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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Tech News updates
Tech News will be
presented at the
Wikimania 2014 conference in London! If you will be attending the conference, please join us in Auditorium 2 at 14:30 local time on Sunday, August 10.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (
1.24wmf16) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 31. Due to the
Wikimania 2014 conference, it will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on August 12, and to all Wikipedias on August 14 (
calendar).
[1]
You can now test a new tool to render wiki pages as PDF files.
[2][3][4]
You can now download an update to the
archive of Wikimedia Commons files (uploaded up to December 31, 2013). If you have free space on your computer, please help preserve the files.
[5]
New users using the mobile Commons site now need to make 75 edits before they can upload a file.
[6][7]
VisualEditor news
You will no longer see an edit confirmation message after making a
null edit with VisualEditor.
[8][9]
The
VisualEditor team is currently working mostly to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find
on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.
The biggest visible change since the last newsletter was to the dialog boxes. The design for each dialog box and window was simplified. The most commonly needed buttons are now at the top. Based on user feedback, the buttons are now labeled with simple words (like "Cancel" or "Done") instead of potentially confusing icons (like "<" or "X"). Many of the buttons to edit links, images, and other items now also show the linked page, image name, or other useful information when you click on them.
Hidden HTML comments (notes visible to editors, but not to readers) can now be read, edited, inserted, and removed. A small icon (a white exclamation mark on a dot) marks the location of each comments. You can click on the icon to see the comment.
You can now drag and drop text and templates as well as images. A new placement line makes it much easier to see where you are dropping the item. Images can no longer be dropped into the middle of paragraphs.
All references and footnotes (<ref> tags) are now made through the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, including the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" (manual formatting) footnotes and the ability to re-use an existing citation, both of which were previously accessible only through the "Insert" menu. The "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-referencelist-tooltip⧽" is still added via the "Insert" menu.
When you add an image or other media file, you are now prompted to add an image caption immediately. You can also replace an image whilst keeping the original caption and other settings.
All tablet users visiting the mobile web version of Wikipedias will be able to opt-in to a version of VisualEditor from 14 August. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu.
The link tool has a new "Open" button that will open a linked page in another tab so you can make sure a link is the right one.
The "Cancel" button in the toolbar has been removed based on user testing. To cancel any edit, you can leave the page by clicking the Read tab, the back button in your browser, or closing the browser window without saving your changes.
Looking ahead
The team posts details about planned work on the
VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team
plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. Your
ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables. Work to support Internet Explorer is ongoing.
Feedback opportunities
The Editing team will be making two presentations this weekend at Wikimania in London. The first is with product manager James Forrester and developer Trevor Parscal on
Saturday at 16:30. The second is with developers Roan Kattouw and Trevor Parscal on
Sunday at 12:30.
Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at the
VisualEditor feedback page or by joining the
office hours discussion on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at
09:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East and Asia) or on Thursday, 18 September 2014 at
16:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Europe).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent software changes
Due to the
Wikimania 2014 conference, there were no MediaWiki changes this week. The latest version of MediaWiki (
1.24wmf16) will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on August 12, and to all Wikipedias on August 14 (
calendar).
[25]
Bureaucrats on all Wikivoyage wikis are no longer able to
merge two accounts into one.
[26]
VisualEditor news
Tablet users visiting the mobile version of non-Wikipedia wikis will be able to use VisualEditor starting on August 12. The feature will also be enabled on all Wikipedias on August 14.
[27]
Future software changes
Internet Explorer 6 users will soon see a
JavaScript-free version of Wikimedia wikis; JavaScript tools and scripts will no longer work on that browser. If you use Internet Explorer 6, make sure to update to a newer browser!
[28][29][30]
If you visit a special page that requires you to be logged-in, you will soon be automatically redirected to the
log-in page instead of seeing a warning.
[31][32]
You will now always see recent changes to the source language text when editing a translation with the
Translate extension.
[33][34]
An IRC meeting to discuss VisualEditor will take place on August 14 at 09:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (
time conversion).
[35]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (
1.24wmf17) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on August 19, and on all Wikipedias on August 21 (
calendar).
There is a new protection level called superprotection. At the moment, only some Wikimedia Foundation employees have access to it. Administrators can't edit "superprotected" pages.
[36][37][38]
You can now create empty pages directly. A
message asks you to confirm that you want to create an empty page.
