VisualEditor global newsletter—May 2014

бӀаьра нисйан

This is a one-time mailing to projects that may need this information. Future newsletters will be available as opt-in only. To receive future newsletters (about one per month), please add your page to the subscribers' list at m:VisualEditor/Newsletter. You're welcome to translate to your language.


Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on the new citation tool, improving performance, reducing technical debt, and other infrastructure needs.

 

Did you know?

 

The cite menu offers quick access to up to five citation templates.  If your wiki has enabled the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, press "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" and select the appropriate template from the menu.

Existing citations that use these templates can be edited either using the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" tool or by selecting the reference and choosing the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Чуйилла" menu.

Read the user guide for more information.

The biggest change in the last few weeks is the new citation template menu, labeled "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽". The new citation menu offers a locally configurable list of citation templates on the main toolbar. It adds or opens references using the simplified template dialog that was deployed last month. This tool is in addition to the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Чуйилла" menu, and it is not displayed unless it has been configured for that wiki. To enable this tool on your wiki, see the instructions at VisualEditor/Citation tool.

Eventually, the VisualEditor team plans to add autofill features for these citations. When this long-awaited feature is created, you could add an ISBN, URL, DOI or other identifier to the citation tool, and VisualEditor would automatically fill in as much information for that source as possible. The concept drawings can be seen at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog, and your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted.

  • There is a new Beta Feature for setting content language and direction.  This allows editors who have opted in to use the "Мотт" tool in the "Чуйилла" menu to add HTML span tags that label text with the language and as being left-to-right (LTR) or right-to-left (RTL), like this:  <span lang="en" dir="ltr">English</span>. This tool is most useful for pages whose text combines multiple languages with different directions, common on Right-to-Left wikis.
  • The tool for editing mathematics formulae in VisualEditor has been slightly updated and is now available to all users, as the "⧼math-visualeditor-mwmathinspector-title⧽" item in the "Чуйилла" menu. It uses LaTeX like in the wikitext editor.
  • The layout of template dialogs has been changed, putting the label above the field.  Parameters are now called "fields", to avoid a technical term that many editors are unfamiliar with.
  • TemplateData has been expanded:  You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData, and VisualEditor will display them in the template dialogs like required ones.  "Suggested" is recommended for parameters that are commonly used, but not actually required to make the template work.  There is also a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name, for file names.  The template tool can now tell you if a parameter is marked as being obsolete.
  • Some templates that previously displayed strangely due to absolute CSS positioning hacks should now display correctly.
  • Several messages have changed: The notices shown when you save a page have been merged into those used in the wikitext editor, for consistency.  The message shown when you "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cancel⧽" out of an edit is clearer. The beta dialog notice, which is shown the first time you open VisualEditor, will be hidden for logged-in users via a user preference rather than a cookie.  As a result of this change, the beta notice will show up one last time for all logged-in users on their next VisualEditor use after Thursday's upgrade.
  • Adding a category that is a redirect to another category prompts you to add the target category instead of the redirect.
  • In the "Суьрташ а, медиафайлаш а" dialog, it is no longer possible to set a redundant border for thumbnail and framed images.
  • There is a new Template Documentation Editor for TemplateData.  You can test it by editing a documentation subpage (not a template page) at Mediawiki.org: edit mw:Template:Sandbox/doc, and then click "Manage template documentation" above the wikitext edit box.  If your community would like to use this TemplateData editor at your project, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
  • There have been multiple small changes to the appearance:  External links are shown in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki.  This is a lighter shade of blue than the internal links.  The styling of the "Йозан хатӀ" (character formatting) drop-down menu has been synchronized with the recent font changes to the Vector skin.  VisualEditor dialogs, such as the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽" dialog, now use a "loading" animation of moving lines, rather than animated GIF images.  Other changes were made to the appearance upon opening a page in VisualEditor which should make the transition between reading and editing be smoother.
  • The developers merged in many minor fixes and improvements to MediaWiki interface integration (e.g., edit notices), and made VisualEditor handle Education Program pages better.
  • At the request of the community, VisualEditor has been deployed to Commons as an opt-in. It is currently available by default for 161 Wikipedia language editions and by opt-in through Beta Features at all others, as well as on several non-Wikipedia sites.

