Latest Tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes.
Recent software changes
(Not all changes will affect you.)
The latest version of MediaWiki (version 1.22/wmf4) was added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 13, and to the English Wikipedia (with a Wikidata software update) on May 20. It will be updated on all other Wikipedia sites on May 22. [1][2]
A software update will perhaps result in temporary issues with images. Please report any problems you notice. [3]
MediaWiki recognizes links in twelve new schemes. Users can now link toSSH, XMPP and Bitcoin directly from wikicode.[4]
The UploadWizard on Commons now shows links to the old upload form in 55 languages (bug 33513). [10]
Future software changes
The next version of MediaWiki (version 1.22/wmf5) will be added to Wikimedia sites starting on May 27.[11]
An updated version of Notifications, with new features and fewer bugs, will be added to the English Wikipedia on May 23. [12]
The final version of the "single user login" (which allows people to use the same username on different Wikimedia wikis) is moved to August 2013. The software will rename some usernames. [13]
A new discussion system for MediaWiki, called "Flow", is under development. Wikimedia designers need your help to inform other users, test the prototype and discuss the interface. [14].
The Wikimedia Foundation is hiring people to act as links between software developers and users for VisualEditor. [15]
Important note: This is the first edition of the Tech News weekly summaries, which help you monitor recent software changes likely to impact you and your fellow Wikimedians.
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The Notifications feature, active on the English Wikipedia, now supportslocal blacklists and whitelists. It is possible to hide users (for example certain bots) from all notifications on the wiki. Also, e-mail notifications are now grouped. [17][18]
The first stable release of MediaWiki 1.21 for sites outside Wikimedia was published on May 25. [19]
The tool storing information about languages (CLDR) was updated to thelatest version (23.1).[20]
Due to a software issue, users couldn't enable or disable Gadgets. The issue is now fixed.
Future software changes
MediaWiki will stop supporting XHTML 1.0 and HTML versions lower than version 5. HTML5 will now be the default language for pages created by the software. [21][22]
The software will check if all uploaded files are secure and match their type. [23]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes.
Recent software changes
(Not all changes will affect you.)
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf5) was added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 29. It will be enabled on the English Wikipedia on June 3, and on all other Wikipedias on June 5. [30]
The Tamil Wikipedia shared a Lua module they created to automate their Main Page. [31]
There is now a test wiki to test new features in right-to-left languages. [32]
The Thanks feature was added to the English Wikipedia; users can now thank others for individual edits. [33]
The new interface for account creation and log-in is now the default on 30 wikis, including the English Wikipedia, Commons, Meta, and Wikidata. The feature will be added to all wikis after June 5. Users can return to the old look by adding ?useNew=0 to the web address. [34]
Videos are now played in pop-up windows if their size on the page is smaller than 200 pixels (800 pixels on the English Wikipedia).[35]
Opening your talk page now marks notifications as read, for wikis using theNotifications feature. (bug 47912)[36].
All autoconfirmed users can now reset transcoding of video files; previously only administrators could do this. [37]
The Nearby feature allows people who use mobile devices to see Wikipedia articles about objects and places around them. [38]
Future software changes
The PostEdit feature is now part of MediaWiki, and will work on all wikis. (bug 48726) [39]
MediaWiki will now be updated every week, starting on June 6. Thanks to this, bugs will be fixed and features will be added faster than they are now.[41]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes.
Recent software changes
(Not all changes will affect you.)
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf6) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 6, and to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 10. It will be enabled on all Wikipedias on June 13. [42]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
(Not all changes will affect you.)
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22wmf7) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 13. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on June 17, and on all Wikipedias on June 20. [50]
VisualEditor was temporarily disabled on Wikipedia sites on June 14 due to an issuethat inserted a lot of HTML code. The issue is now fixed and VisualEditor works as before.
Users can now use VisualEditor to add images and other media items from their local wikis and Wikimedia Commons. [52].
The new Disambiguator extension, which was previously part of MediaWiki itself, was enabled on test wikis. It adds the magic word __DISAMBIG__ to mark disambiguation pages. [54]
The newly enabled Campaigns extension allows Wikimedia Foundation data analysts to track account creations that result from a specific outreach campaign.
Future software changes
Universal Language Selector will be added to the Catalan (ca), Cebuano (ceb), Persian (fa), Finnish (fi), Norwegian Bokmål (no), Portuguese (pt), Ukrainian (uk), Vietnamese (vi), Waray-Waray (war) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias on June 18.[55]
Starting on June 18, VisualEditor will be randomly enabled by default for half of newly created accounts on the English Wikipedia to test stability, performance and features.[56]
Two new webfonts (UnifrakturMaguntia and Linux Libertine) will be added to wikis that use Universal Language Selector.[57][58]
It will now be possible to hide the sidebar while using the Translate extension to reduce distractions (bug #45836).[59]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
(Not all changes will affect you.)
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 20. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on June 24, and on all Wikipedias on June 27. [61]
Universal Language Selectorwas successfully enabled on the Catalan (ca), Cebuano (ceb), Persian (fa), Finnish (fi), Norwegian Bokmål (no), Portuguese (pt), Ukrainian (uk), Vietnamese (vi), Waray-Waray (war) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias. [62]
The new interface for account creation and log–in is now the default on all Wikimedia wikis. The old look is no longer available (bug #46333).[63]
It is now possible to synchroniselocal CSS and JavaScript files with the beta cluster. This should make it easier to test software features before they are enabled on live wikis.[67]
Future software changes
The default link to a help page on editing, visible below the editing window,will change on almost 600 Wikimedia wikis and will now link to MediaWiki.org(bug #45977). [68]
Universal Language Selector will be enabled on wikis without language versions (such asWikisource and Wikispecies) on June 25.[69]
The AbuseFilter extension will allow filtering links and HTML code for page creations. [70]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
(Not all changes will affect you.)
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf9) was added to test wikis on June 27. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 8, and on all Wikipedias on July 11.
On Wikisource, the canonical names of the "Index" and "Page" namespaces in the Proofread Page extension are no longer localized (bug #47596). Please check scripts that depend on $wgCanonicalNamespace. [76]
A JavaScript problem caused the "ประวัติ" and "เพิ่มหัวข้อ" tabs in the Vector skin to be moved into the drop-down menu on right-to-left wikis. The issue is now fixed and links are visible as before (bug #50196). [77]
VisualEditor will be enabled for all logged-in English Wikipedia users on July 1, and for all users on July 8.
From July 8, it will be possible to upload WAV and native FLAC files to Commons, and use them directly on wiki pages ([[<tvar|bug-49505>bugzilla:49505</>|bug #49505]]).[83]
Tech news #26 incorrectly reported that audio transcoding was added to TimedMediaHandler; it was actually statistics about audio transcoding that were added. [85]
Latest [[<tvar|technews>m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News</>|tech news]] from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. [[<tvar|more-transl>m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2013/28</>|Translations]] are available.
Recent software changes(Not all changes will affect you.)
VisualEditor deployment has been delayed by a week. It is now planned to enable the editor for logged–in editors on chosen Wikipedias on July 22, and on all Wikipedias on July 29.
A bug that made it impossible to save VisualEditor edits that triggered a CAPTCHA has been fixed. [86]
Uploading files has been restricted on Meta Wiki to administrators and the newly created uploadergroup. An exemption doctrine policy is being developed (bug #50287). [87]
Emergency priority CentralNotice banners will always be shown unless users have hidden them, ignoring cookies set for lower priority banners.[88]
Future software changes
MediaWiki will allow choosing a specific page of a PDF document or a thumbnail of a video file to show up inside the
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.
Recent software changes(Not all changes will affect you.)
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf10) was added to test wikis on July 11. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 15, and on all Wikipedias on July 18. [95]
The Disambiguator extension was enabled on all Wikimedia wikis on July 9 (bug #50174). To use it, add the __DISAMBIG__ code to disambiguation templates (see example).[96]
A new version of the Single User Login system for global accounts will be enabled on July 17. Users will now automatically go back to the previous page instead of seeing the "Login success" page with logos. [98]
The software that resizes images on all wikis will change on July 18. Resizing of big images will be faster and more reliable, and the resolution limit for GIF, PNG and TIFF files (currently set at 50 megapixels) will be removed. [99]
Edit tags (mostly used by AbuseFilter) will now also be on diff pages. They include a link to Special:Tags before the edit summary. Wikis that use links in tag messages should remove them. [100][101]
Global edit filters are currently in testing and will be added to wikis later.[102]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.
Recent software changes(Not all changes will affect you.)
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 18. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 22, and on all Wikipedias on July 25. [105]
The schedule to add VisualEditor to non-English Wikipedias has been changed: the new editor will be available for logged-in users on the German (de), Spanish (es), French (fr), Hebrew (he), Italian (it), Dutch (nl), Polish (pl), Russian (ru) and Swedish (sv) Wikipedias on July 24, and for all users on those wikis on July 29. [107]
A warning is now displayed if an edit made with VisualEditor matches an edit filter (bug #50472).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes; not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 25. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 29, and on all Wikipedias on August 1. [112]
Wikivoyage was offline for around 40 minutes on July 24. [113]
The Notifications and Thanks extensions were added to Meta-Wiki on July 26; other wikis will get them soon. [115]
It is now possible to add edit summaries on Wikidata using the API; the feature will be added to user interface soon. [116]
The software that resizes large PNG images on all wikis was changed on July 25. Resizing of PNG files bigger than 35 megapixels should be faster and more reliable now.[117]
Three new webfonts (Gentium, Old Persian and Shapour) will be added to Universal Language Selector.[118], [119],[120]
Special:MIMESearch, which gives a list of files by type, will be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis with MediaWiki version 1.22/wmf12 (bug #13438). [121]
A mailing list to discuss multimedia features was started; users are encouraged to sign up.
On July 24, VisualEditor was added for logged-in users on the German (de), Spanish (es), French (fr), Hebrew (he), Italian (it), Polish (pl), Russian (ru) and Swedish (sv) Wikipedias; it will be added for all users on those wikis on July 29. [122]
A preference to completely disable VisualEditor while it is in beta phase was added on July 24.[123]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
New features
The previous version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on August 15. It was enabled on non-Wikipedia sites on August 19, and on all Wikipedias on August 22. [130]
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on August 22. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia sites on August 26, and on all Wikipedias on August 29. [131]
You can now use the <wbr> HTML5 tag to say where a word can be cut. (52468)[134]
Gadget authors: you can now use the wikipage.content hook, so that your scripts are re-run when a page is changed after the document-ready event (for example using Ajax). (30713) [135]
Problems fixed
There was a bug where file redirects didn't work when a file was renamed; it is now fixed. There is still an issue with purging, but it should be fixed soon. (52200)
รายงานการบำรุงรักษา provided by special pages will now all be updated on each wiki every six months. This will for example give you recent information on uncategorized pages, unused templates and most wanted pages (see details).
There was a bug that caused false positives for anti-blanking edit filters; it is now fixed. (52077) [136]
The "edit" and "edit source" tabs and section edit links can now be changed more easily; for example, some wikis are using "edit source" for wikitext editing, and "edit beta" for VisualEditor. You can ask for the same change in bugzilla.
You can now edit references that are added inside a <references> block. (51741)
You can now test on mediawiki.org new basic tools to add and edit struck text (with the button for the <s>tag), lower text ( for <sub>), upper text ( for <sup>), underlined text ( for <u>), computer code ( for <code> and <tt>), math text (ไฟล์:VisualEditor - Icon -Equation.svg for <math>), Egyptian hieroglyphs ( for <hiero>), and to say that text is in another language ( forlang="ar" dir="rtl"). (51609, 51612,51611, 51590, 51610, 52352)
You can now use VisualEditor with the Opera browser. [137]
Future
Starting on August 26, you will be able to use data from Wikidata on Wikivoyage sites.[138]
Starting on August 27, you will also get notifications on the mobile site if you're logged in to a wiki using notifications. [139]
Starting on August 28, all users with an account will be using HTTPS to access Wikimedia sites. HTTPS brings better security and improves your privacy. Some countries (like China) will not use HTTPS. If HTTPS causes problems for you, tell us on meta.[140]
Starting on August 29, you will get the code editor interface to edit JavaScript and CSS pages on all wikis. [141]
The plan to use Solr for search in MediaWiki was changed; instead,Elasticsearch is now planned. [142]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
New features
Special:Listfiles can now display old versions of files a user has uploaded. A new link was also added (Special:AllMyFiles) that gives a list of all files the current user has ever uploaded (that haven't been deleted).
