VisualEditor/changelog/Archive/MediaWiki 1.26

For each weekly production deployment, the VisualEditor team write up a changelog of improvements made to VisualEditor.

2015-04-08 (MW 1.26wmf1)
VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.26wmf1 branch deployment on Wednesday 8 April. In the week since the last deployment, the team mostly worked on ​providing lot of bug fixes and few feature and design tweaks.

The auto-fill citation tool now sets the citation type as 'journal' rather than 'web' when you give it a DOI, PMID, or PMCID (T94597). Pasting text with  and   tags will be automatically converted to   and   tags respectively (T70928). There is now a RTL variant for the help icon in VisualEditor which is for all RTL languages, except Hebrew and Yiddish  where the LTR version is shown (T76540).

We fixed and released early a bad bug which meant if user clicked at the end of a selected text and hit enter to go to the next line it would delete the text which was selected before (T94931).

We fixed a bad regression bug where users were not being able to place the cursor inside the input fields for reference dialogs as it was forcing the cursor to be placed on the CE instead (T95069). We also fixed a bug which meant that the edits made in a document would go out of sync and appear differently in the diff view and in the read mode due to some erroneous selection (T94696). There was a bug where when the adjacent links had same target they were not getting merged as a single link but creating two separate links (T95028).

The OOjs UI library had a new version, , released (changelog, task list), which VisualEditor and MediaWiki both now use. There was a UI issue where the gap between the button label and icon inside media settings dialog was missing making them look overlapped, which we fixed in this release (T93002). We fixed an issue where hovering over a button in a dialog using Chrome would make the button position shift upwards (T93472). There was a bug which meant if you open a dialog towards the end of a page the page would scroll up a bit, this is now fixed (T89612).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on the server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.26/wmf1 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-04-15 (MW 1.26wmf2)
VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.26wmf2 branch deployment on Wednesday 15 April. In the week since the last deployment, the team mostly worked on ​providing lot of bug fixes and feature changes and few design tweaks.

You can now use the auto-fill citation tool when editing a reference (T94621).From now on, whenever a user opens an inspector or a dialog the cursor will be automatically placed inside the first field and it will be highlighted (T95450). We also did the same change for the search textbox inside Re-use citation dialog (T91479).For TemplateData, we added a new optional and translatable property "Example" for template parameters which will show up when there is a text describing the usage of that parameter (T53049).

We fixed and released early a bad bug which was showing an error while saving the edit an article that the revision ID is not found as it was trying to parse an out of date revid, we fixed this issue by explicitly passing the oldid (T94367). We also fixed and released early a bug where empty Edit notices were appearing when the notice contained a FlaggedRev (T95989).

We fixed a bad regression bug which meant citations wont get added to the article while keeping the autofill citation dialog open in the background because we were not closing that inspector (T93638). We also fixed a bug which was showing the context menu for link along with media while selecting an image which has a caption as link (T95246). While creating a citation using ISBN/DOI/PMID etc with autofill citation option, they were appearing as redlink in the context menu, this is now fixed (T95247). There was an issue with cursoring for nested tables which was preventing user to cursor left/right, we fixed that issue (T95574).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on the server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.26/wmf2 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-04-22 (MW 1.26wmf3)
VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.26wmf3 branch deployment on Wednesday 22 April. In the week since the last deployment, the team focused mainly on ​a large number of bug fixes.

When searching for a template, the dropdown menu of results now contains template descriptions. (T53436).

We fixed a significant regression which occasionally made the progress bar move backwards (T93964). We quickly resolved an issue which caused the language tool to disappear (T96447) and a bug in the citation dialog which prevented the parameters from appearing (T96443). We fixed a bad bug which caused newly created links on subpages to have the wrong targets (T96643). We fixed a regression which was causing an error while using the find and replace tool (T96088). We fixed a bug which prevented users from moving their cursors into captions (T96356). We fixed a bug which caused blank line placeholders (slugs) to appear in the basic reference dialog (T93042). We have removed a delay in opening the special character panel, we fixed that (T96456).

We also fixed a number of browser-specific bugs, including one which prevented Firefox users from placing their cursors inside particular table cells (T96446) and another which prevented Opera 12 users from opening VisualEditor (T96435).

We also fixed some issues with the mobile web version of VisualEditor. In iOS Safari, there was a bug which was kept all dialogs from opening fully during first attempt of every edit session (T86233). The editing toolbar was not properly disabled when the page was not focused, which made it possible to click the buttons without any effect. This is now fixed (T96305). We fixed a bad issue that allowed users to get stuck inside the link dialog after searching for something which produced no result (T68696).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on the server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.26/wmf3 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-04-29 (MW 1.26wmf4)
VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.26wmf4 branch deployment on Wednesday, 29 April. In the week since the last deployment, the team focused mainly on ​implementing new interface for a major feature and providing a number of bug fixes.

