User talk:Green Mostaza/Archive



= 2013-06 =

Tech News: 2013-25
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.


 * Recent software changes: (Not all changes will affect you.)


 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22wmf7) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 13. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on June 17, and on all Wikipedias on June 20.
 * The Narayam and WebFonts extensions were successfully replaced by Universal Language Selector on June 11.
 * VisualEditor news:
 * VisualEditor was temporarily disabled on Wikipedia sites on June 14 due to an issue that inserted a lot of HTML code. The issue is now fixed and VisualEditor works as before.
 * Users can now use VisualEditor to add images and other media items from their local wikis and Wikimedia Commons..
 * VisualEditor also allows editing references.
 * The new Disambiguator extension, which was previously part of MediaWiki itself, was enabled on test wikis. It adds the magic word  to mark disambiguation pages.
 * The newly enabled Campaigns extension allows Wikimedia Foundation data analysts to track account creations that result from a specific outreach campaign.


 * Future software changes:


 * Universal Language Selector will be added to the Catalan (ca), Cebuano (ceb), Persian (fa), Finnish (fi), Norwegian Bokmål (no), Portuguese (pt), Ukrainian (uk), Vietnamese (vi), Waray-Waray (war) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias on June 18.
 * Starting on June 18, VisualEditor will be randomly enabled by default for half of newly created accounts on the English Wikipedia to test stability, performance and features.
 * Two new webfonts (UnifrakturMaguntia and Linux Libertine) will be added to wikis that use Universal Language Selector.
 * It will now be possible to hide the sidebar while using the Translate extension to reduce distractions (bug #45836).
 * A patrolling link will now be visible for un-patrolled pages, even if users don't visit it from Special:NewPages or Special:RecentChanges (bug #49123).
 * A request for comments on enabling a new search engine for MediaWiki was started.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Unsubscribe. EdwardsBot (talk) 22:33, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Tech news: 2013-26
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.


 * Recent software changes: (Not all changes will affect you.)
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 20. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on June 24, and on all Wikipedias on June 27.
 * Universal Language Selector was successfully enabled on the Catalan (ca), Cebuano (ceb), Persian (fa), Finnish (fi), Norwegian Bokmål (no), Portuguese (pt), Ukrainian (uk), Vietnamese (vi), Waray-Waray (war) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias.
 * The new interface for account creation and log–in is now the default on all Wikimedia wikis. The old look is no longer available (bug #46333).
 * The TimedMediaHandler extension now supports native FLAC files. A discussion to allow this file type is taking place on Commons (bug #49505).
 * After a test period, the Disambiguator extension was enabled on the English Wikipedia on June 18.
 * VisualEditor news:
 * A VisualEditor bug temporarily made all new accounts unusable. The issue is now fixed and account creation works as before (bug #49727).
 * A high importance file insertion bug has been fixed, but the feature does not work perfectly yet.
 * It is now possible to synchronise local CSS and JavaScript files with the beta cluster. This should make it easier to test software features before they are enabled on live wikis.


 * Future software changes:


 * The default link to a help page on editing, visible below the editing window, will change on almost 600 Wikimedia wikis and will now link to MediaWiki.org (bug #45977).
 * Universal Language Selector will be enabled on wikis without language versions (such as Wikisource and Wikispecies) on June 25.
 * The AbuseFilter extension will allow filtering links and HTML code for page creations.
 * The related changes special page will now include upload log entries.
 * It will soon be possible to choose the language of SVG files that contain translations.
 * MediaWiki will now allow converting audio files from one format to another.
 * The Wikidata technical team has started a discussion about how Wikidata can support Wiktionary.
 * The search feature on Wikimedia sites is planned to be modified to use Solr on all wikis by the end of 2013.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 18:13, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

= 2013-07 =

Tech news: 2013-27
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.


 * Recent software changes: (Not all changes will affect you.)


 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf9) was added to test wikis on June 27. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 8, and on all Wikipedias on July 11.
 * On Wikisource, the canonical names of the "Index" and "Page" namespaces in the Proofread Page extension are no longer localized (bug #47596). Please check scripts that depend on.
 * A JavaScript problem caused the "" and "" tabs in the Vector skin to be moved into the drop-down menu on right-to-left wikis. The issue is now fixed and links are visible as before (bug #50196).
 * There was a short site outage on June 28.
 * The automated Category: now includes broken file links inserted inside the  tag (bug #50119).
 * The Nearby feature is now enabled on Commons and shows images in a user's area.
 * There is now a special page listing disambiguation pages for wikis that use the Disambiguator extension (bug #44040).
 * The old version of the Article feedback tool (version 4) was removed from wikis that still used it.
 * VisualEditor news:
 * Many bugs that caused text to be removed or damaged have been fixed, including one related to copy-paste (bug #49816).
 * VisualEditor now offers a visual interface to edit references.
 * In preparation for enabling the VisualEditor on a wider scale, new documentation has been created, including a list of frequently-asked questions and a user guide with many images. Please help with translations.
 * Several problems related to overlapping of elements with the VisualEditor toolbar have been fixed (bug #50096, #50159, #50324).
 * TemplateData information is now displayed for templates that are added to a page (bug #49778).
 * Section edit links now show links to both VisualEditor and the old (source) editor (bug #49666).
 * Images are now loaded securely when using HTTPS (bug #43015).


 * Future software changes:
 * VisualEditor will be enabled for all logged-in English Wikipedia users on July 1, and for all users on July 8.
 * From July 8, it will be possible to upload WAV and native FLAC files to Commons, and use them directly on wiki pages (bug-49505>bugzilla:49505|bug #49505).
 * The Universal Language Selector will be added to the English Wikipedia on July 2, and to remaining wikis on July 9.


 * Erratum
 * Tech news #26 incorrectly reported that audio transcoding was added to TimedMediaHandler; it was actually statistics about audio transcoding that were added.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 14:28, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Tech news: 2013-28
Latest technews>m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News|tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. more-transl>m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2013/28|Translations are available.

Recent software changes (Not all changes will affect you.)


 * VisualEditor news:
 * VisualEditor deployment [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AVisualEditor%2FFeedback&diff=563042612&oldid=563038914 has been delayed] by a week. It is now planned to enable the editor for logged–in editors on chosen Wikipedias on July 22, and on all Wikipedias on July 29.
 * A bug that made it impossible to save VisualEditor edits that triggered a CAPTCHA has been fixed.
 * Several bugs that occurred on right–to–left wikis have been fixed last week (bug #49416, bug #49613, bug #50543).
 * Uploading files has been restricted on Meta Wiki to administrators and the newly created uploader group. An exemption doctrine policy is being developed (bug #50287).
 * Emergency priority CentralNotice banners will always be shown unless users have hidden them, ignoring cookies set for lower priority banners.

Future software changes


 * MediaWiki will allow choosing a specific page of a PDF document or a thumbnail of a video file to show up inside the  tag (bug #8480).
 * It will now be possible to create empty  messages, for instance in order to disable them (bug #50124).
 * The Nearby feature will soon be enabled on Wikivoyage wikis again.
 * The Notifications extension messages will now include a direct link to diffs on wiki as well as in notification e-mails (bug #48183).
 * Table of contents will now use the HTML  element instead of , fixing a nine–year–old bug #658.
 * First mock–ups of a mobile Wikidata application have been published by Pragun Bhutani as part of his Google Summer of Code project.
 * A discussion on minimum documentation practices in MediaWiki code has been started and awaits comments from the community.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 18:39, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-29
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.

Recent software changes (Not all changes will affect you.)


 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf10) was added to test wikis on July 11. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 15, and on all Wikipedias on July 18.
 * The Disambiguator extension was enabled on all Wikimedia wikis on July 9 (bug #50174). To use it, add the  code to disambiguation templates ([//de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=120414784&oldid=76564202 see example]).
 * The Universal Language Selector was added to all remaining wikis on July 9, finishing the process of replacing the Narayam and WebFonts extensions.
 * The CommonsDelinker bot is now on-line and operating again, after a password problem was fixed (bug #51016).
 * VisualEditor news:
 * According to the schedule, VisualEditor will be available to all users on the English Wikipedia on July 15.
 * Users should add TemplateData to templates to prepare for VisualEditor. A tutorial is available.
 * Parameters marked as "required" in TemplateData are now auto-added when you add a template (bug #50747).
 * Warnings are now displayed in VisualEditor when users edit pages that are protected or have edit notices (bug #50415).
 * Many other bugs have been fixed in VisualEditor during the past two weeks.
 * The Wikimedia technical report for June has been published, with a summary that can be translated.