There is now an Android applicationto contribute to translatewiki.net from mobile devices. [143]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
You can now create and edit references inside media captions. [151]
You now need to press the "delete" key twice to delete a template, reference or image; the first time, they only become selected, to avoid accidental deletion of infoboxes and similar content.[152]
When you resize images, you will now still see them, and their size will also be seen in the center.[153][154]
MediaWiki 1.22wmf22 was added to test wikis on October 17. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on October 21 and all Wikipedia wikis on October 24 (calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
New features
The "Toolbox" section in the site sidebar is now called "Tools" in English. You can do the same in your language by editing the interface texton translatewiki.net. Someone else may have already done it. [157]
On wikis with VisualEditor, you can now use it on pages in the ไฟล์, วิธีใช้ andหมวดหมู่ spaces. [158]
Problems
On October 22 (UTC), an error in the site settings caused *.wikimedia.org sites (like Meta-Wiki and Commons) to redirect to wikimediafoundation.org for a few hours.[159]
Future
MediaWiki 1.23wmf1 was added to test wikis on October 24. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on October 28 and all Wikipedia wikis on October 31 (calendar).
In the next days, servers in San Francisco will start providing (cached) content to users located in Oceania. If you are in that area and notice problems, please tell us.[160]
You will soon be able to test new features easily using the "Beta Features" view. VisualEditor will be in the list on sites where it works and isn't automatically enabled. Another example is a set of changes in the article text style.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
New features
The style and colors for warning boxes, error messages, and success messages in all skins of MediaWiki has been changed. [161]
You will soon be able to switch from editing in VisualEditor to editing wikitext directly without having to save the page. You can't yet switch from wikitext to VisualEditor but developers hope to make it possible in the future. [162]
Problems
There was a problem on October 31 during the activation of MediaWiki 1.22wmf2on test wikis. mediawiki.org was also broken, and if you had problems logging in, it was probably because of this as well.
Future
Because of the problem with MediaWiki 1.22wmf2, the calendar has changed. It will be added to mediawiki.org and non-Wikipedia sites on November 4, and all Wikipedia sites on November 7.
JavaScript / Gadget developers
Due to a recent change, gadgets and user scripts that use jQuery UI should explicitly load the appropriate modules, as they may not be loaded by default. [163]
Developers have started to remove long-deprecated methods. You should check the JavaScript console (indebug=true mode) and look for deprecation warnings and their stack trace.[164]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
New features
You can now use the "Autonym" font of the Universal Language Selector(ULS) to display the name of languages (for example in navigation templates) in their correct script. To do this, add the CSS class "autonym" to the elements that include language names. Note that this font only works for the name of languages, not for any other text.[165]
Problems
There was a problem with Parsoid (the program used by VisualEditor to convert wikitext to annotated HTML) on November 4, between 19:40 and 20:40 (UTC). Encoding issues caused non-ASCII characters (including those with diacritics, like "é") to be broken when converted to wikitext and saved to the page. [166]
Future
The Beta Features tool is now available on Commons and Meta-Wiki. With it, you can test new features before they're added for everyone. The plan is to add this tool to all wikis on November 21. [167]
MediaWiki 1.23wmf3 was added to test wikis on November 7. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on November 12 and all Wikipedia wikis on November 14 (calendar). [168]
The MassMessage tool will be added to all wikis on November 14. It will make it simpler to send messages across wikis. [169]
The button of the Search page will soon be changed to be blue and bigger (see the difference). [170]
You will soon be able to add a page name as parameter for {{REVISIONID}},{{REVISIONUSER}} and {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} and similar functions, by writing for example {{REVISIONID:Apple}}.[171]
In the future, when you hide a CentralNotice banner on a wiki, it will also be hidden on other Wikimedia sites. [172]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
Problems
There was a problem caused by too many requests to the database on November 14.[173]
Future
MediaWiki 1.23wmf4 was added to test wikis on November 14. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on November 19 and all Wikipedia wikis on November 21 (calendar).
The new Search tool (CirrusSearch) will be added to*.wikimedia.org, Wikimania and Wikisource wikis on November 19, and Wiktionary wikis on November 21 (except where it's already available). Once it is added, you can test it by adding&srbackend=CirrusSearch to the address of the search results page. It will become the main search engine on Wikivoyage wikis on November 21. [174]
The MassMessage tool will be added to all wikis on November 19 instead of November 14. It will make it simpler to send messages across wikis. [175]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
New features
The Beta Features announced before are now available on all Wikimedia wikis. You can test new features easily by changing your Beta preferences. VisualEditor is one of those features on sites where it works and isn't automatically enabled. There is also a new media viewer and changes in the article text style.[176]
Tools developers can now create tools that use the OAuth protocol to connect to accounts on Wikimedia sites. As a user, you can use those tools to make edits and other changes with your account without giving the tool your password. [177]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
The CommonsMetadata feature was added to all wikis. It creates metadata information about multimedia files (like their license) that can be read automatically by computer programs. It not only works for Commons, but for all wikis, and you can use it for files on your wiki byediting templates used to describe metadata.[179]
You can now paste formatted content copied from external sources (not just as plain text) into VisualEditor; this includes copy/pasting from other VisualEditor windows.[181]
You can now open VisualEditor by adding ?veaction=edit to the page URL, regardless of your user preferences. [182]
Many bugs have been fixed, and VisualEditor should also look faster, for example when you save a page.[183]
Problems
Due to issues, the new search tool ("CirrusSearch") was recently removed from wikis where it was enabled, then added again. [184]
Future
MediaWiki 1.23wmf6 was added to test wikis on December 5. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on December 10 and all Wikipedia wikis on December 12 (calendar).
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
The toolbar is now simpler; all text styles (bold, italics, underline, subscript, etc.) are in the same menu, and the "More" menu is called "Insert". [188]
You can now use a basic tool to add special characters to your text. You can add more characters (useful in your language) by editing the MediaWiki interface on translatewiki.net.
The tool to add and edit mathematical text is now called "formula".[189]
Problems
There was a problem with the "สร้างหนังสือ" tool (Collection); books could only be exported to PDF format. The change has been undone.[190]
The log-in system for external tools ("OAuth") was broken on wikis that tested the new search tool. It was fixed last week. [191][192]
MediaWiki 1.23wmf7 was added to test wikis on December 12. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on December 17 and all Wikipedia wikis on December 19 (calendar).
You will soon be able to select the language of SVG images that have translations using a drop-down menu on the image page. (see example)[194]
GLAMToolset, a tool to help GLAMgroups (like museums) upload many pictures to Commons, will be added to Commons on December 17.[195]
A Draft namespace will be added to the English Wikipedia to make it easier to create new pages. You will be able to use VisualEditor for drafts if you have enabled it.[196][197]
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 (1.23wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on December 19. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on December 31 and on all Wikipedia wikis on January 2, 2014 (calendar).
You can now test the new search tool ("CirrusSearch") on all Wikisource, Wiktionary and Wikimedia chapter wikis hosted on Foundation servers. Enable "New search" in your Beta features preferences. [199]
There was a bug where notifications were not sent when the signature of the user leaving the message linked to a translated namespace. The problem was fixed in the software and will soon be fixed on Wikimedia sites. [200][201]
You can now use the log-in system for external tools (OAuth) on all Wikimedia wikis that use the unified login.[202]
If your wiki adds stars or other icons to interwiki links for featured articles in other languages, you may need to change the JavaScript code.[203]
You can thank other users for their edits even if your browser does not have JavaScript.[204][205]
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 see the text of DjVu and PDF files in search results on wikis testing the new search tool (CirrusSearch). [219][220]
With the new version of the Wikibase DataModel extension, you can install it outside Wikimedia wikis. [221]
CirrusSearch will be added as the second search method for Spanish (es), French (fr), Portuguese (pt) and Russian (ru) wikis on December 30. Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies and Wikinews users will also be able to enable it in their Beta Features options.
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 (1.23wmf9) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 2. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on January 7 and on all Wikipedia wikis on January 9 (calendar).
On January 2, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and all Wikivoyage projects were broken for 2 hours due to language cache update issues.
On the same day, it was not possible to edit most wikis for about 30 minutes, due to a database replication problem.
Future software changes
The new search tool (CirrusSearch) will be added as the default search method for Italian Wikipedia, French Wikisource, Wikidata and all Wikivoyage sites, and as a second search method for the German Wikipedia and all Wikibooks sites on January 6. [231]
Spanish, French, Portuguese and Russian Wikipedia users will also be able to enable CirrusSearch in theirBeta Features options.[232]
Plural form rules for some languages will be changed. Many translations of the user interface for Belarusian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian and other languages will need to be changed. [233][234][235]
You will see a warning when you try to delete a page linked to from other pages. [236][237]
You will be able to use keyboard shortcuts in the Translate tool, by pressingAlt+1 and similar key groups. [240][241]
E-mails sent by MediaWiki will include the name of the site in their From: line. You will be able to change this name on your wiki by editing the MediaWiki:Emailsender page. [242][243]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.Translations are available.
You can read a recent blog post about how Tech News is put together, translated and sent to you across wikis each week.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf10) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 9. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 14, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 16 (calendar).
Searching in the File: namespace on Wikimedia Commons may be slow due to a search engine issue. [246]
VisualEditor news
VisualEditor will be added for all users on several Wikipedias on January 13. [247]
You can now add and remove __NOTOC__, __FORCETOC__ and __NOEDITSECTION__ in the page metadata menu. [248][249][250]
Problems
For a few hours on January 6, it was not possible to edit pages using theTranslate tool on Wikimedia Commons and the Wikimania 2013 wiki, due to a settings error. [251][252]
For about 20 minutes on January 9, there were problems with CSS andJavaScript due to high server load.
Future software changes
Wikidata will be added to all Wikisource wikis on January 14. [253]
The new search tool (CirrusSearch) will be added as the second search method for the English Wikipedia on January 13. On Wikibooks and the German Wikipedia, you will also be able to test it by adding it in your Beta Features options.
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 (1.23wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 16. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 28, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 30 (calendar).
As of January 16, you can make and use guided tours on the Asturian, Farsi and Russian Wikipedias. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla. [259][260]
You can give comments on an idea to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. [261]
You can watch a video to learn how to report problems in Bugzilla. [262]
VisualEditor news
In the toolbar, the menu to edit the styles (like bold, italic, etc.) now has a down arrow (). The order of the Insert menu has also changed a little.
You can now edit <gallery /> tags with a very basic tool. [263]
You can now see a help page about keyboard shortcuts in the page menu. [264]
When you change categories, you will now see them when you save the page. [265]
When you edit templates, you will now see the parameters in the right order. The ones that you must add have a star (*). [266][267]
The page will now be saved faster, thanks to a new way of coding the text that sends 40% less text to the servers. [268]
There was a problem with search on the English and German Wikipedias between January 6 and January 14. You could not see new pages and changes in search results. [270]
There were "pool timeouts" errors on several wikis on January 13; it was caused by a code change that was made to fix another problem. [271]
On January 17, Bugzilla and Wikimedia Labs were broken for about 20 minutes due to network problems. IRC channels with recent changes (irc.wikimedia.org) were broken for about two hours. [272]
Future software changes
Orange bar with new messages
If you have removed JavaScript in your web browser, you will soon be able to see the orange bar saying that you have new messages. If you have changed how the bar looks with a gadget, you may need to change the gadget again. [273][274]
You will soon be able to add a given Flickr user to a blacklist so that their files can't be uploaded using UploadWizard on Wikimedia Commons and other wikis. [275]
You will see a warning when you try to delete a page included in at least one other page. [276]
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
Pages from Wikimedia sites now load faster in your browser thanks to "module storage", a way for your browser to save data like JavaScript and CSS on your computer to avoid downloading them again. See video.[279]
The code used to show videos has changed. You should be able to play the video on the page, with the play button on top of the video. If you see the play button on the right of the video, or if clicking on the video leads you to the original file, please file a bug or tell User:Bawolff. [280]
The Special:ActiveUsers page will be removed because it's too slow. [281]
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 16. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on January 28, and all Wikipedia wikis on January 30 (calendar).