[39][40]
You can watch the
first videos from
Wikimania 2014. Some of them are about technical topics. More videos will come later.
Wikidata
After August 19, you can use Wikidata for inter language links on Wikinews.
[42]
After August 19, you can use Wikidata for badges like "good" or "featured" articles. Next week, you will be able to show the badges in the article sidebar on Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikiquote.
[43]
Problems
There was an issue with ProofreadPage and WikiEditor on Wikisource wikis. It is now fixed.
[44][45]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
VisualEditor news
There was a error when you put your cursor directly after a reference list. It is now fixed.
[46]
You can now add colors to links in the editor using gadgets. You can do this to see links to redirects or disambiguation pages.
[47]
If you use Internet Explorer, you will soon be able to use VisualEditor.
[48][49][50]
Future software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (
1.24wmf18) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 21. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on August 26, and on all Wikipedias on August 28 (
calendar).
After August 26, you will have a central
JavaScript and
CSS page. They will be on Meta-Wiki and will work on all wikis. Read more on the
help page.
[51]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Recent software changes
You can now test a
new Beta Feature to see links to other wikis in the sidebar. The links come from Wikidata.
[52][53]
You can now search pages that link to a page. Use the linksto: keyword in your search.
[54][55]
A redirect to a section now changes the URL in the address bar of your browser. If "Dog" redirects to "Animals#Dog", you now see "Animals#Dog" instead of "Dog#Dog".
[56][57]
If you are testing Flow, you now have a Flow tab in your Notifications. It is called "Messages".
[58]
VisualEditor news
You can no longer delete required fields in templates.
[59]
We fixed many Internet Explorer bugs. If you use Internet Explorer 11, you will get VisualEditor next week. Support for earlier versions is coming next.
[60][61][62]
We fixed a bug where some of your typing could be undone when you used "cut" (Ctrl+X).
[64]
You will no longer see empty or deleted categories among the suggestions when you add a category.
[65]
Future software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (
1.24wmf19) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 2, and on all Wikipedias on September 4 (
calendar).
There is a proposal to build a database on Commons for file data. It will make it easier to see the author, license and topics. You can
give feedback on this idea. You can also come to the
IRC chat on
September 3 at 18:00 (UTC) in #wikimedia-office at freenode.
[66]
You can give feedback on
Media Viewer until September 7. You can say what needs to be improved and ask other people to give feedback too.
[67]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
VisualEditor news
From Thursday, Internet Explorer 11 users will get VisualEditor. Support for earlier versions is coming next.
[69][70][71]
Future software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (
1.24wmf20) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 9, and on all Wikipedias on September 11 (
calendar).
You will soon confirm a "Thanks" inline instead of in a dialog.
[72]
You can
read more about the plan to move to Phabricator, a tool that will help people develop the MediaWiki software and report bugs.
[73]
Problems
There were problems with JavaScript and CSS on Friday, September 5 because of a code error.
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 software changes
You can now change the style of links to disambiguation pages. This is done with the mw-disambigCSS class.
[74][75]
There was a problem on right-to-left wikis with Wikidata log entries. The text was messy in watchlists and recent changes. The problem is now fixed. The same problem will be fixed soon for user names.
[76][77][78]
New users are randomly chosen for a test on 12 Wikipedias. They get messages with
ideas of articles to edit. The ideas come from what they have already edited.
[79]
Problems
There was a problem with loading images on September 10.
[80]
VisualEditor news
If you don't select text when you add a link, the link now shows a number.
[81]
The citation tool no longer offers to reuse a citation if there are none on the page yet.
[82][83]
You can now use help buttons in the "Page settings" menu to see what the options are for.
[84]
Future software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf21) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 16, and on all Wikipedias on September 18 (
calendar).
These changes are coming with the new version:
If you use Internet Explorer 7,
JavaScript will no longer work. JavaScript tools and scripts will no longer work in that browser. You should update to a newer browser.
[85][86][87]
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 software changes
You can test a new
Beta Feature called HHVM. It should make editing faster. Please
report bugs if you see them.
[88]
Problems
There was a problem on the English Wikipedia on September 19. It was due to edits on a template used on many pages.
Sites were down for users in the Pacific area around 7:00 UTC on September 20. It was due to a problem in the San Francisco data center.
There were two bad bugs messing up articles in some browsers in VisualEditor. We fixed the bugs and updated the sites.