Future software changes
 * A new version of the Single User Login system for global accounts will be enabled on July 17. Users will now automatically go back to the previous page instead of seeing the "Login success" page with logos.
 * The software that resizes images on all wikis will change on July 18. Resizing of big images will be faster and more reliable, and the resolution limit for GIF, PNG and TIFF files (currently set at 50 megapixels) will be removed.
 * Edit tags (mostly used by AbuseFilter) will now also be on diff pages. They include a link to Special:Tags before the edit summary. Wikis that use links in tag messages should remove them.
 * Global edit filters are currently in testing and will be added to wikis later.
 * Wikivoyage wikis will start to use Wikidata for interwiki links on July 22.
 * A new [//tools.wmflabs.org/bawolff/gallery/index.php?title=Featured_pictures/Non-photographic_media image gallery design] has been proposed by Brian Wolff; comments and feedback are welcome.
 * An IRC discussion about Bugzilla is planned for July 16, at 16:00 (UTC) on the IRC channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion).

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 17:39, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-30
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Translations are available.

Recent software changes (Not all changes will affect you.)


 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 18. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 22, and on all Wikipedias on July 25.
 * A new version of the Flow Prototype can be tested on Wikimedia Labs.
 * VisualEditor news:
 * The schedule to add VisualEditor to non-English Wikipedias has been changed: the new editor will be available for logged-in users on the German (de), Spanish (es), French (fr), Hebrew (he), Italian (it), Dutch (nl), Polish (pl), Russian (ru) and Swedish (sv) Wikipedias on July 24, and for all users on those wikis on July 29.
 * A warning is now displayed if an edit made with VisualEditor matches an edit filter (bug #50472).
 * SpamBlacklist messages are also supported (bug #50826).
 * Users can now edit  blocks (bug #47678).
 * When a user types text at the end of a link, the link now expands to that text.
 * Freely-licensed fonts for the Cree, Inuktitut and Urdu languages were added to Universal Language Selector, fixing bug #42421 and bug #46693.
 * A Wikidata search plugin for the Firefox web browser was released by Jeroen De Dauw and can be downloaded from the Mozilla add-ons website.

Future software changes


 * The change of the Wikimedia image scaling system from ImageMagick to VipsScaler (announced in the previous issue) has been postponed until bug #51370 is fixed.
 * Administrators will no longer see an unblock link for autoblocked IP addresses on the contributions page (bug #46457).
 * A request for comments on site-wide CSS was started on MediaWiki.org.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 21:10, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-31
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes; not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 25. It will be enabled on non–Wikipedia sites on July 29, and on all Wikipedias on August 1.
 * Wikivoyage was offline for around 40 minutes on July 24.
 * Pywikipediabot moved their code from SVN to git; bot owners need to update their tools.
 * The Notifications and Thanks extensions were added to Meta-Wiki on July 26; other wikis will get them soon.
 * It is now possible to add edit summaries on Wikidata using the API; the feature will be added to user interface soon.
 * The software that resizes large PNG images on all wikis was changed on July 25. Resizing of PNG files bigger than 35 megapixels should be faster and more reliable now.
 * Three new webfonts (Gentium, Old Persian and Shapour) will be added to Universal Language Selector., ,
 * Special:MIMESearch, which gives a list of files by type, will be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis with MediaWiki version 1.22/wmf12 (bug #13438).
 * A mailing list to discuss multimedia features was started; users are encouraged to sign up.
 * VisualEditor news:
 * On July 24, VisualEditor was added for logged-in users on the German (de), Spanish (es), French (fr), Hebrew (he), Italian (it), Polish (pl), Russian (ru) and Swedish (sv) Wikipedias; it will be added for all users on those wikis on July 29.
 * A preference to completely disable VisualEditor while it is in beta phase was added on July 24.
 * Many bugs were fixed in right-to-left languages.
 * It is possible again to scroll down in the template editing window (bug #51739).
 * VisualEditor now works with the FlaggedRevisions extension. (bug #49699)
 * If the user opens VisualEditor using a section edit link, the title of the section is added to the edit summary (bug #50872).
 * Invisible templates now can't be deleted by accident or on purpose (bug #51322).

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 20:52, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

= 2013-08 =

Tech News: 2013-34;
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

New features


 * The previous version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on August 15. It was enabled on non-Wikipedia sites on August 19, and on all Wikipedias on August 22.
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.22/wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on August 22. It will be enabled on non-Wikipedia sites on August 26, and on all Wikipedias on August 29.
 * You can now use new styles of galleries. Please give feedback to User:Bawolff.
 * You can now visit a random page in a category, for example Special:RandomInCategory/Science. (25931)
 * You can now use the HTML5 tag to say where a word can be cut. (52468)
 * Gadget authors: you can now use the  hook, so that your scripts are re-run when a page is changed after the   event (for example using Ajax). (30713)

Problems fixed
 * There was a bug where file redirects didn't work when a file was renamed; it is now fixed. There is still an issue with purging, but it should be fixed soon. (52200)
 * Special:SpecialPages provided by special pages will now all be updated on each wiki every six months. This will for example give you recent information on uncategorized pages, unused templates and most wanted pages (see details).
 * There was a bug that caused false positives for anti-blanking edit filters; it is now fixed. (52077)

VisualEditor news
 * The "edit" and "edit source" tabs and section edit links can now be changed more easily; for example, some wikis are using "edit source" for wikitext editing, and "edit beta" for VisualEditor. You can ask for the same change in bugzilla.
 * You can now edit references that are added inside a  block. (51741)
 * You can now test on mediawiki.org new basic tools to add and edit struck text (with the VisualEditor - Icon - Strikethrough-a.svg button for the  tag), lower text (VisualEditor - Icon - Subscript.svg for  ), upper text (VisualEditor - Icon - Superscript.svg for  ), underlined text (VisualEditor - Icon - Underline-a.svg for  ), computer code (VisualEditor - Icon - Code.svg for  and  ), math text (VisualEditor - Icon - Equation.svg for  ), Egyptian hieroglyphs (VisualEditor - Icon - Hieroglyphics.svg for  ), and to say that text is in another language (VisualEditor - Icon - Language.svg for  ). (51609, 51612, 51611, 51590, 51610, 52352)
 * You can now use VisualEditor with the Opera browser.

Future
 * Starting on August 26, you will be able to use data from Wikidata on Wikivoyage sites.
 * Starting on August 27, you will also get notifications on the mobile site if you're logged in to a wiki using notifications.
 * Starting on August 28, all users with an account will be using HTTPS to access Wikimedia sites. HTTPS brings better security and improves your privacy. Some countries (like China) will not use HTTPS. If HTTPS causes problems for you, tell us on meta.
 * Starting on August 29, you will get the code editor interface to edit JavaScript and CSS pages on all wikis.
 * The plan to use Solr for search in MediaWiki was changed; instead, Elasticsearch is now planned.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 20:07, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

= 2014-02 =

Tech News: 2014-08
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 13. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 18, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 20 (calendar).
 * You can now use the list of active users again. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41078] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/111258/]
 * The new search tool (CirrusSearch) now gives more importance to content namespaces if you search in several namespaces. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61053]
 * You can now directly link to files viewed with MultimediaViewer, the new tool for viewing media files. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56469]
 * You can read the summary of the Wikimedia technical report for January 2014.

