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VisualEditor newsletter—November 2014
VisualEditor is also available on the mobile version of Wikipedia. Login and click the pencil icon to open the page you want to edit. Click on the gear-shaped settings in the upper-right corner, to pick which editor to use. Choose "Edit" to use VisualEditor, or "Edit source" 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 in Mobile Web.
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.
Recent improvements
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 next week, and eventually 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's 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 dialogs has already changed in one Mobile version. The appearance on desktops will change soon. (You can see a developer preview of 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 program 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 a error, for about two weeks this also affected all external links inside templates. Opening an auto-numbered link node like [1] with the keyboard used to open the wrong link tool. These problems have all been fixed.
TemplateData
The tool for quickly editing TemplateData will be deployed to all Wikimedia Foundation wikis on Thursday, 6 November. This tool is 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 "Edit template data" button at the top. Read the help page for TemplateData. You can test the TemplateData editor in a sandbox at Mediawiki.org. Remember that TemplateData should be placed either on a documentation subpage or on the template page itself. Only one block of TemplateData will be used per template.
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 response for that parameter. The autovalue can be easily overridden by the editor, by typing something else in the field.
In TemplateData, you may define a parameter as "required". The template dialog 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 "suggested" or "optional" in TemplateData instead.
Looking ahead
Basic support for inserting tables and changing the number of rows and columns in tables will appear next Wednesday. Advanced features, like dragging columns to different places, will be possible later. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. To help editors find the most important items more quickly, some items in the toolbar menus will be hidden behind a "More" item, such as "underlining" in the styling menu. 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 will be updated soon to add information about editing tables. The translations 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 researcher Abbey 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 Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. Thank you!
— Whatamidoing (WMF) 20:41, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 46, 2014)
 Sleeping is part of everyday life
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Previous selections: Pizza • National park Get involved with the TAFI project! You can... Posted by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of EuroCarGT (talk) 00:16, 10 November 2014 (UTC) • |
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [2] [3]
- The MediaWiki API now shows information in a nice format. You can translate it in translatewiki.net. [4]
- Reminder: You can help fix file information on your wiki. It will help robots understand the information. After that, it will be easier for you to search files and re-use them.
- 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. [5]
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. [6] [7]
- 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". [8]
- The way windows inside VisualEditor work has changed. VisualEditor should be faster and have fewer bugs. [9]
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
15:00, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot
Note: All columns in this table are sortable, allowing you to rearrange the table so the articles most interesting to you are shown at the top. All images have mouse-over popups with more information. For more information about the columns and categories, please consult the documentation, and please do get in touch on SuggestBot's talk page with any questions you might have.
SuggestBot picks articles in a number of ways based on other articles you've edited, including straight text similarity, following wikilinks, and matching your editing patterns against those of other Wikipedians. It tries to recommend only articles that other Wikipedians have marked as needing work. We appreciate that you have signed up to receive suggestions regularly, your contributions make Wikipedia better — thanks for helping!
If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. Regards from Nettrom (talk), SuggestBot's caretaker. -- SuggestBot (talk) 13:23, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 47, 2014)
 Military aviation and missile guidance are examples of modern military technology.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Previous selections: Everyday life • Pizza Get involved with the TAFI project! You can... Posted by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of EuroCarGT (talk) 00:18, 17 November 2014 (UTC) • |
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [10]
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.
- You can make the change easier for you by creating your account.
- Bugzilla will be frozen after the change. You will see, edit and report bugs in Phabricator.
- You can join two IRC chats to learn more about the change. The chats will be on Tuesday, November 18 at 16:00 (UTC) and 23:00 UTC. [11]
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
18:28, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 48, 2014)
 A beach on the island of San Andrés, a tourist destination in the Caribbean
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Previous selections: Military technology • Everyday life Get involved with the TAFI project! You can... Posted by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of EuroCarGT (talk) 00:38, 24 November 2014 (UTC) • |
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- The move from Bugzilla to Phabricator is done. You can now report bugs in Phabricator. [12]
Problems
- There was a problem when editing tables in VisualEditor. VisualEditor was trying to fix bad values for the
colspanorrowspanoption. VisualEditor now leaves the bad values to avoid making things worse. This was fixed on November 17. [13]
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. [14]
- VisualEditor now tells you if your edit needs to be approved. [15]
- You can now use VisualEditor's tools directly when you resume editing after closing the save window. [16]
- VisualEditor's table editing tools now work better in right-to-left languages. [17] [18]
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
19:31, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 49, 2014)
 The Mexico–United States border spans six Mexican states and four U.S. states, with a total length of 3,145 km (1,954 mi).
