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Tech News: 2013-25

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. [1]
  • The Narayam and WebFonts extensions were successfully replaced by Universal Language Selector on June 11. [2]
  • VisualEditor news:
    • VisualEditor was temporarily disabled on Wikipedia sites on June 14 due to an issue that 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. [3].
    • VisualEditor also allows editing references. [4]
  • 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. [5]
  • 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. [6]
  • 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. [7]
  • Two new webfonts (UnifrakturMaguntia and Linux Libertine) will be added to wikis that use Universal Language Selector. [8] [9]
  • It will now be possible to hide the sidebar while using the Translate extension to reduce distractions (bug #45836). [10]
  • A patrolling link will now be visible for un-patrolled pages, even if users don't visit it from Special:NewPages or Special:RecentChanges (bug #49123). [11]
  • A request for comments on enabling a new search engine for MediaWiki was started.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Unsubscribe. 00:27, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Tech news: 2013-26

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. [12]
  • Universal Language Selector was 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. [13]
  • 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). [14]
  • The TimedMediaHandler extension now supports native FLAC files. A discussion to allow this file type is taking place on Commons (bug #49505). [15]
  • After a test period, the Disambiguator extension was enabled on the English Wikipedia on June 18. [16]
  • VisualEditor news:
    • A VisualEditor bug temporarily made all new accounts unusable. The issue is now fixed and account creation works as before (bug #49727).
    • A high importance file insertion bug has been fixed, but the feature does not work perfectly yet. [17]
  • It is now possible to synchronise local CSS and JavaScript files with the beta cluster. This should make it easier to test software features before they are enabled on live wikis. [18]
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). [19]
  • Universal Language Selector will be enabled on wikis without language versions (such as Wikisource and Wikispecies) on June 25. [20]
  • The AbuseFilter extension will allow filtering links and HTML code for page creations. [21]
  • The related changes special page will now include upload log entries. [22]
  • It will soon be possible to choose the language of SVG files that contain translations. [23]
  • MediaWiki will now allow converting audio files from one format to another. [24]
  • The Wikidata technical team has started a discussion about how Wikidata can support Wiktionary. [25]
  • The search feature on Wikimedia sites is planned to be modified to use Solr on all wikis by the end of 2013. [26]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:05, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Tech news: 2013-27

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. [27]
  • A JavaScript problem caused the "View history" and "New section" 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). [28]
  • There was a short site outage on June 28.
  • The automated Category:Pages with missing files now includes broken file links inserted inside the <gallery /> tag (bug #50119). [29]
  • The Nearby feature is now enabled on Commons and shows images in a user's area. [30]
  • There is now a special page listing disambiguation pages for wikis that use the Disambiguator extension (bug #44040). [31]
  • The old version of the Article feedback tool (version 4) was removed from wikis that still used it. [32]
  • VisualEditor news:
    • Many bugs that caused text to be removed or damaged have been fixed, including one related to copy-paste (bug #49816).
    • VisualEditor now offers a visual interface to edit references.
    • In preparation for enabling the VisualEditor on a wider scale, new documentation has been created, including a list of frequently-asked questions and a user guide with many images. Please help with translations.
    • Several problems related to overlapping of elements with the VisualEditor toolbar have been fixed (bug #50096, #50159, #50324).
    • TemplateData information is now displayed for templates that are added to a page (bug #49778).
    • Section edit links now show links to both VisualEditor and the old (source) editor (bug #49666).
    • Images are now loaded securely when using HTTPS (bug #43015). [33]
Future software changes
  • 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]]). [34]
  • The Universal Language Selector will be added to the English Wikipedia on July 2, and to remaining wikis on July 9. [35]
Erratum

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14:20, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Tech news: 2013-28

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 news:
    • 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. [37]
    • Several bugs that occurred on right–to–left wikis have been fixed last week (bug #49416, bug #49613, bug #50543).
  • Uploading files has been restricted on Meta Wiki to administrators and the newly created uploader group. An exemption doctrine policy is being developed (bug #50287). [38]
  • Emergency priority CentralNotice banners will always be shown unless users have hidden them, ignoring cookies set for lower priority banners. [39]

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 <gallery /> tag (bug #8480). [40]
  • It will now be possible to create empty MediaWiki: messages, for instance in order to disable them (bug #50124). [41]
  • The Nearby feature will soon be enabled on Wikivoyage wikis again. [42]
  • The Notifications extension messages will now include a direct link to diffs on wiki as well as in notification e-mails (bug #48183). [43]
  • Table of contents will now use the HTML <div /> element instead of <table />, fixing a nine–year–old bug #658. [44]
  • First mock–ups of a mobile Wikidata application have been published by Pragun Bhutani as part of his Google Summer of Code project. [45]
  • A discussion on minimum documentation practices in MediaWiki code has been started and awaits comments from the community.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:31, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-29

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.)

Future software changes

  • 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. [49]
  • 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. [50]
  • 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. [51] [52]
  • Global edit filters are currently in testing and will be added to wikis later. [53]
  • Wikivoyage wikis will start to use Wikidata for interwiki links on July 22. [54]
  • A new image gallery design has been proposed by Brian Wolff; comments and feedback are welcome.
  • An IRC discussion about Bugzilla is planned for July 16, at 16:00 (UTC) on the IRC channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion). [55]

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17:30, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-30

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.)