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 (1.23wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on January 30. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 4, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 6 (calendar).
You can now link to diffs using [[Special:Diff/12345]] and similar links. [289]
There is no longer an option to hide tables of contents on all pages. [290]
Searching in the File: namespace on Wikimedia Commons is now faster, after a bug was fixed on January 29. [291]
All Wikimedia wikis now have high-resolution favicons. [292]
VisualEditor news
You can now see a list of keyboard shortcuts by pressing Ctrl+/ inside VisualEditor. [293]
Future software changes
Edits and files hidden with the Oversight tool will be moved to theRevisionDelete system. The Oversight tool will then be removed from Wikimedia wikis. [294][295][296]
For languages where not all sister projects exist, you will be able to link to other language projects using double interwikis (:ko:v, :v:ko, etc.). [297]
It will soon be possible to use the GettingStarted tool on other wikis than the English Wikipedia. You can translate it on Translatewiki.net.[298]
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 (1.23wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 6. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 11, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 13 (calendar).
The Vector search box was changed to fix old display and accessibility issues; for example, you can now use full-text search even if you have disabled JavaScript. Please report any problems you see. The option to disable the "simplified search bar" on Vector will also be removed. [304][305][306][307][308]
You are now notified when someone adds a link to your user page on wikis where it didn't work before (wikis with dates in the year-month-day order, including Hungarian, Japanese, Korean and some variants of Chinese). [309]
VisualEditor news
You can now set media items' alt text and position, and directly set their size, in the media tool. [310][311]
The gallery tool was improved and several issues were fixed. [312][313][314]
Problems
On February 3, all wikis were broken for about an hour due to a traffic balancing issue. [315]
On February 6, some wikis were broken for about half an hour in total due to a problem with the Math extension.
Future software changes
Some methods from Scribunto's mw.message library will be removed after February 18. If you use them in your templates or modules, please check to make sure that things will not break. [316][317]
You will soon be able to use GettingStarted on 23 new Wikipedias. It helps new users by listing possible tasks and giving help. The new version was also added to the English Wikipedia on February 7th. [318]
You will soon see results from other wikis when you use the new search tool (CirrusSearch). [319][320]
The WikiLove tool was redesigned and should also load faster. [321]
bugzilla.wikimedia.org will be updated this week. You won't be able to access it from 22:00 UTC on February 12 until 01:00 UTC on February 13 at the latest. [330]
The <poem> tag will be renamed to <lines>. The old tag will still work. [331]
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 (1.23wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 13. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 18, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 20 (calendar).
The new search tool (CirrusSearch) now gives more importance to content namespaces if you search in several namespaces. [334]
You can now directly link to files viewed with MultimediaViewer, the new tool for viewing media files. [335]
You can read the summary of the Wikimedia technical report for January 2014. [336]
Problems
On February 9, Wikimedia Labs was broken for about 2 hours due to an XFS file system problem. [337]
On February 11, there were problems with VisualEditor for about 20 minutes due to a server logging issue. [338]
On the same day, for about 20 minutes there were issues with page loading due to database problems.
There were issues with page loading between 21:00 UTC on February 13 and 11:00 UTC on February 14 for users in Europe. It was due to a cache server problem.
On February 14, all sites were broken for about 15 minutes for users in Southeast Asia, Oceania and the western part of North America. It was due to problems with cache servers.
VisualEditor news
The link tool now tells you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. [339]
You can now change image display (like thumbnail, frame and frameless) with VisualEditor. [340]
Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from paragraphs you are editing. [341]
You will soon be able to create and edit redirect pages with VisualEditor. [342][343][344]
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 (1.23wmf15) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 20. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 25, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 27 (calendar).
The new search tool (CirrusSearch) was added to the Italian Wikiquote and all Wikiversity projects. Users can now enable it in their Beta options. [345][346]
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 (1.23wmf16) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 27. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 4, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 6 (calendar).
When users enable web fonts by default, Universal Language Selector will now log if they don't have fonts to display pages correctly. This information will be used by developers to improve font support in the future. Read more about missing fonts. [360]
Article Feedback Tool will be removed from the English and French Wikipedias on March 3. It will also no longer be possible to add this tool to any Wikimedia wiki. [377][378]
Wikis using the new search tool will come back to the old tool for a few hours starting at 00:00 UTC on March 6. [379]
Problems
For about an hour on February 23, there were problems with page loading due to a MediaWiki bug. [380]
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 (1.23wmf17) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 6. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 11, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 13 (calendar).
It is now easier to edit templates. Complex tools are now in the "advanced" mode. [383][384]
It is also easier to edit images. You now have more options and they are explained better. [385]
VisualEditor adds fake blank lines so you can put your cursor there. They are now smaller and animated to be different from actual blank lines. [386]
We have improved the tool to add special characters. The buttons are now larger. More changes are coming. [387]
You can now use new keyboard shortcuts to undo the last action, clear formatting, and show the shortcut help window. [388][389][390]
Future software changes
You will soon be able to use a Beta option to show a shorter list of language links. That way, Universal Language Selector will only show languages that are relevant to you. You will still be able to search for other languages. [391]
An IRC discussion with the Wikimedia Foundation Language Engineering team will take place on March 12 at 17:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion). [395]
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 (1.23wmf18) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 13. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 18, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 20 (calendar).
You can now view smaller versions of PNG images bigger than 20 megapixels. [396]
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 (1.23wmf19) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 20. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 25, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 27 (calendar).
VisualEditor news
You can now double-click or press the ↲ Enter key on an image or template to change its settings. [408][409]
Pages that don't exist will now show as red links in the edit mode. [410]
You will no longer be able to try to use VisualEditor on pages translated using the Translate extension, and you will see a warning if you try to edit pages marked for translation. [411]
You will now see a full warning, including the most recent log entry, when you try to edit protected pages with VisualEditor. [412]
Future software changes
Typography Refresh will be enabled for test wiki and MediaWiki.org users who use the Vector skin on March 27. For users on non-Wikipedia wikis, it will be enabled on April 1, and for Wikipedia users on April 3. If you don't use Vector as your skin, you will not be affected.
You will be able to use the Hovercards tool as a beta feature on all wikis from March 26.
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 (1.23wmf20) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 27. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 1, and all Wikipedia wikis on April 3 (calendar).
Typography Refresh was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 27. You'll only see it if you use the Vector skin. For users on non-Wikipedia wikis, it will be enabled on April 1, and for Wikipedia users on April 3.
CirrusSearch, the new search tool, was enabled as a beta feature on over 30 new wikis on March 27. [415][416]
VisualEditor news
Blocked users now see the same messages in VisualEditor as in the wikitext editor. [417][418]
The search box for re-using a reference in VisualEditor is now cleared after each use. [419]
New links on sub-pages no longer point to the wrong location in VisualEditor. [420]
VisualEditor's media dialog no longer breaks when opening some types of images. [421]
Future software changes
You will not be able to use the Wikitech wiki for a short period around 16:00 UTC on April 1 due to a server change. [422]
CirrusSearch will become the main search engine for all non-Wikipedia wikis except Commons, Meta and Incubator on April 2.
You will soon be able to use a new special page listing duplicate files. [423]
Deleting a version of a file or a version of its description page will soon be shown differently in the logs. [424]
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 (1.23wmf21) was scheduled to be deployed to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 3, however it was temporarily put on hold due to localization issues. (calendar).
Typography Refresh was enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on April 1, and on all Wikipedias on April 3. You'll only see it if you use the Vector skin.
CirrusSearch was enabled as the primary search method on over 400 non-Wikipedia wikis on April 2. [425]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
We are looking for contributors to help write new issues every week. If you would like to help, please contact us.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf22) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 10. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 15, and all Wikipedias on April 17 (calendar).
MediaViewer was enabled for all users on MediaWiki.org on April 10. It will be enabled for all users on the Catalan (ca), Hungarian (hu) and Korean (ko) Wikipedias and English Wikivoyage on April 17. Comments are welcome. [433][434][435]
You will now see only three options when you try to add a template parameter in VisualEditor; you will see other options after a click. [438]
The size changing controls in VisualEditor media editing dialog were simplified further.
The wikitext editor tab will now fold into a drop-down menu in the Vector skin if there is not enough space on your screen. [439][440]
Future software changes
The font used for body text on Wikimedia wikis will change to your system default sans-serif font. This temporary change will be enabled on all non-Wikipedia wikis on April 15, and on all Wikipedias on April 17. [441][442]
Files from Commons seen on another wiki will soon have a tab saying "View on Wikimedia Commons". The create tab will change to "Add local description" (see screenshot). [443]
An IRC discussion with the Wikimedia Foundation Multimedia team will take place on April 16 at 18:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion). [453]
Problems
Wikimedia Foundation servers were updated after a security bug called Heartbleed was discovered last week. You should change your password as an extra precaution. [454]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
We are looking for contributors to help write a new issue every week. If you would like to help, please contact us.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf1) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 17. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 22, and all Wikipedias on April 24 (calendar).
Problems with various fonts in SVG files were fixed last week. Files that use DejaVu Sans Condensed, DejaVu Serif Condensed, DejaVu Sans Light, Kochi Gothic and Kochi Mincho fonts now show correctly. [458][459][460][461]
You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for March 2014. [463]
VisualEditor news
If you try to add a category which redirects to another category, VisualEditor will now suggest adding the target category directly. [464][465]
VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear on Education Program pages. [466][467]
You can now use VisualEditor on Meta-Wiki and the French Wikinews by enabling it in your preferences. [468][469][470]
Future software changes
MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the Czech (cs), Estonian (et), Finnish (fi), Hebrew (he), Polish (pl), Romanian (ro), Slovak (sk), Thai (th) and Vietnamese (vi) Wikipedias on April 24. Feedback is welcome. [471]
Edits by anonymous users will now be marked with a new CSS class (mw-anonuserlink). This way, you can easily make those edits use a different color, font or background. [472][473]
An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on April 22 at 03:30 AM UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). [483]
Problems
For about 40 minutes on April 17, there were problems with page loading due to high server load.
There is a problem with the rendering of formulas with MathJax. If you enabled MathJax in your preferences, you might need to turn it off and on again. [484]
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 (1.24wmf2) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 29, and all Wikipedias on May 1 (calendar).
You can now use interwiki prefix c: to link to pages on Wikimedia Commons. [485]
VisualEditor news
You will soon be able to set content language and direction with VisualEditor. [486]
VisualEditor now works on all Wikipedias after broken MediaWiki:Common.js pages (and similar) were fixed last week. [487]
VisualEditor dialogs now use an animation of moving lines rather than animated GIF images.
Future software changes
CirrusSearch will be enabled as a beta feature on 41 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and the Swedish (sv), Russian (ru), Polish (pl), Japanese (ja) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias next week. This change means that CirrusSearch will now be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis.
MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the French (fr) and Dutch (nl) Wikipedias on May 1. Feedback is welcome. [488]
The mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will soon include filters to limit the number of uploaded files that are copyright violations. [489]
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 (1.24wmf3) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 1. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 6, and all Wikipedias on May 8 (calendar).
The Compact Personal Bar was added as a beta feature to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 1. It will be added as a beta feature to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 6, and to all Wikipedias on May 8. To test it, you can enable it now in your preferences on MediaWiki.org. [497]
External links in VisualEditor are now in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki. [499]
The template tool now tells you if a parameter is obsolete. [500]
You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData; VisualEditor will add them like required ones. [501]
There is a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name for file names. [502][503]
Editing formulae in VisualEditor will soon be enabled for all users. [504][505]
You will soon be able to try a new beta feature to edit text in another language. [506][507]
Future software changes
MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the Japanese (ja), Portuguese (pt), Spanish (es), Swedish (sv) and Telugu (te) Wikipedias on May 8. Feedback is welcome. [508]
You can help translate about 100 new language names that have been added to our data source. They are used, for example, as hover text for interwiki links. Send an e-mail to Nemo if you want to help.