[89][90]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf22) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 23, and on all Wikipedias on September 25 (
calendar).
If you have more than 2000 notifications, the oldest ones will be removed.
[91][92]
In the "Vector" skin, the icon used for users will show a neutral gender.
[93][94]
The VisualEditor template tool now tells you if a required field is missing.
[95]
The "Cancel" button of the VisualEditor save window is now called "Resume editing". This shows that you can still edit and you won't lose your changes.
[96]
There are new keyboard shortcuts in VisualEditor. Use Ctrl+Shift+6 for code and Ctrl+Shift+5 for strikethrough.
[97][98]
In VisualEditor, you can now see that you are switching to the source editing mode. Before, it was not clear it was happening.
[99]
Future site changes
You can see a
plan for the move to Phabricator. It's the new tool to track bugs. A
guided tour will be done via video on September 24.
[100]
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 are now many more translations for language names.
[103]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf1) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 30, and on all Wikipedias on October 2 (
calendar).
Errors from Scribunto (Lua) are now shown on the page. Before, you had to click on "Script error" to see them.
[104][105]
You can add an "
autovalue" for a field in TemplateData. When users add the template to a page, the value will be added automatically. An example is when a clean-up template shows the date it was added.
[106]
If you change a user preference but don't save it, it now asks if you want to save it.
[107][108]
The PDF export tool has changed. The new one has better language support but it doesn't offer ZIM and EPUB formats.
[109]
JavaScript authors: Many old methods will be removed soon. Please check your scripts and gadgets and replace the old methods by the new ones if needed.
[110]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
Some wikis have a
template to track bugs in Bugzilla. You should update it to work with Phabricator. You can look at the one
on mediawiki.org to see how.
[113][114]
A new tool can now create thumbnails of large
TIFF images. This concerns files larger than 50
megapixels. These thumbnails are also
sharpened. You can comment
on Commons.
[116]
The
Media Viewer tool has a clearer link to the file page. It also has buttons to download, share and embed the file. You can enlarge images by clicking on them.
[117]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf2) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since 2 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from 7 October, and on all Wikipedias from 9 October (
calendar).
If you make a code mistake when editing a Lua script, you won't be able to save your edit.
[118][119]
We fixed some more Internet Explorer bugs. If you use Internet Explorer 10, you will be able to use VisualEditor next week. Support for earlier versions is coming next.
[120]
On Thursday, the tool to edit TemplateData will come to 30 more wikis.
[121][122]
You can help sort bugs in the Book and PDF export tool on
October 8.
[123]
1% of logged-out readers are getting pages from servers that run the
HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster.
[124]
Future changes
You can look at the plan of the Mobile team for their future work.
[125]
More changes to Media Viewer are coming. It will be easier to disable it, and you will see the caption below the image.
[126][127]
VisualEditor newsletter—September and October 2014
Did you know?
TemplateData is a separate program that organizes information about the parameters that can be used in a template. VisualEditor reads that data, and uses it to populate its simplified template dialogs.
With the new TemplateData editor, it is easier to add information about parameters, because the ones you need to use are pre-loaded.
Since the last newsletter, the
Editing team has reduced technical debt, simplified some workflows for template and citation editing, made major progress on Internet Explorer support, and fixed
over 125 bugs and requests. Several performance improvements were made, especially to the system around re-using references and reference lists. Weekly updates are posted
on Mediawiki.org.
There were three issues that required urgent fixes: a deployment error that meant that many buttons didn't work correctly (bugs
69856 and
69864), a problem with edit conflicts that left the editor with nowhere to go (
bug 69150), and a problem in Internet Explorer 11 that caused replaced some categories with a link to the system message,
MediaWiki:Badtitletext (
bug 70894) when you saved. The developers apologize for the disruption, and thank the people who reported these problems quickly.
Increased support for devices and browsers
Internet Explorer 10 and 11 users now have access to VisualEditor. This means that about 5% of Wikimedia's users will now get an "Edit" tab alongside the existing "Edit source" tab. Support for Internet Explorer 9 is planned for the future.