Problems
 * On February 9, Wikimedia Labs was broken for about 2 hours due to an XFS file system problem.
 * On February 11, there were problems with VisualEditor for about 20 minutes due to a server logging issue.
 * On the same day, for about 20 minutes there were issues with page loading due to database problems.
 * There were issues with page loading between 21:00 UTC on February 13 and 11:00 UTC on February 14 for users in Europe. It was due to a cache server problem.
 * On February 14, all sites were broken for about 15 minutes for users in Southeast Asia, Oceania and the western part of North America. It was due to problems with cache servers.

VisualEditor news
 * The link tool now tells you when you're linking to a disambiguation or redirect page. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50240]
 * You can now change image display (like thumbnail, frame and frameless) with VisualEditor. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38129]
 * Wikitext warnings will now hide when you remove wikitext from paragraphs you are editing. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51701]
 * You will soon be able to create and edit redirect pages with VisualEditor. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50878] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47328] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57173]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  08:38, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Education Program technical update, February 2014
We've started working on "editor campaigns", a system that we expect will eventually be able to replace our current Education Program extension (and be useful for many other purposes as well). The early work with that project will focus on a system for signup up new editors for editing campaigns (such as courses, but also edit-a-thons, Wiki Loves Monuments, etc.). Because of that, progress will be slow on the current course page system. However, we have several improvements that should be available within the next few weeks.

As part of the effort to make course pages behave more like regular wiki pages, we've enabled editing of course pages by anyone. Users who currently have the right to edit courses will have access to all the fields (so that they can change the start/end dates, and change the enrollment token). Users who currently cannot edit courses will be able to edit only the "page text" portion. This change should take effect on 2014-02-27.
 * Anyone can edit the main text of course pages

We've considerably simplified the interface for editing course pages, removing the options to rename courses. Changing the title of a course would also move the course page, creating confusion and leading to a number of bugs. Several other parts of the course editing interface were not very useful, so we've removed them to make it easier on newcomers. This change should take effect on 2014-02-27.
 * Simplified course editing interface

Two students participating in the Facebook Open Academy mentorship program are currently working on additional Notifications for course pages. For the first of these, users will be notified whenever someone else adds them to a course.
 * Additional Notifications

Once again, if you have feedback about these new features, or other questions or ideas related to course pages, please let me know!--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:38, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Subscribe or unsubscribe from future Wikipedia Education Program technical updates.

Tech News: 2014-09
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf15) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 20. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 25, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 27 (calendar).
 * The new search tool (CirrusSearch) was added to the Italian Wikiquote and all Wikiversity projects. Users can now enable it in their Beta options. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/114156/] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/114169/]
 * The Universal Language Selector was enabled on all Wikimedia wikis again. You can enable web fonts in your ULS options (see how).

VisualEditor news
 * You will soon be able to add and edit, and in the page settings menu. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57173] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57167] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57168]
 * You will soon be able to use the Ctrl +Alt +S or ⌘ +Opt +S shortcuts to open the save window in VisualEditor. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50897] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/110434/]
 * You will soon be able to preview your edit summary when checking your changes in the save window. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42139] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/112490/]

Future software changes
 * You will soon be able to use the tag again. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59798]
 * You will soon be able to post messages with the MassMessage tool in all talk namespaces. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60132] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/94698/]
 * Notifications will soon work in all namespaces. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55491][//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56311][//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/93508/]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  10:18, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

= 2014-03 =

Tech News: 2014-10
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.  Recent software changes


 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf16) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 27. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 4, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 6 (calendar).
 * When users enable web fonts by default, Universal Language Selector will now log if they don't have fonts to display pages correctly. This information will be used by developers to improve font support in the future. Read more about missing fonts. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/113876/]
 * You can now use Guided tours on the Czech and Japanese Wikipedia. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to [//translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&group=ext-guidedtour&filter=&language=&action=translate translate it] and ask in [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org Bugzilla]. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/115824/]
 * You can now use information from Wikidata in all Wikisource wikis. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/115393/]
 * The multimedia team is now posting weekly updates on their mailing list.

VisualEditor news
 * You can now change image size to default for your wiki. If you add new images to pages, they will also be default size. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47804] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50379] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/114420/]
 * If you switch from VisualEditor to wikitext editing, your edit will now be tagged. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56465]
 * Template parameters now have a bigger, auto-sizing input box for easier editing. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61289]
 * VisualEditor now has Arabic, Finnish and Kölsch icons for text styling. If you want icons for your language, ask in Bugzilla. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/115636/] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/115512/] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/115424/]

Future software changes <section end="tech-newsletter-software-news"/> Problems
 * The new tool for viewing media files will soon show a progress bar and a thumbnail while loading full images. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/113963/] [//wikimedia.mingle.thoughtworks.com/projects/multimedia/cards/146]
 * You will soon be able to make user contributions show only page creations. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42026] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/115189/]
 * Article Feedback Tool will be removed from the English and French Wikipedias on March 3. It will also no longer be possible to add this tool to any Wikimedia wiki. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61163]
 * Wikis using the new search tool will come back to the old tool for a few hours starting at 00:00 UTC on March 6. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61879]
 * For about an hour on February 23, there were problems with page loading due to a MediaWiki bug. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/114994/]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W10"/> 09:30, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-11
<section begin="technews-2014-W11"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. <section begin="tech-newsletter-software-news"/> Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf17) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 6. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 11, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 13 (calendar).
 * You can now use the new search tool (CirrusSearch) on all Wikiquote projects. You can now enable it in your Beta options. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/116919/] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/116992/]

VisualEditor news
 * It is now easier to edit templates. Complex tools are now in the "advanced" mode. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61822] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55434]
 * It is also easier to edit images. You now have more options and they are explained better. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61059]
 * VisualEditor adds fake blank lines so you can put your cursor there. They are now smaller and animated to be different from actual blank lines. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47790]
 * We have improved the tool to add special characters. The buttons are now larger. More changes are coming. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/116661/]
 * You can now use new keyboard shortcuts to undo the last action, clear formatting, and show the shortcut help window. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53356] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52140] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56453]

Future software changes <section end="tech-newsletter-software-news"/> Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W11"/> 09:10, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
 * You will soon be able to use a Beta option to show a shorter list of language links. That way, Universal Language Selector will only show languages that are relevant to you. You will still be able to search for other languages. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/116726/]
 * CirrusSearch will soon automatically index newly imported pages. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60053] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/116896/]
 * It will soon be possible to use CSS to style buttons in templates on all Wikimedia wikis, without needing JavaScript. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/114085/]
 * An IRC discussion with the Wikimedia Foundation Language Engineering team will take place on March 12 at 17:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion).

Tech News: 2014-12
<section begin="technews-2014-W12"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. <section begin="tech-newsletter-software-news"/> Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf18) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 13. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 18, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 20 (calendar).
 * You can now view smaller versions of PNG images bigger than 20 megapixels. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/117809/]
 * You can now use the new search tool (CirrusSearch) on all [//noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=small.dblist small] wikis. You can now enable it in your Beta options. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/118482/] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/118638/]
 * You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for February 2014.

VisualEditor news
 * Searching for template parameters in now case-insensitive. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51673] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/117305/]
 * Required template parameters now have an asterisk (*) next to their edit boxes. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/117327/]
 * Several template dialogs are now smaller, and their insert buttons have changed wording. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50998]

Future software changes <section end="tech-newsletter-software-news"/> Problems
 * You will soon see an error message if you try to log-in or register with an invalid or taken username. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/117437/]
 * You can now test first version of a tool that includes OpenStreetMap maps inside the UploadWizard. Comments are welcome.
 * You will soon be able to use the Hovercards tool as a beta feature.
 * VisualEditor was slow to load on March 13 because of an API issue.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W12"/> 07:14, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-13
<section begin="technews-2014-W13"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. <section begin="tech-newsletter-software-news"/> Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf19) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 20. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 25, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 27 (calendar).

