Help:Reference Previews

The Reference Previews feature shows a preview of a footnote when you hover over its footnote marker. This feature is part of the MediaWiki extension Popups, which is used for Page Previews. It's currently under development and will become a beta feature on first wikis soon.

Background
The Reference Previews feature aims to fulfill a wish from the German-speaking community's Technical Wishlist and is developed by WMDE's Tech team, with support from the WMF’s Reading Web team. The design for this feature is being developed by the WMF.

More information can be found on the main project page on Meta.

Activate the feature

 * Reference Previews will first be available as a beta feature. In order to use them, you have to be logged in and tick the checkbox for "Reference Previews" in your beta feature settings.
 * You need to have Page Previews enabled.
 * In order to try Reference Previews, you need to have the Navigation Popups disabled. Otherwise, Reference Previews won't show.
 * It's also recommended you disable the Reference Tooltips gadget. Otherwise, both pop-ups from Reference Tooltips and from Reference Previews will appear.

Look and Behavior
This is the scope of the very first version of this feature. More functionality will be added in the course of the beta phase:


 * The pop-up opens when you hover over a footnote marker.
 * It gives a preview of the footnote as it is shown at the bottom of the page. Inside the preview, all kinds of footnote content (text, images, tables, …) can be displayed.
 * Reference Previews look like Page Previews. This way, all pop-ups have the same design, no matter if you hover over a page link or a footnote marker.
 * At the top of the pop-up, it's indicated which type of footnote is shown. There are five types: Website, News, Journal, Book, Generic. The type of a footnote is determined by a class on a  element in the footnote’s content. E.g.   categorizes the footnote as "Journal" (more info). This classification is usually done by using templates. The English   templates for example specify their class already. The classes can be added to other templates as well. Footnotes that use plain   tags without templates are shown as "Generic".
 * For short footnotes, the pop-up window adjusts to a smaller size. If the footnote size exceeds the maximum pop-up size, you can scroll to read the whole footnote.
 * Clicking on the link "Jump to footnote" brings you to the actual footnote in the footnote section.
 * Links that are part of a footnote open in a new tab.

JavaScript
The preview uses JavaScript. If you don't have JavaScript activated, you'll get the current view: Footnote markers are jump marks and there's no preview.

Deployment roadmap

 * test.wikipedia.org : planned for 2019-02-28
 * first Wikipedias (small beta): tba
 * all Wikipedias (full beta): tba

Links

 * extension manual on Mediawiki.org

Reference Previews
 * project board on Phabricator
 * main project page on Meta
 * central feedback page on Mediawiki.org

Page Previews
 * main project page on Mediawiki.org
 * central feedback page on Mediawiki.org

Help with translation
The software messages for this feature can be translated on translate wiki. Any help is much appreciated!