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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Problems
Last week's Tech News had delivery problems. Some did not get the newsletter. Some got it more than one time. The problem where some pages got it three times should now be fixed.
[1]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 October. It will be on all wikis from 3 October (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
2 October at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Special:Contributions will get the standard
OOUI look. This makes it easier to use on mobile and makes it look like other Special: pages. There is a
script you can use to make the form smaller if you want to.
[2]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
There is a problem in the visual editor when you copy or delete text with footnotes. It will be fixed soon.
[4]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 October. It will be on all wikis from 10 October (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
9 October at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
The
Community Wishlist Survey has a new format. It will focus on wikis that typically get less support. It will probably go back to the normal format next year. It is not decided exactly how it will work this year. You can
leave feedback.
There is a new
technical community newsletter. You can read more about the work of Wikimedia's technical community.
Subscribe to get the information in the future.
Outreachy is an internship program for groups who are underrepresented in free and open-source software. There are seven Wikimedia projects about coding, documentation and quality assurance in the next round. Persons who fit the criteria
can apply. The last day to apply is 5 November.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can now use
more advanced editing tools on the mobile web. You can turn them on and off in your preferences in the mobile version.
[5]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 October. It will be on all wikis from 17 October (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
16 October at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are no longer
supported. This means the browsers might start looking a bit weird. They will not get security support. You
can't read Wikimedia wikis in Internet Explorer on Windows XP or Windows versions that are older than Windows XP. This is because almost no one uses the browsers anymore. Supporting them made the wikis less secure for everyone else.
[6]
In the future section headings might have a share link. This is to make it easier to link to the section. You can
read more and discuss.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
The
API sandbox and help pages now show more clearly when API modules are marked as internal. API modules marked as internal were probably internal before. It was easier to miss. You should look for non-internal alternatives.
[7]
Problems
There is a
translation tool we use on wikis with more than one language. For a few days it did not create pages for new languages when someone translated a page. The languages did not show in the language bar. This has been fixed.
[8]
The history and diffs can show wrong content. This is because of a cache problem. It will soon be fixed.
[9]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 October. It will be on all wikis from 24 October (
calendar).
Reference Previews will be a beta feature on
all Wikipedias and some Wikivoyages. It shows you a preview of the footnote when you hover over or click on the number. It has been a beta feature on German and Arabic Wikipedia since April.
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
23 October. See
how to join.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent changes
You can post proposals for the
Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the
Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals until 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 20 November to 2 December. This year the wishlist will focus on Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikispecies, Wikivoyage and Wikinews. You can
read more about the format for this year.
Mobile users now have a specific design for their Watchlist.
[10][11]
You can share feedback and ideas on the
Desktop Improvements project. The goal is to make the interface easier to use for readers and editors without removing any functionality. The Foundation's Readers Web team will work on this over the next two years.
OOUI now allows using px (pixels) instead of em (
em) for some specific cases.
[12][13]
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 October. It will be on all wikis from 31 October (
calendar).
Meetings
You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on
30 October at 15:00 (UTC). See
how to join.
Future changes
There will be no software changes from 19 December to 2 January. The first MediaWiki version next year will come the week of 6 January.
[14]
Gadgets and user scripts can access variables about the current page in JavaScript. In 2015, this information was moved from global variables named wg* to mw.config. The old global variables will be removed later this year. You can
know more about it and tell the developers if you want to try this out on your wiki first.