There is now a new search interface for the link dialogue (T76397). The link inspector now has two separate sections: one for articles and one for external links. It also shows more information about each article search result such as a thumbnail image  Wikidata description, and appropriate icon for disambiguation pages, redirect pages and empty pages. We also replaced the previous order of link suggestions and reduced the number of results to five, with creating a new page being the last option (T93698). The context menu for link inspector also now includes the page image and description (T93695).

For the auto-fill citation option, the cite button is now labeled with the word "cite" rather than a book icon. (T95470). There  is now a tooltip  describing each character in the special character inserter (T70425). The parameter list inside the template dialog will now remain open after inserting a parameter from the list, so that users don’t need to click on "add more information" each time they want to add another parameter (T95696).

We quickly fixed and released the bug fix early  for an issue where VisualEditor was failing to load when there was a revision id mismatch earlier on that page (T97069).

We fixed a significant bug which meant some characters were not getting converted to UTF-8 correctly (T95833). We fixed a regression which changed the positions of the toggle buttons in the "find and replace" dialog incorrectly (T97262). We fixed a regression which was causing an error while using the find and replace tool (T96088). We fixed a bug which meant that when a slug (fake blank line)  was the last item in a page, selecting all content would create inconsistency in the selection range (T96357). Previously, clicking on the disabled "Open" button inside the link inspector would open the same page in a separate tab, this is now fixed by making it unclickable when disabled (T93004).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on the server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.26/wmf4 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-05-06 (MW 1.26wmf5)
VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.26wmf5 branch deployment on Wednesday, 6 May. In the week since the last deployment, the team focused mainly providing a number of bug fixes and some minor design tweaks.

There is now consistent error styling for all text boxes throughout VisualEditor (T97516). In the link inspector, if you insert a URL to another page in the same wiki it will be converted as internal page when users switch to the "Search Pages" section (T94334). Also, the matching parts of link suggestions will now be highlighted inside link inspector (T93697).

We fixed a significant bug which meant the position of context menus was getting misplaced (T98236, T98191). We also fixed a bug where the font of the page was getting bigger after switching to Read mode from Edit mode (T98193). There was an issue where the article font was appearing much smaller while loading VisualEditor; this is now fixed (T97690). The autofill citation dialog now has a more meaningful label 'Generate' instead of "Lookup" for the submit button (T97353). There was a bug in Internet Explorer which meant pressing backspace or delete or creating a heading would cause the page to abruptly scroll; we fixed that (T73119).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on the server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.26/wmf5 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-05-14 (MW 1.26wmf6)
VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.26wmf6 branch deployment on Wednesday, 13 May. In the week since the last deployment, the team focused mainly on improving the interface of a major feature, as well as providing a number of bug fixes and few design tweaks.

You now make citations through a single tool for the entire citation workflow by introducing three tabs inside it: Automatic, Manual and Re-use (T97390). The toolbar in VisualEditor has a new design now which is consistent with the MediaWiki theme (T86693, T85998, T98423). The progress bar from now on will accelerate towards the end as it nears the completion of loading a page, and generally feel more accurate (T95137).

We quickly made and released early a fix for a significant bug which meant users were unable to open VisualEditor after switching to Read mode from Edit mode (T98388). We also fixed and release the fix early where the articles were getting unchecked from your watchlist after editing and then saving it (T97838).

We fixed a bug which meant to "Switch to source editing" tool was never activate-able in the Page Settings menu (T97646). There was an issue which meant when users edit an existing reference and then applies it, the context menu for it was getting cut-off which is now fixed (T98430). We also fixed a bug where after adding a citation, the URL format was appearing incorrectly on the context menu (T95700). There was a regression bug on the sizes of checkboxes and radio buttons appearing smaller which got fixed (T93944). We fixed the issue of a dark highlight appearing over the first match in the link inspector (T98085). We quickly fixed an UI issue with the toolbar in VisualEditor  being misaligned by one pixel (T98795). We removed the tooltip for the tool-tips of the formatting menu in the toolbar as they were pointless and confusing (T98417).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on the server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.26/wmf6 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-05-20 (MW 1.26wmf7)
VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.26wmf7 branch deployment on Wednesday, 20 May. In the week since the last deployment, changes to VisualEditor were light as the team were mostly occupied with a team off-site and preparations for the action-packed hackathon this coming weekend.