Future software changes

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:01, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-31

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. [63]
  • Wikivoyage was offline for around 40 minutes on July 24. [64]
  • Pywikipediabot moved their code from SVN to git; bot owners need to update their tools. [65]
  • The Notifications and Thanks extensions were added to Meta-Wiki on July 26; other wikis will get them soon. [66]
  • It is now possible to add edit summaries on Wikidata using the API; the feature will be added to user interface soon. [67]
  • 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. [68]
  • Three new webfonts (Gentium, Old Persian and Shapour) will be added to Universal Language Selector. [69], [70], [71]
  • 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). [72]
  • A mailing list to discuss multimedia features was started; users are encouraged to sign up.
  • VisualEditor news:
    • 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. [73]
    • A preference to completely disable VisualEditor while it is in beta phase was added on July 24. [74]
    • Many bugs were fixed in right-to-left languages. [75] [76] [77] [78] [79] [80]
    • It is possible again to scroll down in the template editing window (bug #51739).
    • VisualEditor now works with the FlaggedRevisions extension. (bug #49699)
    • If the user opens VisualEditor using a section edit link, the title of the section is added to the edit summary (bug #50872).
    • Invisible templates now can't be deleted by accident or on purpose (bug #51322).

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20:41, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-34;

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. [81]
  • 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. [82]
  • You can now use new styles of galleries. Please give feedback to User:Bawolff. [83]
  • You can now visit a random page in a category, for example Special:RandomInCategory/Science. (25931) [84]
  • You can now use the <wbr> HTML5 tag to say where a word can be cut. (52468) [85]
  • 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) [86]

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)
  • Maintenance reports 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) [87]

VisualEditor news

  • 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 ( for <math>), Egyptian hieroglyphs ( for <hiero>), and to say that text is in another language ( for lang="ar" dir="rtl"). (51609, 51612, 51611, 51590, 51610, 52352)
  • You can now use VisualEditor with the Opera browser. [88]

Future

  • Starting on August 26, you will be able to use data from Wikidata on Wikivoyage sites. [89]
  • Starting on August 27, you will also get notifications on the mobile site if you're logged in to a wiki using notifications. [90]
  • 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. [91]
  • Starting on August 29, you will get the code editor interface to edit JavaScript and CSS pages on all wikis. [92]
  • The plan to use Solr for search in MediaWiki was changed; instead, Elasticsearch is now planned. [93]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:52, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-40

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 application to contribute to translatewiki.net from mobile devices. [94]

VisualEditor news

  • VisualEditor now has a new toolbar with drop-down menus for advanced tools. [95]
  • Many bugs were fixed, some related to copy-and-paste. [96]
  • You can now move references, list of references, templates and other elements with the mouse ("drag-and-drop"). [97]
  • You are invited to comment on designs for the interface to add references in VisualEditor.

Future

  • Developers are looking for ideas of small technical projects that new developers could work on. Please add your ideas. [98]
  • Developers are looking for wikis who would accept to try using secure links (HTTPS) for all users. [99]
  • You can join an IRC discussion about "Beta features", a tool to try new features, on October 3. [100]
  • You can join an IRC discussion about Flow, the new wiki discussion tool, on October 17.

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19:58, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-42

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

VisualEditor news

  • You can now create and edit references inside media captions. [102]
  • 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. [103]
  • When you resize images, you will now still see them, and their size will also be seen in the center. [104] [105]

Future

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09:13, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-43

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 text on translatewiki.net. Someone else may have already done it. [108]

VisualEditor news

  • On wikis with VisualEditor, you can now use it on pages in the File, Help and Category spaces. [109]

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. [110]

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. [111]
  • 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.

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09:43, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-44

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. [112]

VisualEditor news

  • 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. [113]

Problems

  • There was a problem on October 31 during the activation of MediaWiki 1.22wmf2 on 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. [114]
  • Developers have started to remove long-deprecated methods. You should check the JavaScript console (in debug=true mode) and look for deprecation warnings and their stack trace. [115]

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10:33, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-45

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. [116]

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. [117]

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. [118]
  • 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). [119]
  • The MassMessage tool will be added to all wikis on November 14. It will make it simpler to send messages across wikis. [120]
  • The button of the Search page will soon be changed to be blue and bigger (see the difference). [121]
  • 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}}. [122]
  • In the future, when you hide a CentralNotice banner on a wiki, it will also be hidden on other Wikimedia sites. [123]

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13:05, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-46

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. [124]

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. [125]
  • 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. [126]

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08:50, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-47

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. [127]
  • 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. [128]

Problems

Future

  • There will be no major code changes on the week of November 25 because many developers will be on holiday for Thanksgiving.
  • The editing interface of Page: pages on Wikisource (working with the Proofread Page extension) will soon also work without JavaScript. [129]

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06:47, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-49

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

This newsletter is now posted using MediaWiki message delivery.

