Contributors/status

The following is an archive of updates on the status of the Editing team. Last update on: 2014-09-monthly.

2014-07-monthly
In July, the newly re-named and re-scoped Editing Team was formed from the VisualEditor Team. We are responsible for extending and improving the editing tools used at Wikimedia – primarily VisualEditor and maintenance for WikiEditor. We exist to support new and existing editors alike; our current work is mostly on desktop, and we are working with Mobile to take responsibility for all editing across desktop, tablet and phone platforms, spanning approximately 50 different areas of MediaWiki and extensions related to editing. We will continue to report progress on VisualEditor separately.

The biggest Editing change this month was in the Cite extension (for footnotes) – this now automatically shows a references list at the end of the page if you forget to put in a  tag, instead of displaying an ugly error message. The Math extension (for formulæ) was improved with more rigorous error handling and LaTeX formula checking, as part of the long-term volunteer-led work to introduce MathML-based display and editing. The TemplateData GUI editor was deployed to a further six wikis – the English, French, Italian, Russian, Finnish and Dutch Wikipedias.

A lot of work was done on libraries and infrastructure for the Editing Team and others. The OOjs UI library was extensively modified to bring in a new window management system for comprehensive combined desktop, tablet and phone support, as well as other updates to improve Internet Explorer compatibility and accessibility of controls. In the next few months the team will continue working on OOUI to support other teams' needs and implement a consistent look-and-feel in collaboration with the Design team. The OOjs library was updated to fix a minor bug, with a new version (v1.0.11) released and pushed downstream into MediaWiki, VisualEditor and OOjs UI. The ResourceLoader framework was extended to allow skins to set the "skinStyles" property themselves, rather than rely on faux dependencies, as part of wider efforts led jointly by a volunteer and a team member to improve MediaWiki's skin support.

2014-08-monthly
In August, the Editing Team presented at Wikimania 2014 on better ways to develop and manage front-end software, improved the infrastructure of the key user interface libraries, and continued the planned adjustments to the MediaWiki skins system.

The TemplateData GUI editor was significantly improved, including being updated to use the new types, and recursive importing of parameters if needed, and deployed on Norwegian Bokmål Wikipedia. The volunteers working on the Math extension (for formulæ) moved closer to deploying the "Mathoid" server that will use MathJax to render clearer formulæ than with the current versions.

The Editing team as usual did a lot of work on improving libraries and infrastructure. The OOjs UI library was modified to make the isolation of dialogs using s optional, and re-organise the theme system as part of implementing a new look-and-feel for OOUI, to make it consistent with the planned changes to the MediaWiki design, in collaboration with the Design team. The OOjs library was updated to fix a minor bug, with two new versions (v1.0.12 and then v1.1.0) released and pushed downstream into MediaWiki, VisualEditor and OOjs UI.

2014-09-monthly
In September, the Editing Team made substantial progress on front-end standardisation, as well as the work on VisualEditor which is reported separately. The team welcomed Bartosz "MatmaRex" Dziewoński as a new team member, and existing student member Moriel Schottlender converted to full-time status.

The team's work on front-end standardisation is focussed on improving libraries and infrastructure, and in particular, the OOjs UI library. This included the creation of a MediaWiki theme in collaboration with the Design team, which can be explored in the online demo; this will be deployed into MediaWiki's use of OOUI in the next few weeks. A number of bugs were fixed, including working around window and popup sizing, over-flow item placement, and working around some browser bugs in Firefox and Safari. The code documentation has a number of minor issues corrected, and the build process was extended to create a minified distribution. The OOjs library was updated to fix a minor bug in, with a new version (v1.1.1) released and pushed downstream into MediaWiki, VisualEditor and OOjs UI.

The TemplateData extension now supports the " " parameter property, a wikitext value that a parameter can be set to have inserted by default if desired. Also, the specification for TemplateData was re-written to be clearer and more consistent. Next month the TemplateData GUI editor will be made available on all Wikimedia wikis.

2014-10-monthly
 In October, the Editing team worked on the front-end standardisation project, now one of Wikimedia Engineering's Q2 priorities, as well as the work on VisualEditor which is reported separately. The team welcomed Marielle Volz as a new team member, who will focus on improving citations support.

The team's work on extending the OOjs UI library continued. The library now has a parallel, PHP language port. This will allow pages to be created server-side and later as a progressive enhancement made rich for JavaScript-supporting clients. This PHP port will be made available inside MediaWiki soon, and will be used to provide the framework for the future skin architecture. Other improvements to the library include support for toolbar menus to only show a few items initially with option to expand later, and showing keyboard shortcuts, expansion of the developer documentation, and fixing a number of bugs. Two new widgets were created – a widget for a button that's also an input, and a widget for a progress bar, which will be used as part of the work to convert the new PDF generation system to use the OOjs UI framework.

More widely, the team created the wikitext concept of s, a way to show icons which tell the user something about the page in MediaWiki. These features are now supported in the Vector, Monobook, Cologne Blue and Modern skins, and will replace the need for the local CSS hacks that some wikis have used to approximate this feature. The TemplateData extension now wraps its contents in a  tag unless editing a sub-page, and the help link's target can now be set to a page other than the one on MediaWiki. The last vestiges of the CiteThisPage extension were removed from the Cite extension, as part of a complex manoeuvre to simplify the naming of the system; it now has its own home. 