If you click on a redirect page in your watchlist, you will soon access the redirect itself. [509][510]
Problems
For about 40 minutes around 00:20 UTC on April 29, there were problems with page loading due to high server load.
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 (1.24wmf4) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 8. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 13, and all Wikipedias on May 15 (calendar).
VisualEditor news
A new citation system in VisualEditor was enabled on the English Wikipedia. It will soon be enabled on more wikis. [511]
Templates that were previously broken in VisualEditor should now appear correctly. [512]
Future software changes
It will soon be possible to move category description pages. Pages in changed categories will still have to be moved independently. [513][514]
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 is one year old this week; thank you for being with us!
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf5) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 15. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 20, and all Wikipedias on May 22 (calendar).
The jQuery JavaScript library was updated on May 16. Please check that your gadgets and scripts still work. [529][530][531]
MediaViewer was enabled for all users on the Kannada (kn) and Telugu (te) Wikipedias on May 13. It will be enabled on the German (de), English (en), Italian (it) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias and on all Wikisource wikis on May 22. Feedback is welcome. [532][533]
VisualEditor was added as a beta feature to Wikimedia Commons on May 15. You can enable it in your preferences. [534][535]
You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for April 2014.
VisualEditor news
VisualEditor's buttons and icons can now be accessed using keyboard keys. [536][537]
VisualEditor's new citation tool now matches templates like {{cite_web}} and not just {{Cite web}}. [538][539]
VisualEditor's welcome message will no longer be shown to users who have already seen it. [540][541]
VisualEditor now shows a clearer message when you cancel an edit. [542]
The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. [543][544]
This is a one-time mailing to projects that may need this information. Future newsletters will be available as opt-in only. To receive future newsletters (about one per month), please add your page to the subscribers' list at m:VisualEditor/Newsletter. You're welcome to translate to your language.
Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on the new citation tool, improving performance, reducing technical debt, and other infrastructure needs.
Did you know?
The cite menu offers quick access to up to five citation templates. If your wiki has enabled the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, press "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" and select the appropriate template from the menu.
Existing citations that use these templates can be edited either using the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" tool or by selecting the reference and choosing the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "แทรก" menu.
The biggest change in the last few weeks is the new citation template menu, labeled "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽". The new citation menu offers a locally configurable list of citation templates on the main toolbar. It adds or opens references using the simplified template dialog that was deployed last month. This tool is in addition to the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "แทรก" menu, and it is not displayed unless it has been configured for that wiki. To enable this tool on your wiki, see the instructions at VisualEditor/Citation tool.
There is a new Beta Feature for setting content language and direction. This allows editors who have opted in to use the "ภาษา" tool in the "แทรก" menu to add HTML span tags that label text with the language and as being left-to-right (LTR) or right-to-left (RTL), like this: <span lang="en" dir="ltr">English</span>. This tool is most useful for pages whose text combines multiple languages with different directions, common on Right-to-Left wikis.
The tool for editing mathematics formulae in VisualEditor has been slightly updated and is now available to all users, as the "⧼math-visualeditor-mwmathinspector-title⧽" item in the "แทรก" menu. It uses LaTeX like in the wikitext editor.
The layout of template dialogs has been changed, putting the label above the field. Parameters are now called "fields", to avoid a technical term that many editors are unfamiliar with.
TemplateData has been expanded: You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData, and VisualEditor will display them in the template dialogs like required ones. "Suggested" is recommended for parameters that are commonly used, but not actually required to make the template work. There is also a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name, for file names. The template tool can now tell you if a parameter is marked as being obsolete.
Some templates that previously displayed strangely due to absolute CSS positioning hacks should now display correctly.
Several messages have changed: The notices shown when you save a page have been merged into those used in the wikitext editor, for consistency. The message shown when you "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cancel⧽" out of an edit is clearer. The beta dialog notice, which is shown the first time you open VisualEditor, will be hidden for logged-in users via a user preference rather than a cookie. As a result of this change, the beta notice will show up one last time for all logged-in users on their next VisualEditor use after Thursday's upgrade.
Adding a category that is a redirect to another category prompts you to add the target category instead of the redirect.
In the "ภาพและสื่อ" dialog, it is no longer possible to set a redundant border for thumbnail and framed images.
There is a new Template Documentation Editor for TemplateData. You can test it by editing a documentation subpage (not a template page) at Mediawiki.org: edit mw:Template:Sandbox/doc, and then click "Manage template documentation" above the wikitext edit box. If your community would like to use this TemplateData editor at your project, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
There have been multiple small changes to the appearance: External links are shown in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki. This is a lighter shade of blue than the internal links. The styling of the "ข้อความรูปแบบ" (character formatting) drop-down menu has been synchronized with the recent font changes to the Vector skin. VisualEditor dialogs, such as the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽" dialog, now use a "loading" animation of moving lines, rather than animated GIF images. Other changes were made to the appearance upon opening a page in VisualEditor which should make the transition between reading and editing be smoother.
The developers merged in many minor fixes and improvements to MediaWiki interface integration (e.g., edit notices), and made VisualEditor handle Education Program pages better.
At the request of the community, VisualEditor has been deployed to Commons as an opt-in. It is currently available by default for 161 Wikipedia language editions and by opt-in through Beta Features at all others, as well as on several non-Wikipedia sites.
Looking ahead: The toolbar from the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. More buttons and icons will be accessible from the keyboard. The "แป้นลัดคีย์บอร์ด" link will be moved out of the "ตัวเลือกหน้า" menu, into the "คำอธิบาย" menu. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) and inline images is being developed. You will be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. VisualEditor will be available to all users on mobile devices and tablet computers. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.
If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Thursday, 19 June 2014 at 10:00 UTC. If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at Meta for any project. Thank you! --Elitre (WMF)(talk) 00:39, 23 พฤษภาคม 2557 (ICT)
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 (1.24wmf6) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 22. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 27, and all Wikipedias on May 29 (calendar).
MediaViewer will be enabled on all Wikisource wikis on May 29, and on the German (de) and English (en) Wikipedias on June 3. Feedback is welcome.
VisualEditor news
VisualEditor's welcome message and wikitext warning now say that you can switch to source mode editing and keep your edits without saving them. [548][549][550][551]
A bug that caused files not to appear after saving edits in the File: namespace was fixed last week. [552][553]
VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear in namespaces where VisualEditor is disabled. [554][555]
It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor; many minor bugs related to images have also been fixed. [556]
VisualEditor will no longer convert spaces to underscores inside links to pages in namespaces that include spaces in their names. [557]
Future software changes
Wikimedia Labs will stop working for about 10 minutes around 18:00 UTC on May 30 due to a server upgrade. [558]
It will soon no longer be possible to upload different files under the same name at the same time using the UploadWizard tool. [559][560]
Links to TIFF, DjVu or PDF files created with the syntax [[File:Name.ext|thumb|page 15 is my favourite]] will now show an image caption if there is any text after page number; previously they caused the given page to appear. [561][562][563]
You will soon see information about global blocks for IP addresses on their contributions page on your local wiki. [564][565]
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 (1.24wmf7) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 29. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 3, and to all Wikipedias on June 5 (calendar).
CirrusSearch was enabled as the primary search method on all Wikipedias with less than 100,000 pages on May 30. [566]
VisualEditor news
Templates that redirect to other templates now get the TemplateData of their target. [567]
The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible after you save an edit with VisualEditor. [568][569]
VisualEditor now checks if your browser supports SVG files to avoid displaying broken icons. [570]
There is now a new type for TemplateData parameters: date for dates and times in the ISO 8601 format. [571]
Future software changes
MediaViewer will be enabled on the German (de) and English (en) Wikipedias on June 3. Feedback is welcome.
You will soon see a warning if you visit a contributions page for a user that does not exist. [572][573]
The search tab will soon be removed from user preferences. You will be able to set your search preferences on Special:Search. [574][575]
You will soon see a label next to the little triangle arrow for the Actions menu in the Vector skin (screenshot). [576][577]
Problems
For about 20 minutes on May 29, all wikis were broken due to a configuration error. [578]
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 (1.24wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 5. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 10, and to all Wikipedias on June 12 (calendar).
You can now use guided tours on the Arabic (ar), Bengali (bn) and Norwegian (no) Wikipedias. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla. [579][580]
VisualEditor news
You should no longer be able to add empty references with VisualEditor. [581][582]
The "use an existing reference" button in the reference tool is now shown as disabled, rather than hidden, when the reference has content. [583][584][585]
You will now see category contents again after saving an edit to a category page with VisualEditor. [586][587]
You will be able to use information from Wikidata directly in Wikiquote pages starting on June 10. [589]
On wikis with the Translate extension enabled, translation administrators will soon be able to use the page migration tool to import existing translations to the new system. [590][591]
You will soon see metadata on file description pages for Ogg files (example video, example audio). Some metadata with non-English characters may need to be purged or transcoded to UTF-8 before they show correctly. [592][593]
Templates containing <ref> or <references> tags will no longer need dummy parameters to prevent caching. [594][595][596]
You will no longer be able to use Special:Thanks directly. The page will soon show an error message when you visit it. [597][598]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Reminder
You can subscribe to the wikitech-ambassadors mailing list to get news more quickly and to send feedback or report problems.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf9) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 12. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 17, and to all Wikipedias on June 19 (calendar).
You can now read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for May 2014.
VisualEditor news
You can now easily see the target of a link or other information using the context menu. [600]
When you edit a reference, you can now empty it and click the "use an existing reference" button to switch it to re-use another reference. [601][602]
You can now add and edit {{DISPLAYTITLE}} and __DISAMBIG__ in the page settings menu. [603][604][605][606]
The tool to insert special characters is now wider and simpler; the order of mathematical symbols is now correct. [607][608][609]
You will no longer see image thumbnails on search results pages on Wikibooks and Wikisource wikis. [612][613]
It will soon be possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. [614][615]
Tablet users will be redirected to the mobile view of Wikimedia wikis starting on June 17. [616]
The special page that lists most linked-to templates will soon include pages from all namespaces; it will also be renamed to Special:MostTranscludedPages. [617]
An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on June 17 at 17:30 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). You can also read a blog post about the upcoming switch to Phabricator.
You can now comment on the draft 2014-15 goals of the Wikimedia Foundation engineering department. [618]
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 (1.24wmf10) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 19. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 24, and to all Wikipedias on June 26 (calendar).
VisualEditor news
You can now drag-and-drop selections of content, not just files and templates. [619][620]
When dragging an item, you will now see a line that helps you to drop it. [621][622]
You can now only move an image to the start of a paragraph, not to the middle of it, so you don't accidentally split it. [623][624]
You will now be warned if you add wikitext to file captions and references. [625][626]
Future software changes
You will no longer be able to upload files on wikis that do not have any copyright tags. [627][628]
CirrusSearch results will soon take into account categories, the first paragraph and the wikitext of a page. You will also be able to use regular expressions to search the wikitext. It will take a few days for the changes to be enabled on all wikis. [630]
An IRC meeting to organize old high priority MediaWiki bug reports will take place on June 24 at 17:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). [633]
Problems
On June 19, all wikis were broken for about 15 minutes due to a high server load.
Between June 13 and June 15 there were problems with the scaling of video files due to a configuration error. [634]
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 (1.24wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 26. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 1, and to all Wikipedias on July 3 (calendar).
VisualEditor news
Context menus in VisualEditor will no longer flicker and disappear when you insert a new reference, formula, image, etc. [635][636]
A bug that prevented relocating items due to cache was fixed last week. [637][638]
VisualEditor will no longer scroll to the bottom of the page when you try to edit section 0. When you try to add a formula, VisualEditor will no longer scroll to the top of the page. [639][640][641][642]
Links to category pages or file pages added with VisualEditor will now work correctly. [643][644]
Future software changes
You will no longer be able to upload files on wikis that do not have any copyright tags. [645][646]
Toolserver tools will be stopped on June 30. Please make sure to change gadgets that link to the Toolserver to point to Tool Labs instead.