VisualEditor news
 * You can now double-click or press the <kbd class="keyboard-key nowrap" style="border:1px solid #AAA;background:#F9F9F9;padding:1px 3px">↲ Enter key on an image or template to change its settings. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50996] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54827]
 * Pages that don't exist will now show as red links in the edit mode. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37901]
 * You will no longer be able to try to use VisualEditor on pages translated using the Translate extension, and you will see a warning if you try to edit pages marked for translation. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50284]
 * You will now see a full warning, including the most recent log entry, when you try to edit protected pages with VisualEditor. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51215]

Future software changes <section end="tech-newsletter-software-news"/> Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W13"/> 18:56, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Typography Refresh will be enabled for test wiki and MediaWiki.org users who use the Vector skin on March 27. For users on non-Wikipedia wikis, it will be enabled on April 1, and for Wikipedia users on April 3. If you don't use Vector as your skin, you will not be affected.
 * You will be able to use the Hovercards tool as a beta feature on all wikis from March 26.
 * You will soon be able to include the Whatlinkshere special page in other pages. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35486] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/106625/]

Tech News: 2014-14
<section begin="technews-2014-W14"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. <section begin="tech-newsletter-software-news"/> Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf20) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 27. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 1, and all Wikipedia wikis on April 3 (calendar).
 * Typography Refresh was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on March 27. You'll only see it if you use the Vector skin. For users on non-Wikipedia wikis, it will be enabled on April 1, and for Wikipedia users on April 3.
 * CirrusSearch, the new search tool, was enabled as a beta feature on over 30 new wikis on March 27. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/121305/] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/121305/]

VisualEditor news
 * Blocked users now see the same messages in VisualEditor as in the wikitext editor. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51454] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52004]
 * The search box for re-using a reference in VisualEditor is now cleared after each use. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=61959]
 * New links on sub-pages no longer point to the wrong location in VisualEditor. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=58314]
 * VisualEditor's media dialog no longer breaks when opening some types of images. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62024]

Future software changes <section end="tech-newsletter-software-news"/> Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W14"/> 09:20, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
 * You will not be able to use the Wikitech wiki for a short period around 16:00 UTC on April 1 due to a server change.
 * CirrusSearch will become the main search engine for all non-Wikipedia wikis except Commons, Meta and Incubator on April 2.
 * You will soon be able to use a new special page listing duplicate files. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/85446/]
 * Deleting a version of a file or a version of its description page will soon be shown differently in the logs. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/115640/]

= 2014-04 =

Tech News: 2014-15
<section begin="technews-2014-W15"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. <section begin="tech-newsletter-software-news"/> Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf21) was scheduled to be deployed to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 3, however it was temporarily put on hold due to localization issues. (calendar).
 * Typography Refresh was enabled on non-Wikipedia wikis on April 1, and on all Wikipedias on April 3. You'll only see it if you use the Vector skin.
 * CirrusSearch was enabled as the primary search method on over 400 non-Wikipedia wikis on April 2. [//https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/123246/]

Future software changes <section end="tech-newsletter-software-news"/> Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W15"/> 08:00, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
 * A new special page (Special:TrackingCategories) will soon list all the tracking categories on a wiki. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60333] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/112323/]
 * All Wikiquote projects will start using language links from Wikidata on April 8.
 * The Hovercards feature will soon work with right-to-left languages. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62970] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62970]
 * You will soon be able to download files directly from MediaViewer, the new multimedia tool. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/120738/]
 * MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on MediaWiki.org on April 10. Comments are welcome.
 * You can help check that users can read CAPTCHAs in your language.

Tech News: 2014-16
<section begin="technews-2014-W16"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. <section begin="tech-newsletter-software-news"/> We are looking for contributors to help write new issues every week. If you would like to help, please contact us.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf22) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 10. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 15, and all Wikipedias on April 17 (calendar).
 * MediaViewer was enabled for all users on MediaWiki.org on April 10. It will be enabled for all users on the Catalan (ca), Hungarian (hu) and Korean (ko) Wikipedias and English Wikivoyage on April 17. Comments are welcome.  [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/125031/] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/125032/]
 * Font issues caused by Typography refresh for Windows users were fixed on April 7. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/124387/] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63512]

VisualEditor news
 * You will now see only three options when you try to add a template parameter in VisualEditor; you will see other options after a click.
 * The size changing controls in VisualEditor media editing dialog were simplified further.
 * The wikitext editor tab will now fold into a drop-down menu in the Vector skin if there is not enough space on your screen. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50255] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/123503/]

Future software changes <section end="tech-newsletter-software-news"/> Problems
 * The font used for body text on Wikimedia wikis will change to your system default sans-serif font. This temporary change will be enabled on all non-Wikipedia wikis on April 15, and on all Wikipedias on April 17. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/124475/] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/125447/]
 * Files from Commons seen on another wiki will soon have a tab saying "View on Wikimedia Commons". The create tab will change to "Add local description" (see screenshot). [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/104182]
 * You will soon be able to hide Notification and Hovercards pop-ups by pressing the <kbd class="keyboard-key nowrap" style="border:1px solid #AAA;background:#F9F9F9;padding:1px 3px">Esc key. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53588] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62948] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/123638/] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/120343/]
 * Shorter lists of language links will soon work in right-to-left languages. Languages that you have used before will be shown in the list. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62981]
 * You will soon be able to send messages with the MassMessage tool to all pages in a given category. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57473] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/120334/]
 * The date format user preference will soon be moved to the appearance tab. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63582] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/125370/]
 * An IRC discussion with the Wikimedia Foundation Multimedia team will take place on April 16 at 18:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on Freenode (time conversion).
 * Wikimedia Foundation servers were updated after a security bug called Heartbleed was discovered last week. You should change your password as an extra precaution. [//meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Blog/Drafts/Heartbleed]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W16"/> 07:18, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-17
<section begin="technews-2014-W17"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available. <section begin="tech-newsletter-software-news"/> Tech News updates
 * You can now subscribe to an [//meta.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=featuredfeed&feed=technews&feedformat=atom Atom] or [//meta.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=featuredfeed&feed=technews&feedformat=rss RSS] feed to read Tech News in your news aggregator. The newsletter will now also show on the [//en.planet.wikimedia.org/ English Planet Wikimedia] every Monday.
 * We are looking for contributors to help write a new issue every week. If you would like to help, please contact us.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf1) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 17. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 22, and all Wikipedias on April 24 (calendar).
 * CirrusSearch was enabled as a beta feature on 27 new wikis on April 18. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/126671/] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/126806/]
 * Problems with various fonts in SVG files were fixed last week. Files that use DejaVu Sans Condensed, DejaVu Serif Condensed, DejaVu Sans Light, Kochi Gothic and Kochi Mincho fonts now show correctly. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63206] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/126834/] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64002] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/126729/]
 * The page view statistics site developed by Henrik (stats.grok.se) should now work faster.
 * You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for March 2014.

VisualEditor news
 * If you try to add a category which redirects to another category, VisualEditor will now suggest adding the target category directly. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52414] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/118218/]
 * VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear on Education Program pages. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53477] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/125233/]
 * You can now use VisualEditor on Meta-Wiki and the French Wikinews by enabling it in your preferences. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/125774/] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63841] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/125538/]

Future software changes <section end="tech-newsletter-software-news"/> Problems
 * MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the Czech (cs), Estonian (et), Finnish (fi), Hebrew (he), Polish (pl), Romanian (ro), Slovak (sk), Thai (th) and Vietnamese (vi) Wikipedias on April 24. Feedback is welcome. [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/125033/]
 * Edits by anonymous users will now be marked with a new CSS class . This way, you can easily make those edits use a different color, font or background. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43179] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/115095/]
 * The user preference to remember login will soon be removed from all wikis. The edit review preferences will be moved to the recent changes tab, and the preference for the WikiLove tool will be moved to the editing tab. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52342] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63576] [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52757]
 * You will soon be able to give parameters to preloaded templates. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12853] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/116482/]
 * You will soon be able to use CodeEditor in read-only mode on pages that you cannot edit. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45258] [//gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/120397/]
 * It is now proposed to replace [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org Bugzilla], [//gerrit.wikimedia.org Gerrit] and other tools by a single tool called Phabricator. You can test Phabricator and add your opinion on MediaWiki.org.
 * An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on April 22 at 03:30 AM UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion).
 * For about 40 minutes on April 17, there were problems with page loading due to high server load.
 * There is a problem with the rendering of formulas with MathJax. If you enabled MathJax in your preferences, you might need to turn it off and on again. [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63915]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W17"/> 08:34, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Education Program technical update, April 2014
Since the last update, development of the editor campaigns project has been continuing, and it's almost at the point that it will be useful to users running edit-a-thons and other non-course outreach events. (If you are planning such an event soon and would like to beta test it for tracking the contributions of newcomers, get it touch.) In the meantime, we've made a few small improvements and bug fixes to the Education Program extension:

