Beta Features/New Features



This page is a staging area for product teams who wish to add new experiments to the Beta Features project.

We invite product owners who would like to experiment with a new feature to add it to this list, and answer these questions:
 * 1) What is this feature? Describe its main purpose and function.
 * 2) Is this a single feature or multiple (e.g., how many checkboxes do you need? What are examples of these checkboxes?
 * 3) What will happen when this feature is enabled through this Beta Features tool?  Specifically, what happens when someone clicks on the check-box?

To get the ball started, we have listed below the first features which we are considering for this project. Please fill in answers to the questions for each feature, and add any other features which you would like to test through this project.

VisualEditor

 * Purpose: Enable the basic version of VisualEditor on sites that require opt-in. This option would not be available on sites that provide this tool on an opt-out basis.
 * Functions: what are the key functions of this feature?
 * Effect: what will happen when this feature is enabled?
 * Links: Info | Discussion
 * Team: who will be working on this feature?

VisualEditor - Extra features

 * Purpose: Enable the latest features inside VisualEditor. As we develop tools and make changes for the editor, we make them available for testing ahead of general release.
 * Functions: what are the key functions of this feature?
 * Effect: what will happen when this feature is enabled?
 * Links: Info | Discussion
 * Team: who will be working on this feature?

Typography update

 * Purpose: Makes text more readable and beautiful, to benefit readers and editors alike. This beta feature uses serif headings for sections and sans serif for body copy to clearly differentiate them from body paragraphs, for a better visual experience that works consistently across desktop and mobile platforms.
 * Functions: what are the key functions of this feature?
 * Effect: what will happen when this feature is enabled?
 * Links: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Design/Typography and https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/79948
 * Team: Mobile team (Product Manager: Kenan Wang; Developer: Jon Robson; Designers: Vibha Bamba/Jared Zimmerman)

Media Viewer

 * Purpose: Improve your multimedia viewing experience with this new tool, which displays images in larger size on pages that have thumbnails. This viewer also aims to reduce confusion by only showing key information, with a link to the file info page for more details.
 * Functions: The key functions of this feature include a lightbox view and a full-screen view.
 * Effect: This will display the lightbox view when you click on a thumbnail for standard image files supported by this first version
 * Links: Info | Discussion
 * Team: Multimedia team (Product Manager: Fabrice Florin; Developer: Mark Holmquist; Designers: May Galloway/Jared Zimmerman)

Better interlanguage Links

 * Purpose: Describe this feature's main goals.
 * Functions: what are the key functions of this feature?
 * Effect: what will happen when this feature is enabled?
 * Links: please add links to the feature's info page -- and any discussion page.
 * Team: who will be working on this feature?

Compact Personal Bar

 * Purpose: Describe this feature's main goals.
 * Functions: what are the key functions of this feature?
 * Effect: what will happen when this feature is enabled?
 * Links: please add links to the feature's info page -- and any discussion page.
 * Team: who will be working on this feature?

VE on Flow

 * Purpose: The first release of Flow will allow users to type in markup. Future releases may also have the option to create posts using the Visual Editor. We want to pilot this functionality using the Beta Features experimentation space.
 * Functions: Add a VE bar to the compose post screen in Flow. Allow users to add bold, italics, links, and possibly some other features of VE to their posts.
 * Effect: Users will be able to compose Flow posts using VE instead of markup.
 * Links: none yet
 * Team: Core features – PM: Maryana Pinchuk; Devs: Erik Bernhardson, Matthias Mullie, Benny Situ, Andrew Garrett

In coming days, please take a moment to fill in the blanks for these features, as well as start writing copy and preparing graphics, as well as links to overview and discussion pages for each feature.

To see a preliminary version of this tool, create an account on this prototype site, then log in and click on 'Preferences > Beta features'. Here is a screenshot of how it works now in its barebones form (please ignore the placeholder copy).