CirrusSearch will be enabled on June 30 as the primary search method on 34 new wikis, including the Czech (cs), Danish (da), Finnish (fi) and Hebrew (he) Wikipedias. [647]
All Wikimedia wikis will be using a security method called perfect forward secrecy starting on July 1. If you see a problem, please report it. [648][649]
Starting on July 1, it will be possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. [650]
You will soon see block information when you visit the contributions page or try to edit the user page or user talk page of a user who is affected by an IP range block. [651][652]
You will soon be able to use {{!}} as a magic word to produce the pipe character, for instance for use in tables. [653]
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
We are looking for contributors to help write a new issue every week. If you would like to help, please contact us.
Recent software changes
The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 3. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 8, and to all Wikipedias on July 10 (calendar).
CirrusSearch was enabled on July 1 as the primary search method on 36 new wikis, including the Norwegian (no), Portuguese (pt) and Ukrainian (uk) Wikipedias. [654]
It is now possible to create Atom or RSS feeds for Word of the Day, Word of the Week and similar entries on Wiktionary wikis. [655][656]
Saving an edit with VisualEditor will now be much faster. [659][660]
You can now add a caption when you add a file to a page with VisualEditor. You can also change the file to a different one and keep the existing caption. [661][662][663]
When you switch to the Edit source tab, you are now asked to keep your changes. You no longer need to find the option in the menus. [664][665][666]
The reference tool that adds empty <ref></ref> tags is now at the bottom of the Cite menu, below references that use templates like {{Cite web}}. [667]
Context menus will no longer be shown over items that you can edit directly, for example formulæ. [668][669][670]
Future software changes
Starting on July 9, it will be possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. The feature was first scheduled for July 1, but was delayed due to bugs.
A plan to enable CirrusSearch as the primary search method on the 11 largest Wikimedia wikis has now been prepared. [671]
If you use references on a page, you will soon always see them at the bottom of the page, even if you forget to add the <references /> tag (or a template). [672][673]
Black-and-white XCF images will soon display correctly. [674][675]
Description pages of SVG files will soon always show download links for multiple resolutions (example). The links were previously shown only for SVG files in large original resolutions. [676][677]
Problems
Between July 2-3, there were problems with loading pages on multiple wikis due to a configuration issue. [678][679]
For a few hours on July 1, there were problems with uploading new files on Wikimedia Commons due to a configuration error. [680][681]
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 (1.24wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 10. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 15, and to all Wikipedias on July 17 (calendar).
The tool to add templates and citations will now work for templates that include HTML comments or templates in their titles. [684][685]
The button to make images full size should now work correctly. [686][687][688]
References will now be shown in the default font size again. [689]
Future software changes
CirrusSearch will be enabled as the primary search method on the Dutch (nl) and Japanese (ja) Wikipedias on July 14, and on the Polish (pl) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias on July 16. [690]
The Special:Version page will soon show the exact version of MediaWiki and all extensions installed on your wiki (example). [691][692]
It will soon no longer be possible to order printed books of wiki articles via PediaPress. You will still be able to create PDF files. [693]
Pages that use {{DISPLAYTITLE:''title''}} more than once will soon show a warning. You can use {{DISPLAYTITLE:''title''|noerror}} to hide it. [694][695]
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 (1.24wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 17. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 22, and to all Wikipedias on July 24 (calendar).
CirrusSearch was removed as the primary search method from Wikimedia Commons and the Spanish (es) Wikipedia due to a high server load. The plan to enable it on the Dutch (nl), Japanese (ja), Polish (pl) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias was also postponed to a later date. [701][702][703]
The tool that stores information about languages (CLDR) was updated to its latest version. You can still help translate language names into your own language so they can be used in the sidebar and other places. [704]
Tablet users visiting the mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will be able to use a special version of VisualEditor starting on July 31. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu. Feedback is welcome. [708]
All windows in VisualEditor have now a new design. Main action buttons will always be located in the top bar and will use simple words rather than icons. [709]
You can now easily open links inside the link editor, for example to see their target. [710]
Several bugs related to the positioning of the cursor around some items (like images and references) were fixed last week. [711][712][713][714][715][716]
Future software changes
It will soon be possible to watch individual discussions in the Topic namespace rather than whole pages for talk pages using Flow. [717]
You can give comments about the new version of Winter, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. [718]
An IRC meeting to organize Pywikibot bugs will take place from July 24 to July 27 on the channel #pywikibot on freenode. [719]
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 (1.24wmf15) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 29, and to all Wikipedias on July 31 (calendar).
You can now download the latest version of the anti-vandalism tool Huggle.
The cancel button in VisualEditor toolbar has been removed. You can still use the Read tab and the Back button in your browser to cancel your edit. [723]
If you try to use a template which has no suggested or required parameters in TemplateData, you will now be asked to add the parameters. [724][725]
You will no longer be able to edit a page if you can't create it, for example on pages protected against recreation. [726][727]
Wikidata will soon be able to store data about article status, for example "good article" or "featured article". If your wiki has highlighted content, please make sure it is on Wikidata's list. [730]
It will soon be possible to directly create empty pages, for example in the user namespace. [731][732]
Please help translate this message in your language. Thanks :)
Hi, everybody. This is a reminder that we invite you to discuss VisualEditor's recent development and plans ahead during the next office hours with James Forrester (Product Manager):
If you are not able to attend but have a question for James, you can leave your question at mediawiki.org or on my talk page by the day before, and I will try to get a response. We plan to continue these monthly sessions as long as there is community interest, and to announce them through the VisualEditor global newsletter as well (please subscribe your talk page there to get the latest news about the software).
Most of the VisualEditor team will be at Wikimania in London in August! You'll be able to meet the developers during the Hackaton or at the following sessions:
WMF community liaisons will share a booth with community advocates at the Community Village and look forward to talking to you there. Thanks for your attention! --User:Elitre (WMF) 23:02, 31 กรกฎาคม 2557 (ICT)
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). [733]
You can now test a new tool to render wiki pages as PDF files. [734][735][736]
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. [737]
New users using the mobile Commons site now need to make 75 edits before they can upload a file. [738][739]
VisualEditor news
You will no longer see an edit confirmation message after making a null edit with VisualEditor. [740][741]
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.
Dialog boxes in VisualEditor have been re-designed to use action words instead of icons. This has increased the number of items that need to be translated. The user guide is also being updated.
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 "แทรก" menu. The "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-referencelist-tooltip⧽" is still added via the "แทรก" 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.
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.
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. There is a VisualEditor Translation Sprint going on during Wikimania; whether you're in London or not, any contributions are welcome!
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).
If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at Meta for any project. Thank you! --Elitre (WMF), 21:40, 9 สิงหาคม 2557 (ICT)
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). [757]
Bureaucrats on all Wikivoyage wikis are no longer able to merge two accounts into one. [758]
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. [759]
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! [760][761][762]
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. [763][764]
You will now always see recent changes to the source language text when editing a translation with the Translate extension. [765][766]
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). [767]
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. [768][769][770]
You can now create empty pages directly. A message asks you to confirm that you want to create an empty page. [771][772]
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. [774]
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. [775]
Problems
There was an issue with ProofreadPage and WikiEditor on Wikisource wikis. It is now fixed. [776][777]
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. [778]
You can now add colors to links in the editor using gadgets. You can do this to see links to redirects or disambiguation pages. [779]
If you use Internet Explorer, you will soon be able to use VisualEditor. [780][781][782]
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. [783]
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. [784][785]
You can now search pages that link to a page. Use the linksto: keyword in your search. [786][787]
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". [788][789]
If you are testing Flow, you now have a Flow tab in your Notifications. It is called "Messages". [790]
VisualEditor news
You can no longer delete required fields in templates. [791]
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. [792][793][794]
We fixed a bug where some of your typing could be undone when you used "cut" (Ctrl+X). [796]
You will no longer see empty or deleted categories among the suggestions when you add a category. [797]
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. [798]
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. [799]
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. [801][802][803]
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. [804]
You can read more about the plan to move to Phabricator, a tool that will help people develop the MediaWiki software and report bugs. [805]
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. [806][807]
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. [808][809][810]
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. [811]
Problems
There was a problem with loading images on September 10. [812]
VisualEditor news
If you don't select text when you add a link, the link now shows a number. [813]
The citation tool no longer offers to reuse a citation if there are none on the page yet. [814][815]
You can now use help buttons in the "การตั้งค่าหน้า" menu to see what the options are for. [816]
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. [817][818][819]
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. [820]
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. [821][822]
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.[823][824]
In the "Vector" skin, the icon used for users will show a neutral gender. [825][826]
The VisualEditor template tool now tells you if a required field is missing. [827]
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. [828]
There are new keyboard shortcuts in VisualEditor. Use Ctrl+Shift+6 for code and Ctrl+Shift+5 for strikethrough. [829][830]
In VisualEditor, you can now see that you are switching to the source editing mode. Before, it was not clear it was happening. [831]
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. [832]
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. [835]
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. [836][837]
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. [838]
If you change a user preference but don't save it, it now asks if you want to save it. [839][840]
The PDF export tool has changed. The new one has better language support but it doesn't offer ZIM and EPUB formats. [841]
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. [842]
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. [845][846]
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. [848]
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. [849]
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. [850][851]
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. [852]
On Thursday, the tool to edit TemplateData will come to 30 more wikis. [853][854]
You can help sort bugs in the Book and PDF export tool on October 8. [855]
1% of logged-out readers are getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. [856]
Future changes
You can look at the plan of the Mobile team for their future work. [857]
More changes to Media Viewer are coming. It will be easier to disable it, and you will see the caption below the image. [858][859]
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. [864]
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 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.
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.
The tool for editing TemplateData has been deployed to 30 more Wikipedias this week. 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 page or a subpage, and then click the "แก้ไขข้อมูลแม่แบบ" 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.
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 and mw-disambig class on links to redirects and disambiguation pages, so that user gadgets that colour in these 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.
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 is available. Thank you all for your work.
This was the first translatable VisualEditor newsletter, so thanks to everybody who made this possible! If it hasn't been delivered in your language, and you'd like to help with translations in the future, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact Elitre (WMF), so that you will be notified when the next issue is due.
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. 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. [868][869]
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. [871]
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. [872]
If you add the same parameter twice in a template, it now puts the page in a tracking category. [873][874]
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. [875]
There was a problem with cut and paste in VisualEditor in Firefox. It was fixed quickly. [876]
There was a problem with editing math in VisualEditor. It was fixed quickly. [877]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will now come to Wikipedia sites every Wednesday, instead of every Thursday. [878]
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. [882]
VisualEditor now opens faster when you click "edit". [883]
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. [884]
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 was a bug in VisualEditor with Internet Explorer. It hid tools like the link editor when you opened them. The bug was fixed on Monday. [888]
Issues with the new search tool caused geo data code to show up on pages on Monday and Friday. The mobile "nearby" tool was also broken. The problem is now fixed. [889][890][891]
HHVM caused server issues on Thursday. They are now fixed.
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf5) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since October 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 4, and on all Wikipedias from November 5 (calendar).
Some wikis have icons at the top of a page to show if it is protected or featured. Icons show up using CSS. You can now use the <indicator> tag in these templates instead to add the icons. [892][893]
VisualEditor now tells you if you're editing a re-used reference. This helps you avoid changing it if you just want to add a new one. [894]
The icons in VisualEditor's template editor tool for adding more fields are back, along with other fixes. [895][896][897][898][899]
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 may see a new tool on the mobile site of the English Wikipedia. It asks simple questions to make the article better. In the future, your answers will go to Wikidata. [904][905]
You can join two IRC chats this week to learn more about the file cleanup project. One will be on Wednesday at 18:00 (UTC) and the other on Thursday at 04:00 (UTC). You can ask questions during the chat if you need help to fix files on your wiki.
You can see a list of files to fix on the Labs tool. You can report bugs and ask questions on the talk page.