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Previous selections: Tourism in the Caribbean • Military technology Get involved with the TAFI project! You can... Posted by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of EuroCarGT (talk) 00:36, 1 December 2014 (UTC) • |
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This week's article for improvement (week 50, 2014)
 Game design is the art of creating rules and mechanics to facilitate interactions between players in a game.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Previous selections: Mexico–United States border • Tourism in the Caribbean Get involved with the TAFI project! You can... Posted by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of EuroCarGT (talk) 00:25, 8 December 2014 (UTC) • |
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- All users are now getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. [19]
- You can join a video chat about Phabricator on December 11 at 18:00 (UTC). Phabricator is the new tool to report issues. [20]
Problems
- There was a problem with Phabricator on November 29. It was due to a network issue. [21]
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). [22]
- You can now exit VisualEditor by pressing the "Esc" key. [23]
- It is now easier to use VisualEditor with IMEs. Typing in Malayalam now works better. [24] [25]
- The new version of OOjs UI fixed many issues with the size and layout of buttons in dialogs. [26] [27] [28]
- (Lua) You can no longer use
mw.text.unstripto get the HTML from special page transclusion. You can see a list of scripts to fix. [29] [30]
Future changes
- Starting next week JavaScript tools won't work if they use jQuery Migrate. [31]
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
17:11, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 51, 2014)
.jpg) A plate of spaghetti and meatballs.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Previous selections: Game design • Mexico–United States border Get involved with the TAFI project! You can... Posted by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of EuroCarGT (talk) 00:22, 15 December 2014 (UTC) • |
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [32]
- You can watch a video to learn how to use Phabricator to manage projects. [33]
- 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). [34]
- You can now find and replace text in VisualEditor. You can open the tool via the menu,
Ctrl+ForCmd+F. [35] - VisualEditor now doesn't change the space at the end of a text that you make bold. [36]
- The "Apply changes" button in the reference window of VisualEditor is now disabled until you make a change. [37]
Future changes
- The star image of the watchlist may change soon. [38] [39]
- You won't be able to use Phabricator on December 18, 2014. It will be down between 00:00 and 08:00 (UTC). [40] [41]
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:44, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
VisualEditor newsletter—December 2014
Did you know?
Basic table editing is now available in VisualEditor. You can add and remove rows and columns from existing 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).
Recent improvements
Basic support for editing tables is available. You can insert new 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 "Paragraph" into a "Block quote".
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.
Looking ahead
VisualEditor will replace the existing design 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 at other sites early January. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" theme and the new "MediaWiki" one which will replace it.)
The Editing team plans to add auto-fill features for citations in January. Planned changes to the media search dialog will make choosing between possible images easier.
Help
- Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
- Translations of the user guide for most languages are oudated. Ukrainian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch translators 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 "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.
- The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
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! WhatamIdoing (WMF) (talk) 23:37, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 52, 2014)
 An aurora is a natural phenomenon.
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Previous selections: Spaghetti • Game design Get involved with the TAFI project! You can... Posted by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of EuroCarGT (talk) 00:08, 22 December 2014 (UTC) • |
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
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. [42]
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. [43]
Future changes
- The system that displays citations will change in the future. The new system will not change the style of citations. [44]
- A new design for VisualEditor will come in January. You can try it now on test wikis. [45]
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
16:52, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
This week's article for improvement (week 1, 2015)
 The skyline of Frankfurt, Germany
The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Previous selections: Natural phenomenon • Spaghetti Get involved with the TAFI project! You can... Posted by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of EuroCarGT (talk) 00:18, 29 December 2014 (UTC) • |
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