The default end date for courses is now approximately six months in the future, instead of immediately. This will prevent the common problem where a user creates a new course page but does change the default dates, resulting in a course that is immediately considered "ended" and thus cannot be enrolled in.
 * Default course end date

Whenever a user gets added to a course by someone else, they will now receive a Notification.
 * Notifications when you get added to a course

The student profile special page (Special:Student/Username, not to be confused with Special:Students) is a page that lists the courses a student editor is enrolled in, and is also supposed to list the articles that user is working on. However, the list of articles can include incorrect data in cases where an instructor or volunteer assigned the articles to the student editor. These profiles are being removed from the extension altogether. This change should go into effect Thursday, May 1. (Logs are still available to find out which courses a user is enrolled in.)
 * Disabling individual student profiles

A nearly complete patch from Facebook Open Academy student Jeff Lloyd will add a new type of Notification: students will be alerted to edits made by others to the article(s) they are assigned (as well as the corresponding talk pages). Expect to see this feature within the next several weeks.
 * Article edit notifications for students coming soon

Bugs in the course page creation process (now fixed) led in some cases to duplicate listings for the same course at Special:Courses. This happens when the same course page had two (or more) different course ID numbers. It is possible to clean up such duplicate entries using by making calls to the API. I've documented this process and written a Python script for it.
 * Duplicate courses and API deletion

If you have feedback about these changes, or other questions or ideas related to course pages, please let Anna Koval or me know!--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 19:23, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Subscribe or unsubscribe from future Wikipedia Education Program technical updates.

Tech News: 2014-18
<section begin="technews-2014-W18"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf2) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on April 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on April 29, and all Wikipedias on May 1 (calendar).
 * You can now use interwiki prefix  to link to pages on Wikimedia Commons.

VisualEditor news
 * You will soon be able to set content language and direction with VisualEditor.
 * VisualEditor now works on all Wikipedias after broken  pages (and similar) were fixed last week.
 * VisualEditor dialogs now use an animation of moving lines rather than animated GIF images.

Future software changes
 * CirrusSearch will be enabled as a beta feature on 41 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and the Swedish (sv), Russian (ru), Polish (pl), Japanese (ja) and Chinese (zh) Wikipedias next week. This change means that CirrusSearch will now be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis.
 * MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the French (fr) and Dutch (nl) Wikipedias on May 1. Feedback is welcome.
 * The mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will soon include filters to limit the number of uploaded files that are copyright violations.
 * CodeEditor will soon have a status bar about errors and warnings.
 * You can test a new version of Winter, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages. Comments are welcome.

Problems
 * For about 30 minutes on April 21, there were problems with image scaling due to a high server load.
 * On April 22, it was not possible to use the Collection extension for about 90 minutes due to a server move.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W18"/> 07:23, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

= 2014-05 =

Tech News: 2014-19
<section begin="technews-2014-W19"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf3) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 1. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 6, and all Wikipedias on May 8 (calendar).
 * The Compact Personal Bar was added as a beta feature to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 1. It will be added as a beta feature to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 6, and to all Wikipedias on May 8. To test it, you can enable it now in your preferences on MediaWiki.org.
 * It is now easier to disable the CodeEditor tool.

VisualEditor news
 * External links in VisualEditor are now in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki.
 * The template tool now tells you if a parameter is obsolete.
 * You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData; VisualEditor will add them like required ones.
 * There is a new type for TemplateData parameters:  for file names.
 * Editing formulae in VisualEditor will soon be enabled for all users.
 * You will soon be able to try a new beta feature to edit text in another language.

Future software changes
 * MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on the Japanese (ja), Portuguese (pt), Spanish (es), Swedish (sv) and Telugu (te) Wikipedias on May 8. Feedback is welcome.
 * You can help translate about 100 new language names that have been added to our data source. They are used, for example, as hover text for interwiki links. Send an e-mail to Nemo if you want to help.
 * If you click on a redirect page in your watchlist, you will soon access the redirect itself.

Problems
 * For about 40 minutes around 00:20 UTC on April 29, there were problems with page loading due to high server load.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W19"/> 07:29, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-20
<section begin="technews-2014-W20"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf4) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 8. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 13, and all Wikipedias on May 15 (calendar).

VisualEditor news
 * A new citation system in VisualEditor was enabled on the English Wikipedia. It will soon be enabled on more wikis.
 * Templates that were previously broken in VisualEditor should now appear correctly.

Future software changes
 * It will soon be possible to move category description pages. Pages in changed categories will still have to be moved independently.
 * You will soon be able to clear your watchlist with one click or through the API.
 * You will soon be able to link to Flow posts and workflows with.
 * The jQuery JavaScript library will soon be updated. Please check that your gadgets and scripts will still work.
 * The Vector skin will work faster, as the sidebar will no longer collapse partly after being loaded.
 * MediaViewer will be enabled for all users on Wikimedia Commons on May 15. Feedback is welcome.
 * An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on May 14 at 18:00 UTC on the channel  on freenode (time conversion).
 * Toolserver tools will be stopped on June 30. Please make sure to change gadgets [ that link to the Toolserver] to point to Tool Labs instead.

Problems
 * There were problems with generating file thumbnails for all wikis between May 3 and May 6 due to a configuration error.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W20"/> 06:00, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-21
<section begin="technews-2014-W21"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News updates
 * Tech News is one year old this week; thank you for being with us!

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf5) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 15. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 20, and all Wikipedias on May 22 (calendar).
 * The jQuery JavaScript library was updated on May 16. Please check that your gadgets and scripts still work.
 * MediaViewer was enabled for all users on the Kannada (kn) and Telugu (te) Wikipedias on May 13. It will be enabled on the German (de), English (en), Italian (it) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias and on all Wikisource wikis on May 22. Feedback is welcome.
 * VisualEditor was added as a beta feature to Wikimedia Commons on May 15. You can enable it in your preferences.
 * You can read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for April 2014.

VisualEditor news
 * VisualEditor's buttons and icons can now be accessed using keyboard keys.
 * VisualEditor's new citation tool now matches templates like  and not just.
 * VisualEditor's welcome message will no longer be shown to users who have already seen it.
 * VisualEditor now shows a clearer message when you cancel an edit.
 * The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor.

Future software changes
 * User ID number will no longer be visible in preferences.

Problems
 * For several hours on May 16, there were problems with loading gadgets on some wikis due to a server problem.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W21"/> 07:18, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-22
<section begin="technews-2014-W22"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf6) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 22. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on May 27, and all Wikipedias on May 29 (calendar).
 * MediaViewer will be enabled on all Wikisource wikis on May 29, and on the German (de) and English (en) Wikipedias on June 3. Feedback is welcome.

VisualEditor news
 * VisualEditor's welcome message and wikitext warning now say that you can switch to source mode editing and keep your edits without saving them.
 * A bug that caused files not to appear after saving edits in the  namespace was fixed last week.
 * VisualEditor tabs will no longer appear in namespaces where VisualEditor is disabled.
 * It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor; many minor bugs related to images have also been fixed.
 * VisualEditor will no longer convert spaces to underscores inside links to pages in namespaces that include spaces in their names.

Future software changes
 * Wikimedia Labs will stop working for about 10 minutes around 18:00 UTC on May 30 due to a server upgrade.
 * It will soon no longer be possible to upload different files under the same name at the same time using the UploadWizard tool.
 * Links to TIFF, DjVu or PDF files created with the syntax  will now show an image caption if there is any text after page number; previously they caused the given page to appear.
 * You will soon see information about global blocks for IP addresses on their contributions page on your local wiki.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W22"/> 08:29, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

= 2014-06 =

Tech News: 2014-23
<section begin="technews-2014-W23"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf7) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on May 29. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 3, and to all Wikipedias on June 5 (calendar).
 * CirrusSearch was enabled as the primary search method on all Wikipedias with less than 100,000 pages on May 30.