New features

  • 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 by editing templates used to describe metadata. [130]
  • JavaScript code used on Wikimedia sites is now saved locally on your computer to load faster. [131]

VisualEditor

  • 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. [132]
  • You can now open VisualEditor by adding ?veaction=edit to the page URL, regardless of your user preferences. [133]
  • Many bugs have been fixed, and VisualEditor should also look faster, for example when you save a page. [134]

Problems

  • Due to issues, the new search tool ("CirrusSearch") was recently removed from wikis where it was enabled, then added again. [135]

Future

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08:38, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-50

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

VisualEditor

  • 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". [139]
  • 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". [140]

Problems

  • There was a problem with the "Create a book" tool (Collection); books could only be exported to PDF format. The change has been undone. [141]
  • The log-in system for external tools ("OAuth") was broken on wikis that tested the new search tool. It was fixed last week. [142] [143]
  • Because of a bug, this newsletter is delivered to users using the new MediaWiki message delivery, and to community pages using the old EdwardsBot. [144]

Future

  • 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) [145]
  • GLAMToolset, a tool to help GLAM groups (like museums) upload many pictures to Commons, will be added to Commons on December 17. [146]
  • 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. [147] [148]

Other

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08:24, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-51

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes

  • 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. [150]
  • 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. [151] [152]
  • You can now use the log-in system for external tools (OAuth) on all Wikimedia wikis that use the unified login. [153]
  • 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. [154]
  • You can thank other users for their edits even if your browser does not have JavaScript. [155] [156]
  • All edits made through Flow, the new discussion system for MediaWiki, are now visible in user's contributions. You can test it on the Flow talk page on MediaWiki.org. [157] [158]
  • You can test a visual tool that shows edits made to an article over time. It only works for English Wikipedia pages for now and is slow on long articles. [159]
  • You can test the first version of the new mobile Wikipedia app for Android and iOS. [160]
  • Translatewiki.net, the site where you can translate the MediaWiki software, now has a new main page for users without an account. [161]

Future software changes

  • There will be no technical changes this week (December 23 to December 29) due to end-of-year holidays.
  • When someone deletes, restores, uploads, or moves a file on Commons, pages on all wikis that use that file will be refreshed. [162] [163]
  • New users will soon have their user and talk pages added to their watchlist as soon as they create an account. [164] [165].
  • The new search tool (CirrusSearch) will not show the text of versions of a page that have been hidden. [166] [167]
  • You will soon be able to see the raw HTML created by some wikitext by using the Special:ExpandTemplates tool. [168] [169]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:22, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-01

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). [170] [171]
  • With the new version of the Wikibase DataModel extension, you can install it outside Wikimedia wikis. [172]

VisualEditor news

  • Images are now shown inside VisualEditor as HTML5 <figure /> elements. Comments are welcome. [173]
  • You can now test a basic version of VisualEditor on mobile devices; see this article as an example.

Problems

Future software changes

  • 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.
  • AbuseFilter log entries will be visible in CheckUser tool reports. [175] [176]
  • It will soon be possible to search for log entries done by users without an account. [177] [178]
  • It will no longer be possible to globally hide users with more than 1,000 edits. [179] [180]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:40, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-02

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).
  • The old note-taking site (Etherpad) was removed on December 30, 2013. You can see most of the documents on the new site. [181]

Problems

  • 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. [182]
  • Spanish, French, Portuguese and Russian Wikipedia users will also be able to enable CirrusSearch in their Beta Features options. [183]
  • 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. [184] [185] [186]
  • You will see a warning when you try to delete a page linked to from other pages. [187] [188]
  • You will be able to hide redirect pages on the list of protected pages. [189] [190]
  • You will be able to use keyboard shortcuts in the Translate tool, by pressing Alt+1 and similar key groups. [191] [192]
  • 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. [193] [194]
  • Images viewed in the Beta Features media viewer will load faster. [195] [196]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:35, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-03

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. [197]

VisualEditor news

  • VisualEditor will be added for all users on several Wikipedias on January 13. [198]
  • You can now add and remove __NOTOC__, __FORCETOC__ and __NOEDITSECTION__ in the page metadata menu. [199] [200] [201]

Problems

  • For a few hours on January 6, it was not possible to edit pages using the Translate tool on Wikimedia Commons and the Wikimania 2013 wiki, due to a settings error. [202] [203]
  • For about 20 minutes on January 9, there were problems with CSS and JavaScript due to high server load.

Future software changes

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:33, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-04

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

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. [214]
  • You can now see a help page about keyboard shortcuts in the page menu. [215]
  • When you change categories, you will now see them when you save the page. [216]
  • When you edit templates, you will now see the parameters in the right order. The ones that you must add have a star (*). [217] [218]
  • The page will now be saved faster, thanks to a new way of coding the text that sends 40% less text to the servers. [219]
  • Your wiki can ask to test a new tool to edit TemplateData. [220]

Problems

  • 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. [221]
  • 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. [222]
  • 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. [223]

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. [224] [225]
  • 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. [226]
  • You will see a warning when you try to delete a page included in at least one other page. [227]
  • You will so longer see disambiguation pages in Special:LonelyPages. [228] [229]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

10:22, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-05

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. [230]
  • 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. [231]
  • The Special:ActiveUsers page will be removed because it's too slow. [232]
  • 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).