Looking ahead:  The toolbar from the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. More buttons and icons will be accessible from the keyboard.  The "Пиллигин цхьаьнадалор" link will be moved out of the "АгӀонан параметраш" menu, into the "ГӀо" menu. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) and inline images is being developed. You will be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. VisualEditor will be available to all users on mobile devices and tablet computers. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Thursday, 19 June 2014 at 10:00 UTC. If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at Meta for any project. Thank you! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:39, 22 май 2014 (UTC)

бӀаьра нисйан
Please help translate this message in your language. Thanks :)

Hi, everybody. This is a reminder that we invite you to discuss VisualEditor's recent development and plans ahead during the next office hours with James Forrester (Product Manager):

If you are not able to attend but have a question for James, you can leave your question at mediawiki.org or on my talk page by the day before, and I will try to get a response. We plan to continue these monthly sessions as long as there is community interest, and to announce them through the VisualEditor global newsletter as well (please subscribe your talk page there to get the latest news about the software).

Most of the VisualEditor team will be at Wikimania in London in August! You'll be able to meet the developers during the Hackaton or at the following sessions:

WMF community liaisons will share a booth with community advocates at the Community Village and look forward to talking to you there. Thanks for your attention! --User:Elitre (WMF) 16:02, 31 июль 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor global newsletter—July and August 2014

бӀаьра нисйан
 

The VisualEditor team is currently working mostly to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.

 
Dialog boxes in VisualEditor have been re-designed to use action words instead of icons. This has increased the number of items that need to be translated. The user guide is also being updated.

The biggest visible change since the last newsletter was to the dialog boxes. The design for each dialog box and window was simplified. The most commonly needed buttons are now at the top. Based on user feedback, the buttons are now labeled with simple words (like "Cancel" or "Done") instead of potentially confusing icons (like "<" or "X"). Many of the buttons to edit links, images, and other items now also show the linked page, image name, or other useful information when you click on them.

  • Hidden HTML comments (notes visible to editors, but not to readers) can now be read, edited, inserted, and removed. A small icon (a white exclamation mark on a dot) marks the location of each comments. You can click on the icon to see the comment.
  • You can now drag and drop text and templates as well as images. A new placement line makes it much easier to see where you are dropping the item. Images can no longer be dropped into the middle of paragraphs.
  • All references and footnotes (<ref> tags) are now made through the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, including the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" (manual formatting) footnotes and the ability to re-use an existing citation, both of which were previously accessible only through the "Чуйилла" menu. The "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-referencelist-tooltip⧽" is still added via the "Чуйилла" menu.
  • When you add an image or other media file, you are now prompted to add an image caption immediately. You can also replace an image whilst keeping the original caption and other settings.
  • All tablet users visiting the mobile web version of Wikipedias will be able to opt-in to a version of VisualEditor from 14 August. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu.
  • The link tool has a new "Open" button that will open a linked page in another tab so you can make sure a link is the right one.
  • The "Cancel" button in the toolbar has been removed based on user testing. To cancel any edit, you can leave the page by clicking the Read tab, the back button in your browser, or closing the browser window without saving your changes.

The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables. Work to support Internet Explorer is ongoing.

Feedback opportunities

бӀаьра нисйан

The Editing team will be making two presentations this weekend at Wikimania in London. The first is with product manager James Forrester and developer Trevor Parscal on Saturday at 16:30. The second is with developers Roan Kattouw and Trevor Parscal on Sunday at 12:30. There is a VisualEditor Translation Sprint going on during Wikimania; whether you're in London or not, any contributions are welcome!

Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at the VisualEditor feedback page or by joining the office hours discussion on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 09:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East and Asia) or on Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 16:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Europe).

If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at Meta for any project. Thank you! --Elitre (WMF), 14:40, 9 август 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #8—2014

бӀаьра нисйан

09:49, 13 октябрь 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #9—2014

бӀаьра нисйан

23:29, 14 ноябрь 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #10—2014

бӀаьра нисйан

18:59, 26 декабрь 2014 (UTC)