]

Reasons I've seen/heard from WMF devs include uniformity of appearance, accessibility, not maintaining old libraries, and just plain not liking the gray aesthetic. Also I think ooui and codex are design systems, and jquery.ui is not. Here's some phab discussion about it.

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T49145

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T49145#3838666

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Readers/Web/Dev_notes/jQuery_UI

I think JQuery UI is still kind of maintained (has a release from 2022 on their GitHub), but the version Wikimedia uses is several versions behind.

[NovemLinguae]

Looks like the reason Wikimedia's jquery.ui version is so behind master is that Wikimedia has done a bunch of custom patches:

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/core/+/a1133be25f37400eb4f80b813092830c71e7c412/resources/lib/jquery.ui/PATCHES