Problems

Future software changes

  • You can give comments about the new version of "Winter", a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. [234]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:46, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-06

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).
  • Global AbuseFilter rules are now active on all small wikis. [235] [236]
  • The buttons used in pages like log-in, account creation and search are now using the same colors and styles. [237] [238]
  • You can now link to diffs using [[Special:Diff/12345]] and similar links. [239]
  • There is no longer an option to hide tables of contents on all pages. [240]
  • Searching in the File: namespace on Wikimedia Commons is now faster, after a bug was fixed on January 29. [241]
  • All Wikimedia wikis now have high-resolution favicons. [242]

VisualEditor news

  • You can now see a list of keyboard shortcuts by pressing Ctrl+/ inside VisualEditor. [243]

Future software changes

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:30, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-07

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. [254] [255] [256] [257] [258]
  • 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). [259]

VisualEditor news

  • You can now set media items' alt text and position, and directly set their size, in the media tool. [260] [261]
  • The gallery tool was improved and several issues were fixed. [262] [263] [264]

Problems

  • On February 3, all wikis were broken for about an hour due to a traffic balancing issue. [265]
  • 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. [266] [267]
  • 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. [268]
  • You will soon see results from other wikis when you use the new search tool (CirrusSearch). [269] [270]
  • The WikiLove tool was redesigned and should also load faster. [271]
  • Edits made with WikiLove or after a GettingStarted suggestion will be tagged. [272] [273]
  • It will soon no longer be possible to hide section editing links in your preferences. [274]
  • You will soon be able to use the revision deletion feature via the API. [275]
  • You will soon be able to choose mobile view on non-mobile devices using a Beta Feature option. [276] [277]
  • If you have questions about Universal Language Selector, you can join an IRC meeting on February 12 at 17:00 UTC, in the #wikimedia-office channel on Freenode. [278]
  • Developers are preparing for Google Summer of Code 2014. You can propose ideas. [279]
  • 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. [280]
  • The <poem> tag will be renamed to <lines>. The old tag will still work. [281]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:30, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-08

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).
  • You can now use the list of active users again. [282] [283]
  • The new search tool (CirrusSearch) now gives more importance to content namespaces if you search in several namespaces. [284]
  • You can now directly link to files viewed with MultimediaViewer, the new tool for viewing media files. [285]
  • You can read the summary of the Wikimedia technical report for January 2014. [286]

Problems

  • On February 9, Wikimedia Labs was broken for about 2 hours due to an XFS file system problem. [287]
  • On February 11, there were problems with VisualEditor for about 20 minutes due to a server logging issue. [288]
  • 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. [289]
  • You can now change image display (like thumbnail, frame and frameless) with VisualEditor. [290]
  • Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from paragraphs you are editing. [291]
  • You will soon be able to create and edit redirect pages with VisualEditor. [292] [293] [294]
Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
08:38, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-09

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

VisualEditor news

  • You will soon be able to add and edit __STATICREDIRECT__, __[NO]INDEX__ and __[NO]NEWEDITSECTION__ in the page settings menu. [297] [298] [299]
  • You will soon be able to use the Ctrl+Alt+S or ⌘+Opt+S shortcuts to open the save window in VisualEditor. [300] [301]
  • You will soon be able to preview your edit summary when checking your changes in the save window. [302] [303]

Future software changes

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

10:18, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-10

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. [310]
  • You can now use Guided tours on the Czech and Japanese Wikipedia. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla. [311] [312]
  • You can now use information from Wikidata in all Wikisource wikis. [313]
  • The multimedia team is now posting weekly updates on their mailing list. [314]

VisualEditor news

  • You can now change image size to default for your wiki. If you add new images to pages, they will also be default size. [315] [316] [317]
  • If you switch from VisualEditor to wikitext editing, your edit will now be tagged. [318]
  • Template parameters now have a bigger, auto-sizing input box for easier editing. [319]
  • VisualEditor now has Arabic, Finnish and Kölsch icons for text styling. If you want icons for your language, ask in Bugzilla. [320] [321] [322]

Future software changes

Problems

  • For about an hour on February 23, there were problems with page loading due to a MediaWiki bug. [330]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:30, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-11

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).
  • You can now use the new search tool (CirrusSearch) on all Wikiquote projects. You can now enable it in your Beta options. [331] [332]

VisualEditor news

  • It is now easier to edit templates. Complex tools are now in the "advanced" mode. [333] [334]
  • It is also easier to edit images. You now have more options and they are explained better. [335]
  • 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. [336]
  • We have improved the tool to add special characters. The buttons are now larger. More changes are coming. [337]
  • You can now use new keyboard shortcuts to undo the last action, clear formatting, and show the shortcut help window. [338] [339] [340]

Future software changes

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:10, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-12

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. [346]
  • You can now use the new search tool (CirrusSearch) on all small wikis. You can now enable it in your Beta options. [347] [348]
  • You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for February 2014. [349]

VisualEditor news

  • Searching for template parameters in now case-insensitive. [350] [351]
  • Required template parameters now have an asterisk (*) next to their edit boxes. [352]
  • Several template dialogs are now smaller, and their insert buttons have changed wording. [353]

Future software changes

Problems

  • VisualEditor was slow to load on March 13 because of an API issue. [357]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:14, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-13

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. [358] [359]
  • Pages that don't exist will now show as red links in the edit mode. [360]
  • 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. [361]
  • You will now see a full warning, including the most recent log entry, when you try to edit protected pages with VisualEditor. [362]

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.
  • You will soon be able to include the Whatlinkshere special page in other pages. [363] [364]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:56, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-14

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. [365] [366]

VisualEditor news

  • Blocked users now see the same messages in VisualEditor as in the wikitext editor. [367] [368]
  • The search box for re-using a reference in VisualEditor is now cleared after each use. [369]
  • New links on sub-pages no longer point to the wrong location in VisualEditor. [370]
  • VisualEditor's media dialog no longer breaks when opening some types of images. [371]