VisualEditor news
 * Templates that redirect to other templates now get the TemplateData of their target.
 * The toolbar of the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible after you save an edit with VisualEditor.
 * VisualEditor now checks if your browser supports SVG files to avoid displaying broken icons.
 * There is now a new type for TemplateData parameters:  for dates and times in the ISO 8601 format.

Future software changes
 * MediaViewer will be enabled on the German (de) and English (en) Wikipedias on June 3. Feedback is welcome.
 * You will soon see a warning if you visit a contributions page for a user that does not exist.
 * The search tab will soon be removed from user preferences. You will be able to set your search preferences on [ Special:Search].
 * You will soon see a label next to the little triangle arrow for the Actions menu in the Vector skin (screenshot).

Problems Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W23"/> 08:07, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
 * For about 20 minutes on May 29, all wikis were broken due to a configuration error.

Tech News: 2014-24
<section begin="technews-2014-W24"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf8) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 5. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 10, and to all Wikipedias on June 12 (calendar).
 * You can now use guided tours on the Arabic (ar), Bengali (bn) and Norwegian (no) Wikipedias. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to [//translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&group=ext-guidedtour&filter=&action=translate translate it] and ask in [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org Bugzilla].

VisualEditor news
 * You should no longer be able to add empty references with VisualEditor.
 * The "use an existing reference" button in the reference tool is now shown as disabled, rather than hidden, when the reference has content.
 * You will now see category contents again after saving an edit to a category page with VisualEditor.

Future software changes
 * MediaViewer will be enabled by default on all wikis on June 12. Feedback is welcome.
 * You will be able to use information from Wikidata directly in Wikiquote pages starting on June 10.
 * On wikis with the Translate extension enabled, translation administrators will soon be able to use the page migration tool to import existing translations to the new system.
 * You will soon see metadata on file description pages for Ogg files (example video, example audio). Some metadata with non-English characters may need to be purged or transcoded to UTF-8 before they show correctly.
 * Templates containing  or   tags will no longer need dummy parameters to prevent caching.
 * You will no longer be able to use Special:Thanks directly. The page will soon show an error message when you visit it.
 * Hovercards will no longer flicker.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W24"/> 07:39, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-25
<section begin="technews-2014-W25"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Reminder
 * You can subscribe to the wikitech-ambassadors mailing list to get news more quickly and to send feedback or report problems.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf9) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 12. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 17, and to all Wikipedias on June 19 (calendar).
 * You can now read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for May 2014.

VisualEditor news
 * You can now easily see the target of a link or other information using the context menu.
 * When you edit a reference, you can now empty it and click the "use an existing reference" button to switch it to re-use another reference.
 * You can now add and edit  and   in the page settings menu.
 * The tool to insert special characters is now wider and simpler; the order of mathematical symbols is now correct.

Future software changes
 * Media Viewer will be enabled by default on all wikis on June 19. Feedback is welcome.
 * You will no longer be able to use navigation popups and Hovercards at the same time.
 * You will no longer see image thumbnails on search results pages on Wikibooks and Wikisource wikis.
 * It will soon be possible to globally rename global (<abbr title="Single User Login">SUL ) users.
 * Tablet users will be redirected to the mobile view of Wikimedia wikis starting on June 17.
 * The special page that lists most linked-to templates will soon include pages from all namespaces; it will also be renamed to.
 * An IRC discussion about Phabricator will take place on June 17 at 17:30 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion). You can also read a blog post about the upcoming switch to Phabricator.
 * You can now comment on the draft 2014-15 goals of the Wikimedia Foundation engineering department.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W25"/> 07:13, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-26
<section begin="technews-2014-W26"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf10) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 19. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on June 24, and to all Wikipedias on June 26 (calendar).

VisualEditor news
 * You can now drag-and-drop selections of content, not just files and templates.
 * When dragging an item, you will now see a line that helps you to drop it.
 * You can now only move an image to the start of a paragraph, not to the middle of it, so you don't accidentally split it.
 * You will now be warned if you add wikitext to file captions and references.

Future software changes
 * You will no longer be able to upload files on wikis that do not have any copyright tags.
 * CirrusSearch will be enabled as the primary search method on additional 70 new wikis, including Meta-Wiki and Wikimedia Incubator, during the next week.
 * CirrusSearch results will soon take into account categories, the first paragraph and the wikitext of a page. You will also be able to use regular expressions to search the wikitext. It will take a few days for the changes to be enabled on all wikis.
 * You will soon be able to watch translations for e-mail notifications without receiving an e-mail when they are reviewed by another translator.
 * An IRC meeting to organize old high priority MediaWiki bug reports will take place on June 24 at 17:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion).

Problems
 * On June 19, all wikis were broken for about 15 minutes due to a high server load.
 * Between June 13 and June 15 there were problems with the scaling of video files due to a configuration error.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W26"/> 07:20, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor global newsletter—June 2014
Did you know? The character formatting menu, or "" menu lets you set bold, italic, and other text styles. "Clear formatting" removes all text styles and removes links to other pages.

Do you think that clear formatting should remove links? Are there changes you would like to see for this menu? Share your opinion at MediaWiki.org.

The user guide has information about how to use VisualEditor. The VisualEditor team is mostly working to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.


 * They have moved the "" link out of the "" menu, into the "" menu. Within dialog boxes, buttons are now more accessible (via the Tab key) from the keyboard.
 * You can now see the target of the link when you click on it, without having to open the inspector.
 * The team also expanded TemplateData: You can now add a parameter type "  for dates and times in the ISO 8601 format, and  "  for values which are true or false.  Also, templates that redirect to other templates (like   →  ) now get the TemplateData of their target (bug 50964).  You can test TemplateData by editing mw:Template:Sandbox/doc.
 * Category: and File: pages now display their contents correctly after saving an edit (bug 65349, bug 64239)
 * They have also improved reference editing: You should no longer be able to add empty citations with VisualEditor (bug 64715), as with references.  When you edit a reference, you can now empty it and click the "use an existing reference" button to replace it with another reference instead.
 * It is now possible to edit inline images with VisualEditor. Remember that inline images cannot display captions, so existing captions get removed.  Many other bugs related to images were also fixed.
 * You can now add and edit  and   in  the "" menu, rounding out the full set of page options currently planned.
 * The tool to insert special characters is now wider and simpler.

Looking ahead
The VisualEditor team has posted a draft of their goals for the next fiscal year. You can read them and suggest changes on MediaWiki.org.

The team posts details about planned work on VisualEditor's roadmap. You will soon be able to drag-and-drop text as well as images. If you drag an image to a new place, it won't let you place it in the middle of a paragraph. All dialog boxes and windows will be simplified based on user testing and feedback. The VisualEditor team plans to add autofill features for citations. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments and adding rows and columns to tables.

Supporting your wiki
Please read VisualEditor/Citation tool for information on configuring the new citation template menu, labeled "". This menu will not appear unless it has been configured on your wiki.

If you speak a language other than English, we need your help with translating the user guide. The guide is out of date or incomplete for many languages, and what's on your wiki may not be the most recent translation. Please contact us if you need help getting started with translation work on MediaWiki.org.

VisualEditor can be made available to most non-Wikipedia projects. If your community would like to test VisualEditor, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.

Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Saturday, 19 July 2014 at 21:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas and Pacific Islands) or on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 9:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East, Asia).

To change your subscription to this newsletter, please see the subscription pages on Meta or the English Wikipedia. Thank you! --Elitre (WMF) 14:57, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-27
<section begin="technews-2014-W27"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on June 26. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 1, and to all Wikipedias on July 3 (calendar).

VisualEditor news
 * Context menus in VisualEditor will no longer flicker and disappear when you insert a new reference, formula, image, etc.
 * A bug that prevented relocating items due to cache was fixed last week.
 * VisualEditor will no longer scroll to the bottom of the page when you try to edit section 0. When you try to add a formula, VisualEditor will no longer scroll to the top of the page.
 * Links to category pages or file pages added with VisualEditor will now work correctly.