Problems
Wikimedia Labs was broken for a few hours on Thursday. It was due to a hardware problem. [907]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf7) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 5. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 11, and on all Wikipedias from November 12 (calendar).
You can now use more editing tools for tables in VisualEditor. You can add rows and columns, merge cells, and edit table captions. [908][909]
The style and insert menus in the toolbar of VisualEditor now show fewer tools. This helps you see the most common tasks. You can see all items by clicking "More". [910]
The way windows inside VisualEditor work has changed. VisualEditor should be faster and have fewer bugs. [911]
VisualEditor is also available on the mobile version of Wikipedia. Log in and click the pencil icon to open the page you want to edit. Click on the gear-shaped settings button in the upper-right corner to pick which editor to use. Choose "⧼Mobile-frontend-editor-visual-editor⧽" to use VisualEditor, or "⧼Mobile-frontend-editor-source-editor⧽" to use the wikitext editor.
It will remember whether you used wikitext or VisualEditor, and use the same editor the next time you edit an article.
The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor. Not all features are available on the mobile website.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and requests, and worked on support for editing tables and for using non-Latin languages. Their weekly updates are posted on Mediawiki.org. Informal notes from the recent quarterly review were posted on Meta.
Basic support for inserting tables and changing the number of rows and columns in them was just introduced to Wikipedias. Advanced features, like dragging columns to different places, will be added later.
To help editors find the most important items more quickly, some items in the toolbar menus are now hidden behind a "เพิ่มเติม" item, such as "เส้นใต้" in the styling menu.
The French Wikipedia should see better search results for links, templates, and media because the new search engine was turned on for everyone there. This change is expected at the Chinese and German Wikipedias this week, and the following week at the English Wikipedia.
The "pawn" system has been mostly replaced. Bugs in this system sometimes added a chess pawn character to wikitext. The replacement provides better support for non-Latin languages, with full support hopefully coming soon.
VisualEditor is now provided to editors who use Internet Explorer 10 or 11 on desktop and mobile devices. Internet Explorer 9 is not supported yet.
The keyboard shortcuts for items in the toolbar menus are now shown in the menus.
VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme from the User Experience/Design group. The appearance of dialog boxes has already changed in the mobile version. The appearance on desktops will change soon. You are welcome to compare the old "Apex" design and the new "MediaWiki" theme which will replace it.
Several bugs were fixed for internal and external links. Improvements to MediaWiki's search solved an annoying problem: If you searched for the full name of the page or file that you wanted to link, sometimes the search engine could not find the page. A link inside a template to a local page that does not exist will now show red, exactly as it does when reading the page. Due to an error, for about two weeks this also affected all external links inside templates. Opening an auto-numbered link node like [912] with the keyboard used to open the wrong link tool. These problems have all been fixed.
The tool for quickly editing TemplateData has been deployed to all Wikimedia Foundation wikis on Thursday, 6 November. This tool was already available on the biggest 40 Wikipedias, and now all wikis will have access to it. 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 "แก้ไขข้อมูลแม่แบบ" button at the top. Read the help page for TemplateData to learn more about it. 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.
You can use the new autovalue setting to pre-load a value into a template. This can be used to substitute dates, as in this example, or to add the most common value for that parameter. The autovalue can be overridden by the editor, by typing something else in the field.
In TemplateData, you may define a parameter as "required". The template dialog box in VisualEditor will warn editors if they leave a "required" parameter empty, and they will not be able to delete that parameter. If the template can function without this parameter, then please mark it as "แนะนำ" or "เลือกได้" in TemplateData instead.
The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill featuresfor citations soon. The appearance of the media search dialog will improve, to make picking between possible images easier and more visual. The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap.
The user guide is being updated to add information about editing tables.
The translations of the user guide for most languages except Spanish, French, and Dutch are significantly out of date. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language. Talk to us if you need help exporting the translated guide to your wiki.
You can influence VisualEditor's design! Tell the VisualEditor team what you want changed during the office hours via IRC. The next sessions are on Wednesday, 19 November at 16:00 UTC and on Wednesday 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC. You can also share your ideas at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
Also, user experience researcherAbbey Ripstra is looking for editors to show her how they edit Wikipedia. Please sign up for the research program if you would like to hear about opportunities.
If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta. Thank you!
—Elitre (WMF)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf8) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 12. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 18, and on all Wikipedias from November 19 (calendar).
The new search tool ("CirrusSearch") will be on the English Wikipedia from November 19. [913]
Move from Bugzilla to Phabricator
The tool to track bugs will change on November 21.
You won't be able to add or edit bugs between November 21 and November 24.
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 move from Bugzilla to Phabricator is done. You can now report bugs in Phabricator. [915]
Problems
There was a problem when editing tables in VisualEditor. VisualEditor was trying to fix bad values for the colspan or rowspan option. VisualEditor now leaves the bad values to avoid making things worse. This was fixed on November 17. [916]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf9) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 19. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 25, and on all Wikipedias from November 26 (calendar).
You will be able to try VisualEditor on many new wikis for the first time. After November 26, VisualEditor will become available on Wikidata, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, and Wikinews wikis. You can find it in your Beta options. [917]
VisualEditor now tells you if your edit needs to be approved. [918]
You can now use VisualEditor's tools directly when you resume editing after closing the save window. [919]
VisualEditor's table editing tools now work better in right-to-left languages. [920][921]
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
All users are now getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. [922]
You can join a video chat about Phabricator on December 11 at 18:00 (UTC). Phabricator is the new tool to report issues. [923]
Problems
There was a problem with Phabricator on November 29. It was due to a network issue. [924]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf11) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 9. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 10 (calendar). [925]
You can now exit VisualEditor by pressing the "Esc" key. [926]
It is now easier to use VisualEditor with IMEs. Typing in Malayalam now works better. [927][928]
The new version of OOjs UI fixed many issues with the size and layout of buttons in dialogs. [929][930][931]
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 may see a new tool tested on the mobile site of the English Wikipedia. It asks simple questions to make the article better. In the future, your answers will go to Wikidata. [935]
You can watch a video to learn how to use Phabricator to manage projects. [936]
You can test a new version of the Content Translation tool.
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf12) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 16. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 17 (calendar). [937]
You can now find and replace text in VisualEditor. You can open the tool via the menu, Ctrl+F or Cmd+F. [938]
VisualEditor now doesn't change the space at the end of a text that you make bold. [939]
The "Apply changes" button in the reference window of VisualEditor is now disabled until you make a change. [940]
Future changes
The star image of the watchlist may change soon. [941][942]
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
The Technical Operations team is now using Phabricator to track their tasks. The Operations team manages the Wikimedia servers. In the future you will be able to see the tasks that are not private. [945]
Software changes this week
There will be no software changes this week and next week. This is because of the end-of-year holidays. The next update of MediaWiki will be on January 6. [946]
Future changes
The system that displays citations will change in the future. The new system will not change the style of citations. [947]
A new design for VisualEditor will come in January. You can try it now on test wikis. [948]
Basic table editing is now available in VisualEditor. You can add and remove rows and columns from tables at the click of a button.
The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on table editing and performance. Their weekly status reports are posted on mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.
VisualEditor was deployed to several hundred remaining wikis as an opt-in beta feature at the end of November, except for most Wiktionaries (which depend heavily upon templates) and all Wikisources (which await integration with ProofreadPage).
Basic support for editing tables is now available. You can add and delete tables, add and remove rows and columns, set or remove a caption for a table, and merge cells together. To change the contents of a cell, double-click inside it. More features will be added in the coming months. In addition, VisualEditor now ignores broken, invalid rowspan and colspan elements, instead of trying to repair them.
You can now use find and replace in VisualEditor, reachable through the tool menu or by pressing ^ Ctrl+F or ⌘ Cmd+F.
You can now create and edit simple <blockquote> paragraphs for quoting and indenting content. This changes a "ย่อหน้า" into a "บล็อกข้อความอ้างอิง".
Some new keyboard sequences can be used to format content. At the start of the line, typing "* " will make the line a bullet list; "1." or "#" will make it a numbered list; "==" will make it a section heading; ": " will make it a blockquote. If you didn't mean to use these tools, you can press undo to undo the formatting change.
There are also two other keyboard sequences: "[[" for opening the link tool, and "{{" for opening the template tool, to help experienced editors. The existing standard keyboard shortcuts, like ^ Ctrl+K to open the link editor, still work.
If you add a category that has been redirected, then VisualEditor now adds its target. Categories without description pages show up as red.
You can again create and edit galleries as wikitext code.
The current VisualEditor design will be replaced with a new theme designed by the User Experience group. The new theme will be visible for desktop systems at mediawiki.org in late December and on other sites in early January. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" theme and the new "MediaWiki" one which will replace it.)
Translations of the user guide for most languages are outdated. Only Ukrainian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch translations are nearly current. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language.
Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Wednesday, 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC.
File requests for language-appropriate "ตัวหนา" and "ตัวเอน" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.
If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta. Thank you!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Software changes
There are no technical changes this week.
Feedback about Tech News in 2014
The writers of the technical newsletter are asking for your opinion. Did you get the information you wanted this year? Did we miss important technical news in 2014? What kind of information was too late? Please tell us at m:Talk:Tech/News. You can write in your language. Thank you!
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
Rotated PDF files in landscape format used to show too small. They will now display correctly. You may need to purge older files. [949]
You can now use the {{!}}magic word instead of Template:!. Many wikis used the template to create a pipe (|) in tables and templates. You can delete the template. [950]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf14) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since January 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from January 13. It will be on all Wikipedias from January 14 (calendar).
A bug in VisualEditor sometimes added a ☀ (Sun) character. This is now fixed. [951]
The search and replace tool in VisualEditor is now much faster in long pages. [952]
The TemplateData editor now uses the same design as VisualEditor. [953][954][955]
The thumb option is now shown in your language in the help of the classic editor toolbar. [956]
Future changes
You can sign up to answer questions from designers. It will help them make editing easier. [957]
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 download the new version of the Wikipedia app for Android. The new version shows lead images, better galleries and content from Wikidata. It also has many other new features.[958][959]
Programs and bots still can't read information about images on many wikis. You can see the list of wikis with the most files to fix. Wikipedia in Italian, Indonesian and Japanese language have the most files to fix. On the biggest wikis you should use bots. Bots can add information templates to groups of files. You can ask other tech users to help you.
Problems
All JavaScript on Commons was broken for a few minutes on Tuesday. It was because of old code in the HotCat tool. The same problem happened on some Wikipedias on Wednesday. It is now fixed. [960]
Software changes this week
There are no software changes this week and next week due to annual meetings. [961]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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 a security issue on Wikimedia Labs. Many Labs tools were down after the issue was fixed. [966]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since January 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 3. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 4 (calendar).
The "Save page" button in the VisualEditor toolbar is now blue rather than green. This is the same as on the mobile site. [967]
You can now edit pages on the draft namespace with VisualEditor on the Russian Wikipedia and Hebrew Wikipedia. You can ask to get VisualEditor for a namespace on your wiki. When your community agrees, ask in Phabricator. [968][969]
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's appearance, the coming Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements.
Status reports are posted on mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.
The Wikimedia Foundation has named its top priorities for this quarter (January to March). The first priority is making VisualEditor ready for deployment by default to all new users and logged-out users at the remaining large Wikipedias. You can help identify these requirements. There will be weekly triage meetings which will be open to volunteers beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Tell Vice President of Engineering Damon Sicore, Product Manager James Forrester and other team members which bugs and features are most important to you. The decisions made at these meetings will determine what work is necessary for this quarter's goal of making VisualEditor ready for deployment to new users. The presence of volunteers who enjoy contributing MediaWiki code is particularly appreciated. Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins.
Due to some breaking changes in MobileFrontend and VisualEditor, VisualEditor was not working correctly on the mobile site for a couple of days in early January. The teams apologize for the problem.