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. [372]
  • 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. [373]
  • Deleting a version of a file or a version of its description page will soon be shown differently in the logs. [374]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:20, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-15

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. [375]

Future software changes

  • A new special page (Special:TrackingCategories) will soon list all the tracking categories on a wiki. [376] [377]
  • All Wikiquote projects will start using language links from Wikidata on April 8. [378]
  • The Hovercards feature will soon work with right-to-left languages. [379] [380]
  • You will soon be able to download files directly from MediaViewer, the new multimedia tool. [381]
  • MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on MediaWiki.org on April 10. Comments are welcome.
  • You can help check that users can read CAPTCHAs in your language. [382]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:00, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-16

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. [383] [384] [385]
  • Font issues caused by Typography refresh for Windows users were fixed on April 7. [386] [387]

VisualEditor news

  • 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. [388]
  • 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. [389] [390]

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. [391] [392]
  • 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). [393]
  • You will soon be able to hide Notification and Hovercards pop-ups by pressing the Esc key. [394] [395] [396] [397]
  • Shorter lists of language links will soon work in right-to-left languages. Languages that you have used before will be shown in the list. [398]
  • You will soon be able to send messages with the MassMessage tool to all pages in a given category. [399] [400]
  • The date format user preference will soon be moved to the appearance tab. [401] [402]
  • 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). [403]

Problems

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:18, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-17

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

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).
  • CirrusSearch was enabled as a beta feature on 27 new wikis on April 18. [406] [407]
  • 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. [408] [409] [410] [411]
  • The page view statistics site developed by Henrik (stats.grok.se) should now work faster. [412]
  • You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for March 2014. [413]

VisualEditor news

  • If you try to add a category which redirects to another category, VisualEditor will now suggest adding the target category directly. [414] [415]
  • VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear on Education Program pages. [416] [417]
  • You can now use VisualEditor on Meta-Wiki and the French Wikinews by enabling it in your preferences. [418] [419] [420]

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. [421]
  • 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. [422] [423]
  • The user preference to remember login will soon be removed from all wikis. The edit review preferences will be moved to the recent changes tab, and the preference for the WikiLove tool will be moved to the editing tab. [424] [425] [426] [427]
  • You will soon be able to give parameters to preloaded templates. [428] [429]
  • You will soon be able to use CodeEditor in read-only mode on pages that you cannot edit. [430] [431]
  • It is now proposed to replace Bugzilla, Gerrit and other tools by a single tool called Phabricator. You can test Phabricator and add your opinion on MediaWiki.org. [432]
  • 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). [433]

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. [434]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:34, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-18

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. [435]

VisualEditor news

  • You will soon be able to set content language and direction with VisualEditor. [436]
  • VisualEditor now works on all Wikipedias after broken MediaWiki:Common.js pages (and similar) were fixed last week. [437]
  • 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. [438]
  • The mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will soon include filters to limit the number of uploaded files that are copyright violations. [439]
  • CodeEditor will soon have a status bar about errors and warnings. [440] [441]
  • You can test a new version of Winter, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. Comments are welcome. [442]

Problems

  • For about 30 minutes on April 21, there were problems with image scaling due to a high server load. [443] [444]
  • On April 22, it was not possible to use the Collection extension for about 90 minutes due to a server move. [445] [446]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:23, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-19

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. [447]
  • It is now easier to disable the CodeEditor tool. [448]

VisualEditor news

  • External links in VisualEditor are now in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki. [449]
  • The template tool now tells you if a parameter is obsolete. [450]
  • You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData; VisualEditor will add them like required ones. [451]
  • There is a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name for file names. [452][453]
  • Editing formulae in VisualEditor will soon be enabled for all users. [454] [455]
  • You will soon be able to try a new beta feature to edit text in another language. [456] [457]

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. [458]
  • 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. [459] [460]

Problems

  • For about 40 minutes around 00:20 UTC on April 29, there were problems with page loading due to high server load.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:29, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-20

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. [461]
  • Templates that were previously broken in VisualEditor should now appear correctly. [462]

Future software changes

  • It will soon be possible to move category description pages. Pages in changed categories will still have to be moved independently. [463] [464]
  • You will soon be able to clear your watchlist with one click or through the API. [465] [466] [467] [468]
  • You will soon be able to link to Flow posts and workflows with Special:Flow. [469] [470]
  • The jQuery JavaScript library will soon be updated. Please check that your gadgets and scripts will still work. [471]
  • The Vector skin will work faster, as the sidebar will no longer collapse partly after being loaded. [472] [473] [474]
  • MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on Wikimedia Commons on May 15. Feedback is welcome.
  • An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on May 14 at 18:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). [475]
  • 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. [476]

Problems

  • There were problems with generating file thumbnails for all wikis between May 3 and May 6 due to a configuration error. [477] [478]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

06:00, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-21

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. [479] [480] [481]
  • 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. [482] [483]
  • VisualEditor was added as a beta feature to Wikimedia Commons on May 15. You can enable it in your preferences. [484] [485]
  • 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. [486] [487]
  • VisualEditor's new citation tool now matches templates like {{cite_web}} and not just {{Cite web}}. [488] [489]
  • VisualEditor's welcome message will no longer be shown to users who have already seen it. [490] [491]
  • VisualEditor now shows a clearer message when you cancel an edit. [492]
  • The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. [493] [494]

