Extension:WYSIWYG

The WYSIWYG extension enables a more intuitive editing of pages on a MediaWiki-based site. When this extension is installed, the tab 'Edit' in the command bar on top of every page leads directly in the wysiwyg editing mode.

It uses a special version of the CKeditor that outputs wiki text rather than the usual HTML that caused problems for MediaWiki integrations in the past.

Features of the WYSIWYG extension
The WYSIWYG extension supports the following:
 * importing / insertion of tables, images, formatting stuff like enumerations, font style etc. as well as links
 * real copy and paste without postprocessing
 * working with the known Word-like toolbar arrangement
 * using special characters
 * real time spell-checking with recommender function
 * undo/redo and find and replace functionality

Download

 * WYSIWYG (dependencies, download, help)

NOTE!

Mediawiki 1.17+
-Quick note! When you extract the zip file you get a bunch of stuff that doesn't seem to be needed, copy the WYSIWSG folder from the extracted files into the extensions directory, then copy the code from below into LocalSettings.php Otherwise everything seems to break.

Mediawiki 1.22+ and #6 bundle of Download -section
For more information about proper settings of LocalSettings.php etc. with MW 1.22+ and #6 bundle, see README.md (on github -page).

Customize the toolbar
Everything is explained here.

Disable for some namespaces
To disable the rich editor for some namespaces (for example, here Mediawiki), add the following code in your LocalSettings.php :

$wgFCKEditorExcludedNamespaces = array(NS_MEDIAWIKI);

Style the content of the editor
Two solutions :
 * 1) Edit the file ckeditor/contents.css
 * 2) Point to the css file of your choice, adding this line to ckeditor/config.js :

config.contentsCss = 'path/to/your/file.css';

Config "Paste as ..."
When clicking "Paste as..." button under Firefox, you may get a popup telling your browser can't access your clipboard. This is a security protection, but you can configure your browser so that it makes an exception for your wiki. Thus, you will be able to paste in one click, with no need to paste in the dialog field and then validate. See here.

Improvements
Modifications (#5 and #6 refer to Download section above)
 * Buttons to create a references (footnotes): and (incl. in #5 and #6)
 * Fixed Images dialog (parameters) (incl. in #5 and #6)
 * Button to add ... in one click in order to convert text as target link (incl. in #5 and with additional modifications in #6)
 * Autofilling of the link dialog with selected text, and autosearch] (incl. in #5 and with additional modifications in #6)
 * Dialog to handle categories (incl. in #6)
 * [//en.wikipedia.org wikipedia] is considered as external link (incl. in #6)
 * tags are not deleted anymore. Math -tags, gallery- and hovergallery- tags (HoverGallery ext.), poll- and ajaxpoll- tags (poll- and ajaxpoll ext.) as well as contents of all other unknown mediawiki tags should now be possible to enter/update using tag -dialog of wysiwyg (incl. in #6)

Possible customizations

 * Disable search for images in link dialog (incl. in #5)    Question: Is this necessary modification? You can already now specify namespace as search criteria in link dialog using ":", f.ex. keying in "image:eifel" (without quotes) will search only image names starting with string "eifel". Other namespaces works similarly.

Todo

 * Preliminary test version with new category dialog supporting hierarchical categories is available for testing under branch CKeditor_V4_Category on Github.

Known incompatibilities

 * FileLink extension does not work with wysiwyg extension.
 * Issues with Preloader extension (#6)
 * When loading a template from Preloader, formatting may be stripped from header and thematic break tags. For example, Title and  return only plain, black === Title === and, with no formatting. It is unknown whether this issue occurs with other tags, but appears likely. Github#27
 * In MW 1.24 wysiwyg will not start (#6), issue is with MW variable $styles which has been changed from public to protected variable in includes/OutputPage.php, one possible workaround requires manual modifications outside wysiwyg, other preferred one is to comment out some code lines of CKeditor.body.php manually Github#23.
 * Search feature in category dialog (#6) does not work in case categories are organized hierarchically. Message "Not found, category is new" is displayed for existing category in that case. For more details see:Github#39. Preliminary test version with new category dialog supporting hierarchical categories is available under branch CKeditor_V4_Category on Github.

Development Repositories
If anyone is interested in developing the extension further, there are three known repositories created by users:


 * "WYSIWYG" wikimedia.org repository from Wingsofcourage (#1 of Download section above)
 * "CKEditor in MediaWiki" github.com repository from Ciges (#2 of Download section above)
 * Mediawiki-wysiwyg github.com repository (#6 of Download section above).

See the discussion/talk page to get in touch with the owners of these repositories.