Future software changes
 * You will no longer be able to upload files on wikis that do not have any copyright tags.
 * Toolserver tools will be stopped on June 30. Please make sure to change gadgets [ that link to the Toolserver] to point to Tool Labs instead.
 * CirrusSearch will be enabled on June 30 as the primary search method on 34 new wikis, including the Czech (cs), Danish (da), Finnish (fi) and Hebrew (he) Wikipedias.
 * All Wikimedia wikis will be using a security method called perfect forward secrecy starting on July 1. If you see a problem, please report it.
 * Starting on July 1, it will be possible to globally rename global (<abbr title="Single User Login">SUL ) users.
 * You will soon see block information when you visit the contributions page or try to edit the user page or user talk page of a user who is affected by an IP range block.
 * You will soon be able to use  as a magic word to produce the pipe character, for instance for use in tables.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W27"/> 06:53, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

= 2014-07 =

Tech News: 2014-28
<section begin="technews-2014-W28"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News updates


 * We are looking for contributors to help write a new issue every week. If you would like to help, please contact us.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 3. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 8, and to all Wikipedias on July 10 (calendar).
 * CirrusSearch was enabled on July 1 as the primary search method on 36 new wikis, including the Norwegian (no), Portuguese (pt) and Ukrainian (uk) Wikipedias.
 * It is now possible to create Atom or RSS feeds for Word of the Day, Word of the Week and similar entries on Wiktionary wikis.
 * You can now use a graphical interface to edit TemplateData information on the English (en), French (fr) and Italian (it) Wikipedias.

VisualEditor news
 * Saving an edit with VisualEditor will now be much faster.
 * You can now add a caption when you add a file to a page with VisualEditor. You can also change the file to a different one and keep the existing caption.
 * When you switch to the Edit source tab, you are now asked to keep your changes. You no longer need to find the option in the menus.
 * The reference tool that adds empty  tags is now at the bottom of the Cite menu, below references that use templates like.
 * Context menus will no longer be shown over items that you can edit directly, for example formulæ.

Future software changes
 * Starting on July 9, it will be possible to globally rename global (<abbr title="Single User Login">SUL ) users. The feature was first scheduled for July 1, but was delayed due to bugs.
 * A plan to enable CirrusSearch as the primary search method on the 11 largest Wikimedia wikis has now been prepared.
 * If you use references on a page, you will soon always see them at the bottom of the page, even if you forget to add the  tag (or a template).
 * Black-and-white XCF images will soon display correctly.
 * Description pages of SVG files will soon always show download links for multiple resolutions (example). The links were previously shown only for SVG files in large original resolutions.

Problems
 * Between July 2-3, there were problems with loading pages on multiple wikis due to a configuration issue.
 * For a few hours on July 1, there were problems with uploading new files on Wikimedia Commons due to a configuration error.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W28"/> 07:07, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-29
<section begin="technews-2014-W29"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 10. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 15, and to all Wikipedias on July 17 (calendar).
 * It is now possible to globally rename global (<abbr title="Single User Login">SUL ) users. Please go to the username changes page on Meta if you want to rename your account on all wikis.
 * You can now read a summary of the Wikimedia technical report for June 2014.
 * You can now read the latest issue of the Wikidata newsletter and translate it into your language.

VisualEditor news
 * The tool to add templates and citations will now work for templates that include HTML comments or templates in their titles.
 * The button to make images full size should now work correctly.
 * References will now be shown in the default font size again.

Future software changes
 * CirrusSearch will be enabled as the primary search method on the Dutch (nl) and Japanese (ja) Wikipedias on July 14, and on the Polish (pl) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias on July 16.
 * The Special:Version page will soon show the exact version of MediaWiki and all extensions installed on your wiki (example).
 * It will soon no longer be possible to order printed books of wiki articles via PediaPress. You will still be able to create PDF files.
 * Pages that use  more than once will soon show a warning. You can use   to hide it.
 * Pages that have the list of references added automatically will soon be added to a tracking category. Administrators will be able to configure the name of the category on their wikis.
 * Administrators will soon be able to easily merge histories of two pages using Special:MergeHistory.
 * Administrators will soon see links to delete files on Special:ListFiles.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W29"/> 07:48, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-30
<section begin="technews-2014-W30"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf14) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 17. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 22, and to all Wikipedias on July 24 (calendar).
 * CirrusSearch was removed as the primary search method from Wikimedia Commons and the Spanish (es) Wikipedia due to a high server load. The plan to enable it on the Dutch (nl), Japanese (ja), Polish (pl) and Russian (ru) Wikipedias was also postponed to a later date.
 * The tool that stores information about languages (CLDR) was updated to its latest version. You can still help translate language names into your own language so they can be used in the sidebar and other places.
 * Translation memory for newly translatable pages should now offer more suggestions.
 * A tool to convert MediaWiki pages to LaTeX is now available on [//tools.wmflabs.org/ Tool Labs].

VisualEditor news
 * Tablet users visiting the mobile version of Wikimedia wikis will be able to use a special version of VisualEditor starting on July 31. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu. Feedback is welcome.
 * All windows in VisualEditor have now a new design. Main action buttons will always be located in the top bar and will use simple words rather than icons.
 * You can now easily open links inside the link editor, for example to see their target.
 * Several bugs related to the positioning of the cursor around some items (like images and references) were fixed last week.

Future software changes
 * It will soon be possible to watch individual discussions in the Topic namespace rather than whole pages for talk pages using Flow.
 * You can give comments about the new version of Winter, a proposal to have a fixed toolbar at the top of wiki pages.
 * An IRC meeting to organize Pywikibot bugs will take place from July 24 to July 27 on the channel #pywikibot on freenode.
 * A request for comments on how to improve MediaWiki API was re-started on MediaWiki.org. Your feedback is welcome.

Problems
 * Mailing lists were broken for about 16 hours between July 14 and July 15 due to a server problem.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W30"/> 07:42, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-31
<section begin="technews-2014-W31"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf15) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 24. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 29, and to all Wikipedias on July 31 (calendar).
 * You can now download the latest version of the anti-vandalism tool Huggle.

VisualEditor news
 * You can now create, edit, and view HTML comments in VisualEditor.
 * The cancel button in VisualEditor toolbar has been removed. You can still use the Read tab and the Back button in your browser to cancel your edit.
 * If you try to use a template which has no suggested or required parameters in TemplateData, you will now be asked to add the parameters.
 * You will no longer be able to edit a page if you can't create it, for example on pages protected against recreation.

Future software changes
 * You will soon be able to filter [//meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=rights&user=&page=&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=&hide_patrol_log=1&hide_review_log=1&hide_thanks_log=1 Meta-Wiki's user rights log] by wiki and user.
 * Wikidata will soon be able to store data about article status, for example "good article" or "featured article". If your wiki has highlighted content, please make sure it is on [//meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata/Development/Badges Wikidata's list].
 * It will soon be possible to directly create empty pages, for example in the user namespace.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W31"/> 08:09, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

= 2014-08 =

Tech News: 2014-32
<section begin="technews-2014-W32"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Tech News updates


 * Tech News will be presented at the Wikimania 2014 conference in London! If you will be attending the conference, please join us in Auditorium 2 at 14:30 local time on Sunday, August 10.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf16) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 31. Due to the Wikimania 2014 conference, it will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on August 12, and to all Wikipedias on August 14 (calendar).
 * You can now test a new tool to render wiki pages as PDF files.
 * You can now download an update to the archive of Wikimedia Commons files (uploaded up to December 31, 2013). If you have free space on your computer, please help preserve the files.
 * New users using the mobile Commons site now need to make 75 edits before they can upload a file.

VisualEditor news
 * You will no longer see an edit confirmation message after making a null edit with VisualEditor.
 * VisualEditor will no longer change underscores to spaces in category sort keys.
 * Many bugs that resulted in inserting the pawn and snowman symbols were fixed last week.
 * Several bugs related to the use of references were also fixed.