We made some long-desired improvements to the display of links to non-existent images (T52788). This also involved solving some technical debt to make VisualEditor more flexible for complex-state components in future (T98999). Additionally, the OOjs UI library had a new version, , released (changelog, task list), which VisualEditor and MediaWiki both now use. The interaction design of buttons has been updated, with the 'bevel' at the bottom on hover removed and replaced with a solid, lighter greyed version of the 'selected' state (T98806). Toolbar items can now contain both an icon and a text label, rather than just one or the other. This is now being used for the cite button (T97879). We also fixed several issues with the new toolbar styling (T97905, T98651, T98760, T98776).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on our integration server. You can find a list of the tasks resolved in this deployment in its Phabricator tag, and a complete list of the individual code commits in the changelog for MediaWiki 1.26wmf7.

2015-05-27 (MW 1.26wmf8)
VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.26wmf8 branch deployment on Wednesday, 27 May. In the week since the last deployment, we made very few changes due to the on-going A/B test of VisualEditor. You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on our integration server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.26/wmf8 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-07-07 (MW 1.26wmf13)
VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.26wmf13 branch deployment on Tuesday, 07 July. In the week since the last deployment, the team worked on few bug fixes.

There is now a refresh button for CAPTCHA inside save dialog which will let user to get another CAPTCHA (T103227).

We fixed and released the fix early for a bad bug where VisualEditor was not loading for articles which transcluded the template Infobox Country with Internet TLD specified in it (T104377).

We fixed a regression bug which meant opening the link inspector with text selected only auto-populates search results on the first attempt (T97723). "Open" button in the Link tool was leading to a broken or incorrect target if on a /w/ entry point, this is now fixed (T85619).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on our integration server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.26/wmf13 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-07-14 (MW 1.26wmf14)
VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.26wmf14 branch deployment on Tuesday, 14 July. In the week since the last deployment, team was mostly busy with Wikimania 2015, so there was not much changes made to VisualEditor.

Although, we fixed a very bad bug during this week which meant on en.wiki while trying to open mobile VE, user was getting endless spinner not being able to edit (T105686).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on our integration server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.26/wmf14 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-07-21 (MW 1.26wmf15)
VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.26wmf15 branch deployment on Tuesday, 21 July. In the week since the last deployment, there were almost no changes made to VisualEditor as team members were mostly traveling after Wikimania 2015.

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on our integration server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.26/wmf15 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-07-28 (MW 1.26wmf16)
VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.26wmf16 branch deployment on Tuesday, 28 July. In the week since the last deployment, the team focused mainly providing a number of bug fixes and some minor design tweaks.

We introduced a "Save button" in Review your Changes section in the Save dialog which would let you save the edit directly from that dialog (T69868). The icon for comment in the toolbar menu is now changed to an exclamation point to make it consistent with the way it appears inside a page (T94479). Link inspector will now automatically strip off whitespace that is inserted while including an external link (T103450).

We quickly made and released early a fix for a significant bug which meant users were not being able to add parameters to templates (T106696). We also fixed and release the fix early where the link inspector was not getting closed when applying link to a text (T106270).

We quickly fixed a bad bug which was causing VE to crash while trying to open the insert row/column menu for a table by clicking on the arrow (T107102). The context menu for link was not showing the image related with the linked article, this is now fixed (T106819).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on our integration server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.26/wmf16 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-08-04 (MW 1.26wmf17)
VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.26wmf17 branch deployment on Tuesday, 04 August. In the week since the last deployment, the team focused mainly providing a number of bug fixes and some minor design tweaks around mobile version of VisualEditor.

Now when user tries to save the edit from Review screen of Save dialog, it will swap to main Save screen which is helpful when Edit Summary is required and user need to get notified of it (T107251). For mobile VisualEditor there is now larger tap area for dropdown menus (T92010).

We quickly fixed a bad bug which meant user was getting blank page in Read mode after saving the edit with VisualEditor (T107790). There was a bug where the options set from the Page Settings were getting applied even after cancelling it, we fixed that (T97682). After checking "Redirect this page to" in Page settings, the focus automatically moves now to the target page name input box (T106616). From now on, empty strings cannot be added as parameters for citoid citations (T97259).