Tablet users browsing the site's mobile mode now have the option of using a mobile-specific form of VisualEditor. More editing tools, and availability of VisualEditor on smartphones, is planned for the future. The mobile version of VisualEditor was tweaked to show the context menu for citations instead of basic references (
bug 68897). A bug that broke the editor in iOS was corrected and released early (
bug 68949). For mobile tablet users, three bugs related to scrolling were fixed (
bug 66697,
bug 68828,
bug 69630). You can use VisualEditor on the mobile version of Wikipedia from your tablet by clicking on the cog in the top-right when editing a page and choosing which editor to use.
TemplateData editor
A tool for editing
TemplateData will be deployed to more Wikipedias soon. Other Wikipedias and some other projects may receive access next month. This tool makes it easier to add TemplateData to the template's documentation. When the tool is enabled, it will add a button above every editing window for a template (including documentation subpages). To use it, edit the template or a subpage, and then click the "Edit template data" button at the top. Read
the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor
in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.
Other changes
Several interface messages and labels were changed to be simpler, clearer, or shorter, based on feedback from translators and editors. The formatting of dialogs was changed, and more changes to the appearance will be coming soon, when VisualEditor implements the new MediaWiki theme from Design. (A preview of the theme is
available on Labs for developers.) The team also made some improvements for users of the Monobook skin that improved the size of text in toolbars and fixed selections that overlapped menus.
VisualEditor-MediaWiki now supplies the mw-redirect or mw-disambig class on links to redirects and disambiguation pages, so that user gadgets that colour in these in types of links can be created.
Templates' fields can be marked as 'required' in TemplateData. If a parameter is marked as required, then you cannot delete that field when you add a new template or edit an existing one (
bug 60358).
Language support improved by making annotations use bi-directional isolation (so they display correctly with cursoring behaviour as expected) and by fixing a bug that crashed VisualEditor when trying to edit a page with a dir attribute but no lang set (
bug 69955).
The team is also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables, and early work for this may appear within the month. Please comment on the design
at Mediawiki.org.
In the future, real-time collaborative editing may be possible in VisualEditor. Some early preparatory work for this was recently done.
Supporting your wiki
At Wikimania, several developers gave presentations about VisualEditor. A translation sprint focused on improving access to VisualEditor was supported by many people. Deryck Chan was the top translator. Special honors also go to संजीव कुमार (Sanjeev Kumar), Robby, Takot, Bachounda, Bjankuloski06 and Ата. A summary of the work achieved by the translation community has been
posted here. Thank you all for your work.
VisualEditor can be made available to most non-Wikipedia projects. If your community would like to test VisualEditor, please contact product manager
James Forrester or file an
enhancement request in Bugzilla.
Please join the
office hours on Saturday, 18 October 2014 at
18:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Africa and Europe) and on Wednesday, 19 November at
16:00 UTC on
IRC.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf3) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since 9 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from 14 October, and on all Wikipedias from 16 October (
calendar).
5% of logged-out readers are getting pages from servers that run the
HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. You can also test it as a
Beta Feature.
[132]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. You can read
translations.
Recent changes
You can test a new system to see math using
MathML. Go to your
display options and choose "⧼mw math mathml⧽".
You can add badges in Wikidata for quality articles and featured lists.
[136][137]
File information cleanup
You can join a
wiki project to help tools read file information. It will help people reuse files.
See
how to fix metadata. You can fix it by adding markers to templates and adding templates to files.
You can see a
list of files missing machine-readable information on your wiki.
Developers fixed a
security problem. If you use Internet Explorer 6, you won't be able to log in any more. You should use a newer browser.
[139]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf4) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since October 16. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 21, and on all Wikipedias from October 23 (
calendar).
10% of logged-out readers are getting pages from servers that run the
HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. You can also test it as a
Beta Feature.
[140]
If you add the same parameter twice in a template, it now puts the page in a tracking category.
[141][142]
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
There was an issue with files from Commons on October 21. You could only see those with names between 140 and 159 characters by visiting Commons itself.
[143]
There was a problem with cut and paste in VisualEditor in Firefox. It was fixed quickly.
[144]
There was a problem with editing math in VisualEditor. It was fixed quickly.
[145]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will now come to Wikipedia sites every Wednesday, instead of every Thursday.
[146]
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf5) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since October 23. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 28, and on all Wikipedias from October 29 (
calendar).
VisualEditor's menu items now show their shortcuts beside them.
[150]
VisualEditor now opens faster when you click "edit".
[151]
The rules for plurals in translations changed in some languages. Interface translations are currently not being updated from translatewiki.net; this process will start again on November 6.
[152]