The new design for VisualEditor aligns with MediaWiki's Front-End Standards as led by the Design team. Several new versions of the OOjs UI library have also been released, and these also affect the appearance of VisualEditor and other MediaWiki software extensions. Most changes were minor, like changing the text size and the amount of white space in some windows. Buttons are consistently color-coded to indicate whether the action:
starts a new task, like opening the ⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽ dialog: blue ,
takes a constructive action, like inserting a citation: green ,
might remove or lose your work, like removing a link: red , or
is neutral, like opening a link in a new browser window: gray .
The TemplateData editor has been completely re-written to use a different design based on the same OOjs UI system as VisualEditor. (T67815, T73746.) This change fixed a couple of existing bugs and improved usability. (T73077, T73078.)
Search and replace in long documents is now faster. It does not highlight every occurrence if there are more than 100 on-screen at once.(T78234.)
Editors at the Hebrew and Russian Wikipedia requested the ability to use VisualEditor in the "Article Incubator" or drafts namespace. (T86688, T87027.) If your community would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace on your wiki, then you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.
The Editing team will soon add auto-fill featuresfor citations. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to contribute to the Citoid service's definitions for each website, to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections.
We will need editors to help test the new design of the special character inserter, especially if you speak Welsh, Breton, or another language that uses diacritics or special characters extensively. The new version should be available for testing next week. Please contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF) if you would like to be notified when the new version is available. After the special character tool is completed, VisualEditor will be deployed to all users at Phase 5 Wikipedias. This will affect about 50 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh. The date for this change has not been determined.
Join the weekly bug triage meetings beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC); information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins, and you can also contact James F. to learn more about this initiative.
Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Thursday, 19 February 2015 at 19:00 UTC.
Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta. If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
MediaWiki was reverted to the previous version on February 4. It was because of a performance issue. It was restored later. [971]
UploadWizard was broken on February 4 because of the revert of MediaWiki. [972]
All sites were broken for 30 minutes on February 5. It was due to a network problem. [973]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 5. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 11 (calendar).
You can have one user page for all wikis. Your Meta user page will show if you don't have a user page on a wiki. You can test this tool on test wikis. [974][975][976]
You can search for media files in VisualEditor more easily. Images are bigger and you see the size and license. [977][978]
It is easier to review your changes when you save the page in VisualEditor. The window is wider. [979]
You can read the latest news about VisualEditor. You can now join weekly meetings with developers. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The first meeting is on February 11 at 20:00 (UTC).
Future changes
Administrators will soon be able to delete change tags used fewer than 5,000 times. [980]
In the future you will be able to have personal lists of articles on the mobile site. [981]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 17. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 18 (calendar).
You can now change the order of categories in VisualEditor using drag-and-drop. [985]
In VisualEditor, you now need to make a change before you can "Apply Changes" to citations and templates. [986]
The way the cursor moves in VisualEditor is changing. Your browser now handles the cursor directly. Most of you will see no change. In right-to-left text, the cursor now moves in a 'visible' rather than 'logical' way. This is like other sites but you may be surprised at first. [987]
Meetings
The VisualEditor Team had their first public bug triage meeting on February 11. They will post the results on the meeting page. [988]
You can join the second weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on February 18 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join. [989]
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 has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from February 25. It will be on all Wikipedias from February 26 (calendar).
It is now easier to see template fields in VisualEditor. The fields are bigger. [995]
It is now easier to see when a button is disabled in VisualEditor. [996]
Sometimes when you copy-pasted a template in VisualEditor, it was replaced by HTML. This problem is now fixed. [997]
Tools in Labs will stop working for a few hours on February 24. [998]
Meetings
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on February 26 at 00:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
At the moment you need to log in to edit Wikimedia wikis on mobile devices. You can say if anyone should be allowed to edit on the mobile sites. The discussion ends on March 15.
Images in the interface will soon work better in Opera 12. [999]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
You can use the Content Translation tool on Wikipedia in Uzbek and Minangkabau. You need to enable it in your Beta options.
You can now hide banners if you don't have an account. [1,001][1,002]
Software changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since February 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 3. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 4 (calendar).
You can use the Content Translation tool on Wikipedia in Punjabi and Kyrgyz. You can ask for the tool in other languages.
Editing the fake blank line in VisualEditor is now simpler. This change also fixed a few bugs. [1,003][1,004][1,005][1,006]
The TemplateData editor now warns you if a related page already has TemplateData. [1,007]
The TemplateData table now tells you if a template doesn't take any parameters. [1,008]
Meetings
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 4 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join technical meetings in France and Mexico this year. You will be able to ask for help if you can't pay yourself. [1,009]
Future changes
You will be able to get a direct link for a section of a page. [1,010]
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 create books on almost all wikis. It doesn't work yet on wikis using the language converter. [1,011][1,012]
VisualEditor had problems with categories in Safari. It sometimes moved or removed the categories. The issue is now fixed. [1,013][1,014][1,015]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 11 (calendar).
In VisualEditor the "Edit beta" button is now called "Edit" on the English Wikipedia. [1,016][1,017]
The feedback tool in VisualEditor now looks like the other tools. It also asks for information about your browser to help fix bugs. [1,018][1,019]
You now see the VisualEditor toolbar even if the rest of the page is still loading. [1,020][1,021]
You now see more information when you edit a link, a reference or other items in VisualEditor. You also see a clearer edit button in those tools. [1,022][1,023]
If you use the ContentTranslation tool you now see red links in the list of articles in other languages. The link is red if the article doesn't exist in the language of your options or of your browser. You can translate the article by clicking on the red link.
Meetings
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 11 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join a technical meeting in France in May. You can ask for help if you can't pay yourself. [1,024]
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 servers that resize images are using new software. You should report new problems that you notice with images. [1,027]
It is now easier to add special characters in VisualEditor. You can edit the list of characters for your wiki. [1,029][1,030]
Problems
Wikis were broken for a few minutes on Thursday due to a code error.
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 17. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 18 (calendar).
A puzzle piece icon () now shows hidden templates in VisualEditor. You can edit the template by clicking the icon. For example, you can now edit anchor templates. [1,031][1,032]
You can now add examples, and details about old parameters, in TemplateData. [1,033][1,034]
Meetings
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 18 at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
The list of bad user names on your wiki will no longer work. The global list will replace it. You can ask to add rules for bad user names on Meta. [1,035][1,036]
You can comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [1,037]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 18. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 24. It will be on all Wikipedias from March 25 (calendar).
The text of a reference is now more visible when you click on it. It has a blue background. Many wikis already have the blue color. Those wikis can now remove it from their CSS page. [1,039]
VisualEditor is now much faster. For many users it is now at least as fast as the wikitext editor. [1,040][1,041][1,042]
When you add a list of references in VisualEditor, you now see it right away. You can still change its group by editing it. [1,043]
Meetings
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on March 25 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Talk pages using "LiquidThreads" on mediawiki.org will soon use the new system. [1,044]
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 hide site banners even if you don't have an account. [1,045]
You can now add citations more easily with VisualEditor on the French and Italian Wikipedia. The tool adds the information when you add some types of links. In the future you will be able to add this tool to your wiki. [1,046][1,047][1,048]
All sites should now be faster if you have a recent browser. [1,049]
You could see a serious bug when editing some templates with VisualEditor. It was fixed quickly. [1,050]
VisualEditor could break when you edited an image. The issue was fixed quickly. [1,051]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since March 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from March 31. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 1 (calendar).
VisualEditor is now the main editing tool on 53 more Wikipedias. [1,052]
You can now edit the mobile site of all wikis without an account. [1,053]
You can test a new tool on the beta mobile site on the English Wikipedia. With the new tool, you can create lists of articles. [1,054]
You can now see that VisualEditor is opening even if you're not looking at the top of the page. [1,055]
You can read the notes from the last meeting with the VisualEditor team.
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 1 at 18:00 (UTC). 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 join a new email list for important news about Wikimedia Labs. [1,061]
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 1. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 7. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 8 (calendar).
You can now add the same special characters with VisualEditor as with the wikitext editor. [1,071]
Many bugs around copy-paste in VisualEditor are now fixed. [1,072][1,073]
You can now use basic tools of VisualEditor in the new talk tool. You can add links, bold and italics. You can also mention people. [1,074]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 8 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
You can again comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [1,075]
With Citoid in VisualEditor, you click the 'book with bookmark' icon and paste in the URL for a reliable source:
Citoid looks up the source for you and returns the citation results. Click the green "Insert" button to accept its results and add them to the article:
After inserting the citation, you can change it. Select the reference, and click the "Edit" button in the context menu to make changes.
The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's performance, the Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.
The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 11:00 (noon) PDT (18:00 UTC). You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal.
VisualEditor is now substantially faster. In many cases, opening the page in VisualEditor is now faster than opening it in the wikitext editor. The new system has improved the code speed by 37% and network speed by almost 40%.
The Editing team is slowly adding auto-fill featuresfor citations. This is currently available only at the French, Italian, and English Wikipedias. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections by contributing to the Citoid service's definitions for each website.
Citoid requires good TemplateData for your citation templates. If you would like to request this feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
The special character inserter has been improved, based upon feedback from active users. After this, VisualEditor was made available to all users of Wikipedias on the Phase 5 list on 30 March. This affected 53 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh.
Work continues to support languages with complex requirements, such as Korean and Japanese. These languages use input method editors ("IMEs”). Recent improvements to cursoring, backspace, and delete behavior will simplify typing in VisualEditor for these users.
The design for the image selection process is now using a "masonry fit" model. Images in the search results are displayed at the same height but at variable widths, similar to bricks of different sizes in a masonry wall, or the "packed" mode in image galleries. This style helps you find the right image by making it easier to see more details in images.
You can now drag and drop categories to re-arrange their order of appearance on the page.
The pop-up window that appears when you click on a reference, image, link, or other element, is called the "context menu". It now displays additional useful information, such as the destination of the link or the image's filename. The team has also added an explicit "Edit" button in the context menu, which helps new editors open the tool to change the item.
Invisible templates are marked by a puzzle piece icon so they can be interacted with. Users also will be able to see and edit HTML anchors now in section headings.
Users of the TemplateData GUI editor can now set a string as an optional text for the 'deprecated' property in addition to boolean value, which lets you tell users of the template what they should do instead. (T90734)
The special character inserter in VisualEditor will soon use the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki will also have the option of creating a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Instructions for customizing the list will be posted at mediawiki.org.
The team is discussing a test of VisualEditor with new users at the English Wikipedia, to see whether they have met their goals of making VisualEditor suitable for those editors. The timing is unknown, but might be relatively soon. (T90666)
Can you translate from English into any other language? Please check this list to see whether more interface translations are needed for your language. Contact us to get an account if you want to help!
File requests for language-appropriate "ตัวหนา" and "ตัวเอน" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.
Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
You can now use the new translation tool on 22 Wikipedias. You now see the tool the first time you create a new page. [1,076]
The list of bad user names on your wiki no longer works. The global list replaces it. You can ask to add rules for bad user names on Meta. [1,077][1,078]
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 14. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 15 (calendar).
Developers will start to rename 1.5 million accounts on Wednesday. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [1,081][1,082]
All users can now test link previews ("Hovercards") on several Wikipedias. [1,083]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 15 at 18:00 (UTC). 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
There was sometimes a problem when saving a page in VisualEditor. It is now fixed on all wikis. [1,084]
VisualEditor sometimes showed empty warnings for wikis using Flagged Revisions. This is now fixed on all wikis. [1,085]
You can get the new version of the Wikipedia app for iOS. With it you can share facts with your friends. [1,086]
If you write JavaScript, you should stop using importScript and importStylesheet. [1,087]
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 21. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 22 (calendar).
Developers are renaming 1.5 million accounts. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [1,089][1,090][1,091]
If your wiki has the auto-fill tool for citations, you can now use it when you edit a reference. [1,092]
You can now give examples for template options in TemplateData. [1,093]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 22 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
VisualEditor's editing environment is a browser ContentEditable element. This means that your input method editor (IME) should already know how to work with it. However, to make VisualEditor correctly edit wiki pages, we have to stop browsers in lots of ways from breaking the page.