In mobile VisualEditor, there was an issue which meant on selecting a focusable node (reference/image/templates etc.) as soon as the context menu appears, the position of Save button gets distorted, this is now fixed (T74570). The "Save" and "Back" button for dialogs were too small in mobile, we adjusted the size of these buttons to take up the full height of the toolbar (T91847). The titles of all context menus in mobile where getting cut-off earlier, we fixed this issue (T91845). The "Save" button is now fully visible in small screen mobile devices (T100174).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on our integration server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.26/wmf17 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-08-11 (MW 1.26wmf18)
VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.26wmf18 branch deployment on Tuesday, 11 August. In the week since the last deployment, the team focused mainly providing lots of minor tweaks and changes for the mobile version of VisualEditor and fixing number of bugs.

Users can now edit the table cell which has its formatting defined by templates (T85648). The mobile version of VisualEditor is now available for all device sizes as default-off option (T85630). Mobile VisualEditor now has a new design for toolbar which is wider and makes it easier for users to tap different tabs on smaller devices (T92027)

We quickly made and released early a fix for a significant bug which was preventing users to load VisualEditor (T107979). The Find and Replace buttons were too close to Save button in MW theme, we fixed it (T107928).

There was a bug in mobile VisualEditor which meant when user taps on a different item on a page, the context menu was not getting updated, this is now fixed (T91843). Table cells were not editable in mobile, we fixed that too (T108514). We fixed the design of context menu in mobile in a way that its now visibly distinguishable from the main toolbar (T91842). In mobile, there is now a Delete button in the context menu for all nodes (reference/image/templates etc.) which would let user delete those nodes which was not possible earlier because the keyboard in mobile hides upon selecting those nodes (T62110).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on our integration server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.26/wmf18 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-08-18 (MW 1.26wmf19)
VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.26wmf19 branch deployment on Tuesday, 18 August. In the week since the last deployment, the team focused mainly providing lots of bug fixes and some minor design tweaks and changes.

You can now type or paste a URL into VisualEditor and it will be linked (T54204); this avoids links getting ed, such as when pasted inside a basic reference (T107431). The checkboxes in Save dialog now has consistent design with OOUI style, which means they work better for languages with long labels (T70572, T86617). When editing graphs, you can now possible switch between different types like Bar, Area and Line (T99939).

We quickly fixed a significant bug which was causing all inspectors to instantly close while trying to open them (T108966). There was a bad bug which was causing link suggestions to not appear for mobile VE, we fixed that (T107619). On smaller devices, the text styling menu options were not appearing for mobile VisualEditor, which we fixed (T108344). Another bad bug was not clearing the old CAPTCHA when user failed writing the first one; we fixed and released that early (T109113).

We fixed an issue which meant reducing the screen width would make the title of a dialog appear cut-off when it tried to center it (T108326). Previously, the external link input field inside the link inspector was case sensitive which would not let user open them as a valid link, this has been now changed to make the external URL scheme case-insensitive (T109013).

There was a regression which was clearing the text inside Edit Summary upon opening it each time without saving, this is now fixed (T108329). In Monobook, when the toolbar is disabled the label for "Cite" used to appear as enabled instead of being greyed out, that is fixed now (T108018). There was an issue when user tries to close the Media Settings or Basic reference dialog while keeping the link inspector open VisualEditor was throwing error which is now fixed (T96630). The bug that was causing the link in the context menu for an external link with label added to be not clickable is fixed (T98211).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on our integration server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.26/wmf19 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-08-25 (MW 1.26wmf20)
VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.26wmf20 branch deployment on Tuesday, 25 August. In the week since the last deployment, the team focused mainly providing lots of bug fixes and some minor design tweaks and changes.

You can now type or paste an ISBN, PMID or RFC into VisualEditor and it will be linked (T109498); this also fixes ISBNs getting ed while typing or pasting them in an article (T110347). From now on, if user wrongly pastes a snippet of wikitext for a link, heading or template in VisualEditor, it will be automatically converted into rich content (T109449). The link and language editors now have increased width for consistency and convenience (T101290), this will also let the language code field and language name field to appear in one single line inside link inspector (T110127). The 'basic' (freeform) option for a citation now appears in the citation tool at the bottom, as a separate section (T108725).

We quickly fixed, and released the fix early, a significant bug which meant user was not being able to edit any page using mobile VisualEditor (T109501).

We also released fixed an issue where the thumbnails of many articles were missing from the context menu of that article's link (T109332). We fixed an issue specific to Firefox where the cursor was not getting active upon opening the VisualEditor on a page (T109805). We fixed a regression in mobile VisualEditor where selecting a paragraph was showing a context menu for   (T109503). Previously, after adding a reference or reusing it was causing it to be deselected, making the page loose focus and toolbar disabled; this has been fixed (T109990). If you paste the wikitext of multiple links, we now insert spaces between them for easier editing (T109996).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on our integration server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.26/wmf20 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.