Future software changes

Problems

  • For several hours on May 16, there were problems with loading gadgets on some wikis due to a server problem. [497]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:18, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-22

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. [498] [499] [500] [501]
  • A bug that caused files not to appear after saving edits in the File: namespace was fixed last week. [502] [503]
  • VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear in namespaces where VisualEditor is disabled. [504] [505]
  • It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor; many minor bugs related to images have also been fixed. [506]
  • VisualEditor will no longer convert spaces to underscores inside links to pages in namespaces that include spaces in their names. [507]

Future software changes

  • Wikimedia Labs will stop working for about 10 minutes around 18:00 UTC on May 30 due to a server upgrade. [508]
  • It will soon no longer be possible to upload different files under the same name at the same time using the UploadWizard tool. [509] [510]
  • 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. [511] [512] [513]
  • You will soon see information about global blocks for IP addresses on their contributions page on your local wiki. [514] [515]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:29, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-23

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. [516]

VisualEditor news

  • Templates that redirect to other templates now get the TemplateData of their target. [517]
  • The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible after you save an edit with VisualEditor. [518] [519]
  • VisualEditor now checks if your browser supports SVG files to avoid displaying broken icons. [520]
  • There is now a new type for TemplateData parameters: date for dates and times in the ISO 8601 format. [521]

Future software changes

Problems

  • For about 20 minutes on May 29, all wikis were broken due to a configuration error. [528]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:08, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-24

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. [529] [530]

VisualEditor news

  • You should no longer be able to add empty references with VisualEditor. [531] [532]
  • The "use an existing reference" button in the reference tool is now shown as disabled, rather than hidden, when the reference has content. [533] [534] [535]
  • You will now see category contents again after saving an edit to a category page with VisualEditor. [536] [537]

Future software changes

  • MediaViewer will be enabled by default on all wikis on June 12. Feedback is welcome. [538]
  • You will be able to use information from Wikidata directly in Wikiquote pages starting on June 10. [539]
  • 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. [540] [541]
  • 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. [542] [543]
  • Templates containing <ref> or <references> tags will no longer need dummy parameters to prevent caching. [544] [545] [546]
  • You will no longer be able to use Special:Thanks directly. The page will soon show an error message when you visit it. [547] [548]
  • Hovercards will no longer flicker. [549]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:39, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-25

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. [550]
  • 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. [551] [552]
  • You can now add and edit {{DISPLAYTITLE}} and __DISAMBIG__ in the page settings menu. [553] [554] [555] [556]
  • The tool to insert special characters is now wider and simpler; the order of mathematical symbols is now correct. [557] [558] [559]

Future software changes

  • Media Viewer will be enabled by default on all wikis on June 19. Feedback is welcome. [560]
  • You will no longer be able to use navigation popups and Hovercards at the same time. [561]
  • You will no longer see image thumbnails on search results pages on Wikibooks and Wikisource wikis. [562] [563]
  • It will soon be possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. [564] [565]
  • Tablet users will be redirected to the mobile view of Wikimedia wikis starting on June 17. [566]
  • The special page that lists most linked-to templates will soon include pages from all namespaces; it will also be renamed to Special:MostTranscludedPages. [567]
  • 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. [568]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:13, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-26

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 (1.24wmf10) 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. [569] [570]
  • When dragging an item, you will now see a line that helps you to drop it. [571] [572]
  • 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. [573] [574]
  • You will now be warned if you add wikitext to file captions and references. [575] [576]

Future software changes

  • You will no longer be able to upload files on wikis that do not have any copyright tags. [577] [578]
  • CirrusSearch will be enabled as the primary search method on additional 70 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and Wikimedia Incubator, during the next week. [579]
  • 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. [580]
  • You will soon be able to watch translations for e-mail notifications without receiving an e-mail when they are reviewed by another translator. [581] [582]
  • 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). [583]

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. [584]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:20, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-27

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. [585] [586]
  • A bug that prevented relocating items due to cache was fixed last week. [587] [588]
  • 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. [589] [590] [591] [592]
  • Links to category pages or file pages added with VisualEditor will now work correctly. [593] [594]

Future software changes

  • You will no longer be able to upload files on wikis that do not have any copyright tags. [595] [596]
  • 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. [597]
  • 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. [598] [599]
  • Starting on July 1, it will be possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. [600]
  • 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. [601] [602]
  • You will soon be able to use {{!}} as a magic word to produce the pipe character, for instance for use in tables. [603]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

06:53, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-28

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. [604]
  • 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. [605] [606]
  • You can now use a graphical interface to edit TemplateData information on the English (en), French (fr) and Italian (it) Wikipedias. [607] [608]

VisualEditor news

  • Saving an edit with VisualEditor will now be much faster. [609] [610]
  • 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. [611] [612] [613]
  • 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. [614] [615] [616]
  • 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}}. [617]
  • Context menus will no longer be shown over items that you can edit directly, for example formulæ. [618] [619] [620]

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. [621]
  • 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). [622] [623]
  • Black-and-white XCF images will soon display correctly. [624] [625]
  • 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. [626] [627]

Problems

  • Between July 2-3, there were problems with loading pages on multiple wikis due to a configuration issue. [628] [629]
  • For a few hours on July 1, there were problems with uploading new files on Wikimedia Commons due to a configuration error. [630] [631]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:07, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-29

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).
  • It is now possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. Please go to the username changes page on Meta if you want to rename your account on all wikis. [632] [633]
  • You can now read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for June 2014.
  • You can now read the latest issue of the Wikidata newsletter and translate it into your language.