Sometimes this can interfere with IMEs. To make sure we work in your IME, we need your help: please see wikimedia.github.io/VisualEditor/demos/ve/desktop-dist.html#!pages/simple.html. This is the core system inside VisualEditor which lets you write and edit. It is different from the full editor, and some of the tools you are used to will be missing.
We're interested in particular in whether you can write text at all, what happens when you select different candidate texts, and how VisualEditor behaves in general.
We would love to hear from every language, and especially languages which use IMEs, like Japanese, Korean, Indic languages, Arabic and others. Thank you for your help.
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
All accounts are now unique and work on all wikis. [1,096][1,097]
You can read a report from experts who tested the security of MediaWiki. [1,098]
There was a problem between VisualEditor and an antivirus software. It is now fixed. [1,099]
You can help test VisualEditor to see if it works in your language. [1,100]
Problems
Some Labs tools had problems due to a software bug. [1,101]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 22. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 28. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 29 (calendar).
It is now clearer that you can delete several rows and columns when you edit tables in VisualEditor. [1,102]
You now see more information when you search for a template in VisualEditor. [1,103]
You can now cancel when you add citations on desktop, or edit links on mobile, in VisualEditor. [1,104]
You can now see the list of other formats for videos only after they're ready. [1,105]
Meetings
You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 29 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Dear tech ambassadors, instead of spamming the Village Pump of each Wikipedia about my tiny project proposal for researching team editing (see here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Research_team_editing), I have decided to leave to your own discretion if the matter is relevant enough to inform a wider audience already. I would appreciate if you could appraise if the Wikipedia community you are more familiar with could have interest in testing group editing "on their own grounds" and with their own guidance. In a nutshell: it consists in editing pages as a group instead of as an individual. This social experiment might involve redefining some aspects of the workflow we are all used to, with the hope of creating a more friendly and collaborative environment since editing under a group umbrella creates less social exposure than traditional "individual editing". I send you this message also as a proof that the Inspire Campaign is already gearing up. As said I would appreciate of *you* just a comment on the talk page/endorsement of my project noting your general perception about the idea. Nothing else. Your contribution helps to shape the future! (which I hope it will be very bright, with colors, and Wikipedia everywhere) Regards from User:Micru on meta.
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 was a rare problem with VisualEditor. The text of another wiki could be added to your edit. The issue is now fixed. [1,107][1,108]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 5. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 6 (calendar).
It is now easier to add a link in VisualEditor. You can see an image and a description about the page. [1,109]
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 6 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join an event in France on May 22−25. You need to sign up before May 8. [1,111]
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 make charts and maps on your wiki with the new "graph" tool. If you have an old browser, you will see images instead. It uses a tool called Vega; you can learn how to use it and write help pages for your wiki. You can use the Vega edit tool to make charts and copy the code to your wiki. Charts and maps use complex code and you should put them into templates. In the future, you will be able to create charts with VisualEditor. [1,112][1,113][1,114]
You can apply for technical jobs to develop tools for the community. [1,115]
The logos of all wikis are now in a new place. It will make pages load faster. You can still ask to change the logo. You can also use local CSS for brief changes. [1,116][1,117]
Problems
There was a problem that caused slow editing. [1,118]
Pages were sometimes removed from your watchlist in VisualEditor. This problem is now fixed. [1,119]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 6. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 12. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 13 (calendar).
You can now use data from Wikidata on more pages. The page doesn't need to be linked to the Wikidata item. It works on a few wikis and more wikis will be added soon. [1,120][1,121]
You should get fewer errors when you add files to Commons. [1,122]
When you use an external link to link to a wiki page, VisualEditor now converts it to a wiki link. [1,123]
When you add a link in VisualEditor, you see pages that match what you type. It is now easier to see where they match. [1,124]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 13 at 18:00 (UTC). 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.
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 13. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 19. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 20 (calendar).
References are now always in the right order. Also, the reference list now only shows references used on the page. [1,125]
You can no longer create an account with a colon ':' in it. If you already have one, it still works. [1,126]
The toolbar in VisualEditor now looks different. It is easier to see the icons. [1,127]
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 21 at 15:00 (UTC). 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.
Problems
VisualEditor was broken for 30 minutes on Tuesday. The problem was due to a tool it uses. [1,132]
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 20. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 26. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 27 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 28 at 18:00 (UTC). 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.
Problems
Many wikis were slow for a few hours on Wednesday due to a code error. Sometimes the pages did not load at all and showed an error. [1,136]
Some tools in Labs were broken on Wednesday and Thursday. [1,137]
Edit tags added by the software were broken on all wikis from May 23 to May 28. [1,138][1,139]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 27. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 2. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 3 (calendar).
You won't be able to use e-mail lists for a few hours on Tuesday. [1,140]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 3 at 18:00 (UTC). 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.
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 9. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 11 (calendar). [1,141][1,142]
If you use the Monobook skin, the buttons and other controls now look more the same in VisualEditor and other tools. [1,143]
When you edit links and other items in VisualEditor, you now need to apply your change before closing the tool. [1,144]
The title of dialogs is now easier to see when it is near long buttons. [1,145]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 9 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
When you click on a link to an article, you now see more information:
The link tool has been re-designed:
There are separate tabs for linking to internal and external pages.
The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has created new interfaces for the link and citation tools and fixed many bugs and changed some elements of the design. Some of these bugs affected users of VisualEditor on mobile devices. Status reports are posted on mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.
A test of VisualEditor's effect on new editors at the English Wikipedia has just completed the first phase. During this test, half of newly registered editors had VisualEditor automatically enabled, and half did not. The main goal of the study is to learn which group was more likely to save an edit and to make productive, unreverted edits. Initial results will be posted at Meta later this month.
Auto-fill featuresfor citations are available at a few Wikipedias through the citoid service. Citoid takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. If Citoid is enabled on your wiki, then the design of the citation workflow changed during May. All citations are now created inside a single tool. Inside that tool, choose the tab you want (⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-auto⧽, ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-manual⧽, or ⧼citoid-citeFromIDDialog-mode-reuse⧽). The cite button is now labeled with the word "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" rather than a book icon, and the autofill citation dialog now has a more meaningful label, "⧼Citoid-citeFromIDDialog-lookup-button⧽", for the submit button.
The link tool has been redesigned based on feedback from Wikipedia editors and user testing. It now has two separate sections: one for links to articles and one for external links. When you select a link, its pop-up context menu shows the name of the linked page, a thumbnail image from the linked page, Wikidata's description, and appropriate icons for disambiguation pages, redirect pages and empty pages (where applicable). Search results have been reduced to the first five pages. Several bugs were fixed, including a dark highlight that appeared over the first match in the link inspector. (T98085)
The special character inserter in VisualEditor now uses the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki can also create a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Please read the instructions for customizing the list at mediawiki.org. Also, there is now a tooltip to describing each character in the special character inserter. (T70425)
Several improvements have been made to templates. When you search for a template to insert, the list of results now contains descriptions of the templates. The parameter list inside the template dialog now remains open after inserting a parameter from the list, so that users don’t need to click on "⧼visualeditor-dialog-transclusion-add-param⧽" each time they want to add another parameter. (T95696) The team added a new property for TemplateData, "ตัวอย่าง", for template parameters. This optional, translatable property will show up when there is text describing how to use that parameter. (T53049)
The design of the main toolbar and several other elements have changed slightly, to be consistent with the MediaWiki theme. In the Vector skin, individual items in the menu are separated visually by pale gray bars. Buttons and menus on the toolbar can now contain both an icon and a text label, rather than just one or the other. This new design feature is being used for the cite button on wikis where the Citoid service is enabled.
The team has released a long-desired improvement to the handling of non-existent images. If a non-existent image is linked in an article, then it is now visible in VisualEditor and can be selected, edited, replaced, or removed.
The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, usually on Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker, though. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the VisualEditor Q4 blocker project with the bug.
If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
If you would like to request the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.
The team is planning the second VisualEditor-related "translathon" for July. Please follow this task on Phabricator for details and updates! Announcements will follow in due course.
Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!
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
Users have created more than 5000 articles with the new translation tool. [1,148]
Editing a page is now faster. This is because some statistics about edit filters were removed. [1,149]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from 17 June. It will be on all Wikipedias from 18 June (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 16 at 19:00 (UTC). 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
Some wikis can now be used only with HTTPS. This includes the English, Russian and Chinese Wikipedias, among others. Soon all wikis will use only HTTPS for all users. [1,155][1,156]
You can't use HTTPS wikis with Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP. You need to use another browser. [1,157]
Many Labs tools were broken for several days. Almost all of them are back now. They may be missing some data for the last 10 days. [1,164][1,165][1,166]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 23. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 24. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 25 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 23 at 19:00 (UTC). 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
Long lines in code blocks now look better. [1,167]
When you read a page on the mobile site, you can now see a link to go to its talk page. [1,169]
The code coloring tool has changed. You can now use many more languages. It now also works on mobile. [1,170][1,171][1,172]
You can look at a new site to learn how to reuse data from Wikimedia sites. [1,173]
Problems
JavaScript was broken on some wikis due to a code error. VisualEditor and other tools that use JavaScript were broken. [1,174]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 30. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 1. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 2 (calendar).
You can now use a tool in VisualEditor to add and edit code in color. [1,175]
When you edit a sentence in the Translate tool, it can show you older translations. They help you save time if they look alike. The older translations should now work better. If you see problems, you should report them. [1,176]
If you are an admin or have other special rights, you now need a strong password. [1,177]
Bot and JavaScript coders: The old continuation mode of the API for action=query doesn't work any more. [1,178]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 30 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future
When you create a new account, it will also create one on Meta-Wiki and mediawiki.org. [1,179]
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
On the mobile site, you now see more information when you search for a page. It now shows the description from Wikidata. [1,180]
Problems
The code of long pages is not colored any more. You may see this problem on the pages of long gadgets. [1,181]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 7. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 8. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 9 (calendar).
The "Page information" tool shows how many users watch the page. You can now see how many are active. [1,182][1,183]
You can now translate articles into English with the new translation tool. [1,184]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 7 at 19:00 (UTC). 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.
There was a problem with editing on Thursday. Some tools like bots and VisualEditor were broken on all wikis for 10 minutes. [1,186]
There was a problem with images on Thursday. They were broken on all wikis for 15 minutes. [1,187]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 15. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 16 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join a technical meeting at Wikimania in Mexico City this week. [1,188]
I'm pleased to announce the 2nd edition of the VisualEditor Translathon.
It is a translation rally, focused on interface messages and help pages related to VisualEditor.
In order to participate, you need to sign up on the Translathon page on TranslateWiki.
The top 3 contributors will each win a Wikipedia t-shirt of their choice from the Wikipedia store[1].
Translations made between July 15th and July 19th (CDT time zone) qualify[2].
If you are at Wikimania Mexico this year, you are also welcome to join a related sprint during the hackathon in Workplace 1 - Don Américo, Thursday 16 July at 4pm (CDT) at the conference venue, so you can meet other fellow translators and get support if you need some.
Interface messages have the priority. You will need to create an account at translatewiki.net in order to work on them, if you don't have one. It is recommended to create the account ASAP, so that it can be confirmed in time.
You can also help translate documentation pages about VisualEditor on mediawiki.org. You can use your Wikipedia account to work there.
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 21. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 22. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 23 (calendar).
You now see more warnings in the image viewer. They tell you to be careful when using the image, for example if it shows a person. [1,189]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 21 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
Future changes
Soon you won't be able to use MathJax to display math. [1,190]
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 redirects to link to JavaScript pages. [1,191]
There was a problem with some Lua modules on July 22 and 23. Some pages using them did not list them in "what links here". You can fix those pages with a null edit: edit and save the page without making any change.
There was a problem with the abuse filter page on big wikis on July 23. It was due to a code error. [1,196]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 29. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 30 (calendar).
JavaScript authors: You cannot use wgNoticeUserData to get edit counts anymore. [1,197]
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on July 28 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
button for the 
for 
for 
for 
for 
for 
for
). The order of the Insert menu has also changed a little.
) now shows hidden templates in VisualEditor. You can edit the template by clicking the icon. For example, you can now edit anchor templates. [1,031] [1,032]
