VisualEditor


 * For help installing and running VisualEditor, see Extension:VisualEditor.
 * For changes made on this wiki using VisualEditor, see the filters [ visualeditor] and [ visualeditor-switched].

The VisualEditor project by the Editing team aims to create a reliable rich-text editor for MediaWiki. VisualEditor is available as a MediaWiki extension using the Parsoid project to supply HTML+RDFa; however, its core implementation can be run without MediaWiki, Parsoid, or Node.js.

As of mid-2017, it is available to all users here at MediaWiki.org and on almost all Wikipedias and Wikivoyages. On all other projects and languages it is available as an opt-in Beta Feature to logged-in users. VisualEditor is only available in some namespaces, including the main namespace (where this page is), but generally not in discussion namespaces.

More information about VisualEditor can be found on [//blog.wikimedia.org/2012/06/21/help-us-shape-wikimedias-prototype-visual-editor Wikimedia's blog] and the FAQs. Please visit the main, multi-lingual VisualEditor Portal.

Original Rationale
The decline in new contributor growth was viewed as the single most serious challenge facing the Wikimedia movement. Visual Editor was built with the goal of removing avoidable technical impediments associated with Wikimedia's editing interface, as a necessary pre-condition for increasing the number of Wikimedia contributors. Subsequent research found no measurable gains over wikitext for new contributors.

Status

 * Wikimedia_Engineering/2015-16_Goals
 * Milestone-based Roadmap
 * Roadmap
 * Detailed backlog (see VisualEditor/Backlog design for details on how it works)
 * Recent changes to VisualEditor
 * Quarterly review notes and slides: June 2014, October 2014, January 2015, April 2015
 * VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings

Dashboards

 * Continuous Integration
 * Sprint Board, http://phlogiston.wmflabs.org/ve_report.html
 * Sprint Burndown, Product Burnup
 * Code review dashboard
 * Edit analysis dashboard
 * Editor engagement dashboard (enter "visual" in the search bar, choose one and click "visualize", e.g. English Wikipedia hourly edits, visual editor vs wikitext, % by user group)

History

 * Some level of exploration was done in 2010 by the Wikipedia Usability Initiative.
 * The 2011 product whitepaper published by the Wikimedia Foundation's strategic product team identified rich-text editing as one of the "Great Movement Projects". Work subsequently started in May 2011.
 * The 2011-12 Wikimedia annual plan, released July 2011, states a goal for VisualEditor: "First opt-in user-facing production usage by December 2011, and first small wiki default deployment by June 2012".
 * The 2012-13 Engineering Goals document sets a timeline for VisualEditor's development and deployment up to the end of June 2013.
 * The 2013–2014 Engineering Goals document lists the goals for that year.
 * VisualEditor is scheduled to be deployed across Wikimedia projects over the coming months. Below is the schedule as of May 2015:

Enabling VisualEditor by default for all users or for all logged-in users can be requested by contacting product manager James Forrester.

Documentation

 * Generated code documentation
 * [//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/9/98/Page-retrieval.svg Sequence diagram: Page Retrieval]
 * [//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/9/9a/VisualEditor_sequence-diagram_page-edit.svg Sequence diagram: Page Edit]

You can speak with us in our chat channel,.

Related pages
For more information on VisualEditor and its design process, see these directory pages:
 * Design portal
 * Planning and testing
 * Software
 * Feedback archives
 * /Presentations/
 * Usability
 * Forecasts
 * 2015 Review of Process
 * Plans and Progress
 * Report
 * Design of Backlog
 * 2016 Team Offsite and Retrospective