VisualEditor news

  • The tool to add templates and citations will now work for templates that include HTML comments or templates in their titles. [634] [635]
  • The button to make images full size should now work correctly. [636] [637] [638]
  • References will now be shown in the default font size again. [639]

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. [640]
  • The Special:Version page will soon show the exact version of MediaWiki and all extensions installed on your wiki (example). [641] [642]
  • 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. [643]
  • Pages that use {{DISPLAYTITLE:''title''}} more than once will soon show a warning. You can use {{DISPLAYTITLE:''title''|noerror}} to hide it. [644] [645]
  • Pages that have the list of references added automatically will soon be added to a tracking category. Administrators will be able to configure the name of the category on their wikis. [646] [647]
  • Administrators will soon be able to easily merge histories of two pages using Special:MergeHistory. [648] [649]
  • Administrators will soon see links to delete files on Special:ListFiles. [650]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:49, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-30

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. [651] [652] [653]
  • 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. [654]
  • Translation memory for newly translatable pages should now offer more suggestions. [655] [656]
  • A tool to convert MediaWiki pages to LaTeX is now available on Tool Labs. [657]

VisualEditor news

  • 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. [658]
  • 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. [659]
  • You can now easily open links inside the link editor, for example to see their target. [660]
  • Several bugs related to the positioning of the cursor around some items (like images and references) were fixed last week. [661] [662] [663] [664] [665] [666]

Future software changes

Problems

  • Mailing lists were broken for about 16 hours between July 14 and July 15 due to a server problem. [670]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:42, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-31

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.

VisualEditor news

  • You can now create, edit, and view HTML comments in VisualEditor. [671] [672]
  • 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. [673]
  • 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. [674] [675]
  • You will no longer be able to edit a page if you can't create it, for example on pages protected against recreation. [676] [677]

Future software changes

  • You will soon be able to filter Meta-Wiki's user rights log by wiki and user. [678] [679]
  • 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. [680]
  • It will soon be possible to directly create empty pages, for example in the user namespace. [681] [682]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:09, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-32

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). [683]
  • You can now test a new tool to render wiki pages as PDF files. [684] [685] [686]
  • 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. [687]
  • New users using the mobile Commons site now need to make 75 edits before they can upload a file. [688] [689]

VisualEditor news

Future software changes

  • You will soon have a user option to watch pages where you revert edits. [701] [702]
  • All Toolserver data will be deleted in September. If you want to back up your data, contact Toolserver administrators before August 31. [703]
  • Pages in the Translations: namespace on wikis using the Translate extension will no longer be indexed by search engines. [704]

Problems

  • Wikivoyage wikis were broken for about 45 minutes on July 29 due to a configuration problem. [705]
  • Some users were not able to log in on test wikis and MediaWiki.org between July 31 and August 1. The problem is now fixed. [706]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-33

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). [707]
  • Bureaucrats on all Wikivoyage wikis are no longer able to merge two accounts into one. [708]

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. [709]

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! [710] [711] [712]
  • 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. [713] [714]
  • You will now always see recent changes to the source language text when editing a translation with the Translate extension. [715] [716]
  • 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). [717]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:43, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-34

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. [718] [719] [720]
  • You can now create empty pages directly. A message asks you to confirm that you want to create an empty page. [721] [722]
  • You can search for Wikimedia tools using a new list of tools. [723]
  • 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. [724]
  • 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. [725]

Problems

  • There was an issue with ProofreadPage and WikiEditor on Wikisource wikis. It is now fixed. [726] [727]

Tech news written by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:17, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-35

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. [728]
  • You can now add colors to links in the editor using gadgets. You can do this to see links to redirects or disambiguation pages. [729]
  • If you use Internet Explorer, you will soon be able to use VisualEditor. [730] [731] [732]

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. [733]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:21, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-36

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. [734] [735]
  • You can now search pages that link to a page. Use the linksto: keyword in your search. [736] [737]
  • 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". [738] [739]
  • If you are testing Flow, you now have a Flow tab in your Notifications. It is called "Messages". [740]

VisualEditor news

  • You can no longer delete required fields in templates. [741]
  • 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. [742] [743] [744]
  • VisualEditor now looks better in Monobook. [745]
  • We fixed a bug where some of your typing could be undone when you used "cut" (Ctrl+X). [746]
  • You will no longer see empty or deleted categories among the suggestions when you add a category. [747]

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. [748]
  • 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. [749]
  • You can test a new version of the tool to show math. It uses MathML. Report bugs in bugzilla.
  • You will no longer be able to upload images from the mobile site. [750]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

07:49, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-37

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. [751] [752] [753]

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. [754]
  • You can read more about the plan to move to Phabricator, a tool that will help people develop the MediaWiki software and report bugs. [755]

Problems

  • There were problems with JavaScript and CSS on Friday, September 5 because of a code error.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:33, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-38

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-disambig CSS class. [756] [757]
  • 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. [758] [759] [760]
  • 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. [761]

Problems

  • There was a problem with loading images on September 10. [762]

VisualEditor news

  • If you don't select text when you add a link, the link now shows a number. [763]
  • The citation tool no longer offers to reuse a citation if there are none on the page yet. [764] [765]
  • You can now use help buttons in the "Page settings" menu to see what the options are for. [766]

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. [767] [768] [769]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

08:34, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-39

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

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. [771] [772]

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.[773] [774]
  • In the "Vector" skin, the icon used for users will show a neutral gender. [775] [776]
  • The VisualEditor template tool now tells you if a required field is missing. [777]
  • 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. [778]
  • There are new keyboard shortcuts in VisualEditor. Use Ctrl+Shift+6 for code and Ctrl+Shift+5 for strikethrough. [779] [780]
  • In VisualEditor, you can now see that you are switching to the source editing mode. Before, it was not clear it was happening. [781]

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. [782]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:05, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-40

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

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. [786] [787]
  • 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. [788]
  • If you change a user preference but don't save it, it now asks if you want to save it. [789] [790]
  • The PDF export tool has changed. The new one has better language support but it doesn't offer ZIM and EPUB formats. [791]

Future changes

  • You can watch a video showing Phabricator, the new tool to track bugs. You can also read more about the move from Bugzilla.
  • 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. [792]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:44, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-41

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

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. [800] [801]
  • 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. [802]
  • On Thursday, the tool to edit TemplateData will come to 30 more wikis. [803] [804]
  • You can help sort bugs in the Book and PDF export tool on October 8. [805]
  • 1% of logged-out readers are getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. [806]

Future changes

  • You can look at the plan of the Mobile team for their future work. [807]
  • More changes to Media Viewer are coming. It will be easier to disable it, and you will see the caption below the image. [808] [809]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

06:10, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-42

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

Problems

  • 10% of Tool Labs was down on October 7. [812]
  • Tool Labs was also broken on October 11. [813]

Software changes this week

  • 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. [814]

Meetings

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08:54, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-43

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. [818] [819]

File information cleanup

Problems

  • 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. [821]

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. [822]
  • If you add the same parameter twice in a template, it now puts the page in a tracking category. [823] [824]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

13:48, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-44

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. [825]
  • There was a problem with cut and paste in VisualEditor in Firefox. It was fixed quickly. [826]
  • There was a problem with editing math in VisualEditor. It was fixed quickly. [827]

Software changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will now come to Wikipedia sites every Wednesday, instead of every Thursday. [828]
  • 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 now uses autovalues for templates if they are in TemplateData. [829] [830] [831]
  • VisualEditor's menu items now show their shortcuts beside them. [832]
  • VisualEditor now opens faster when you click "edit". [833]
  • 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. [834]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

05:20, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-45

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes

Problems

  • 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. [838]
  • 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. [839] [840] [841]
  • 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. [842] [843]
  • 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. [844]
  • The icons in VisualEditor's template editor tool for adding more fields are back, along with other fixes. [845] [846] [847] [848] [849]
  • After November 6, all wikis will have the tool to edit TemplateData. [850] [851] [852]

Future changes

  • The new search tool will come to the last wikis in the coming weeks. This includes Wikipedia in French, Chinese, German and English. [853]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

17:28, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-46

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. [854] [855]
  • The MediaWiki API now shows information in a nice format. You can translate it in translatewiki.net. [856]

File information cleanup

Problems

  • Wikimedia Labs was broken for a few hours on Thursday. It was due to a hardware problem. [857]

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. [858] [859]
  • 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". [860]
  • The way windows inside VisualEditor work has changed. VisualEditor should be faster and have fewer bugs. [861]

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)

Tech News: 2014-47

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. [862]

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. [863]

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)

Tech News: 2014-48

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. [864]

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. [865]

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. [866]
  • VisualEditor now tells you if your edit needs to be approved. [867]
  • You can now use VisualEditor's tools directly when you resume editing after closing the save window. [868]
  • VisualEditor's table editing tools now work better in right-to-left languages. [869] [870]

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)

Tech News: 2014-50

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. [871]
  • You can join a video chat about Phabricator on December 11 at 18:00 (UTC). Phabricator is the new tool to report issues. [872]

Problems

  • There was a problem with Phabricator on November 29. It was due to a network issue. [873]

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). [874]
  • You can now exit VisualEditor by pressing the "Esc" key. [875]
  • It is now easier to use VisualEditor with IMEs. Typing in Malayalam now works better. [876] [877]
  • The new version of OOjs UI fixed many issues with the size and layout of buttons in dialogs. [878] [879] [880]
  • (Lua) You can no longer use mw.text.unstrip to get the HTML from special page transclusion. You can see a list of scripts to fix. [881] [882]

Future changes

  • Starting next week JavaScript tools won't work if they use jQuery Migrate. [883]

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)

Tech News: 2014-51

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. [884]
  • You can watch a video to learn how to use Phabricator to manage projects. [885]
  • 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). [886]
  • You can now find and replace text in VisualEditor. You can open the tool via the menu, Ctrl+F or Cmd+F. [887]
  • VisualEditor now doesn't change the space at the end of a text that you make bold. [888]
  • The "Apply changes" button in the reference window of VisualEditor is now disabled until you make a change. [889]

Future changes

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)

Tech News: 2014-52

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. [894]

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. [895]

Future changes

  • The system that displays citations will change in the future. The new system will not change the style of citations. [896]
  • A new design for VisualEditor will come in January. You can try it now on test wikis. [897]

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16:52, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
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