Future software changes
 * You will soon have a user option to watch pages where you revert edits.
 * All Toolserver data will be deleted in September. If you want to back up your data, [mailto:ts-admins@toolserver.org contact Toolserver administrators] before August 31.
 * Pages in the  namespace on wikis using the Translate extension will no longer be indexed by search engines.

Problems
 * Wikivoyage wikis were broken for about 45 minutes on July 29 due to a configuration problem.
 * Some users were not able to log in on test wikis and MediaWiki.org between July 31 and August 1. The problem is now fixed.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W32"/> 07:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-33
<section begin="technews-2014-W33"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes VisualEditor news
 * Due to the Wikimania 2014 conference, there were no MediaWiki changes this week. The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf16) will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on August 12, and to all Wikipedias on August 14 (calendar).
 * Bureaucrats on all Wikivoyage wikis are no longer able to merge two accounts into one.
 * Tablet users visiting the mobile version of non-Wikipedia wikis will be able to use VisualEditor starting on August 12. The feature will also be enabled on all Wikipedias on August 14.

Future software changes
 * Internet Explorer 6 users will soon see a JavaScript-free version of Wikimedia wikis; JavaScript tools and scripts will no longer work on that browser. If you use Internet Explorer 6, make sure to update to a newer browser!
 * If you visit a special page that requires you to be logged-in, you will soon be automatically redirected to the log-in page instead of seeing a warning.
 * You will now always see recent changes to the source language text when editing a translation with the Translate extension.
 * An IRC meeting to discuss VisualEditor will take place on August 14 at 09:00 UTC on the channel #wikimedia-office on freenode (time conversion).

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by MediaWiki message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W33"/> 07:43, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor global newsletter—July and August 2014
''The VisualEditor team is currently working mostly to fix bugs, improve performance, reduce technical debt, and other infrastructure needs. You can find on Mediawiki.org weekly updates detailing recent work.'' VisualEditor - Link editing inline box.png.

The user guide is also being updated.
 * alt=Screenshot of VisualEditor's link tool|240px]]

The biggest visible change since the last newsletter was to the dialog boxes. The design for each dialog box and window was simplified. The most commonly needed buttons are now at the top. Based on user feedback, the buttons are now labeled with simple words (like "Cancel" or "Done") instead of potentially confusing icons (like "<" or "X"). Many of the buttons to edit links, images, and other items now also show the linked page, image name, or other useful information when you click on them.
 * Hidden HTML comments (notes visible to editors, but not to readers) can now be read, edited, inserted, and removed. A small icon (a white exclamation mark on a dot) marks the location of each comments.  You can click on the icon to see the comment.
 * You can now drag and drop text and templates as well as images. A new placement line makes it much easier to see where you are dropping the item.  Images can no longer be dropped into the middle of paragraphs.
 * All references and footnotes (  tags) are now made through the "" menu, including the "" (manual formatting) footnotes and the ability to re-use an existing citation, both of which were previously accessible only through the "" menu. The "" is still added via the "" menu.
 * When you add an image or other media file, you are now prompted to add an image caption immediately. You can also replace an image whilst keeping the original caption and other settings.
 * All tablet users visiting the mobile web version of Wikipedias will be able to opt-in to a version of VisualEditor from 14 August. You can test the new tool by choosing the beta version of the mobile view in the Settings menu.
 * The link tool has a new "Open" button that will open a linked page in another tab so you can make sure a link is the right one.
 * The "Cancel" button in the toolbar has been removed based on user testing. To cancel any edit, you can leave the page by clicking the Read tab, the back button in your browser, or closing the browser window without saving your changes.

Looking ahead
The team posts details about planned work on the VisualEditor roadmap. The VisualEditor team plans to add auto-fill features for citations soon. Your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted. Support for upright image sizes is being developed. The designers are also working on support for adding rows and columns to tables; you can already provide feedback about the design workflow. Work to support Internet Explorer is ongoing.

Feedback opportunities
Please share your questions, suggestions, or problems by posting a note at the VisualEditor feedback page or by joining the office hours discussion on Thursday, 14 August 2014 at 09:00 UTC (daytime for Europe, Middle East and Asia) or on Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 16:00 UTC (daytime for the Americas; evening for Europe).

If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter for English Wikipedia only or at Meta for any project. Thank you! --Elitre (WMF), 17:53, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-34
<section begin="technews-2014-W34"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf17) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on August 19, and on all Wikipedias on August 21 (calendar).
 * There is a new protection level called superprotection. At the moment, only some Wikimedia Foundation employees have access to it. Administrators can't edit "superprotected" pages. [//meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Superprotect_rights]
 * You can now create empty pages directly. A message asks you to confirm that you want to create an empty page.
 * You can search for Wikimedia tools using a new list of tools.
 * You can watch the first videos from Wikimania 2014. Some of them are about technical topics. More videos will come later.

Wikidata
 * After August 19, you can use Wikidata for inter language links on Wikinews.
 * After August 19, you can use Wikidata for badges like "good" or "featured" articles. Next week, you will be able to show the badges in the article sidebar on Wikipedia, Wikisource and Wikiquote.

Problems
 * There was an issue with ProofreadPage and WikiEditor on Wikisource wikis. It is now fixed.

Tech news written by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W34"/> 07:17, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-35
<section begin="technews-2014-W35"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

VisualEditor news
 * There was a error when you put your cursor directly after a reference list. It is now fixed.
 * You can now add colors to links in the editor using gadgets. You can do this to see links to redirects or disambiguation pages.
 * If you use Internet Explorer, you will soon be able to use VisualEditor.

Future software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf18) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 21. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on August 26, and on all Wikipedias on August 28 (calendar).
 * After August 26, you will have a central JavaScript and CSS page. They will be on Meta-Wiki and will work on all wikis. Read more on the help page.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W35"/> 09:21, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

= 2014-09 =

Tech News: 2014-36
<section begin="technews-2014-W36"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * You can now test a new Beta Feature to see links to other wikis in the sidebar. The links come from Wikidata.
 * You can now search pages that link to a page. Use the  keyword in your search.
 * A redirect to a section now changes the URL in the address bar of your browser. If "Dog" redirects to "Animals#Dog", you now see "Animals#Dog" instead of "Dog#Dog".
 * If you are testing Flow, you now have a Flow tab in your Notifications. It is called "Messages". [//www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Echo_(Notifications)/status#2014-08-monthly]

VisualEditor news
 * You can no longer delete required fields in templates.
 * We fixed many Internet Explorer bugs. If you use Internet Explorer 11, you will get VisualEditor next week. Support for earlier versions is coming next.
 * VisualEditor now looks better in Monobook.
 * We fixed a bug where some of your typing could be undone when you used "cut" (Ctrl+X).
 * You will no longer see empty or deleted categories among the suggestions when you add a category.

Future software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf19) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since August 28. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 2, and on all Wikipedias on September 4 (calendar).
 * There is a proposal to build a database on Commons for file data. It will make it easier to see the author, license and topics. You can give feedback on this idea. You can also come to the IRC chat on September 3 at 18:00 (UTC) in  at freenode.
 * You can give feedback on Media Viewer until September 7. You can say what needs to be improved and ask other people to give feedback too.
 * You can test a new version of the tool to show math. It uses MathML. Report bugs in bugzilla.
 * You will no longer be able to upload images from the mobile site.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W36"/> 07:49, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-37
<section begin="technews-2014-W37"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

VisualEditor news
 * From Thursday, Internet Explorer 11 users will get VisualEditor. Support for earlier versions is coming next.

Future software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf20) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 9, and on all Wikipedias on September 11 (calendar).
 * You will soon confirm a "Thanks" inline instead of in a dialog.
 * You can read more about the plan to move to Phabricator, a tool that will help people develop the MediaWiki software and report bugs.

Problems
 * There were problems with JavaScript and CSS on Friday, September 5 because of a code error.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W37"/> 09:33, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-38
<section begin="technews-2014-W38"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * You can now change the style of links to disambiguation pages. This is done with the  CSS class.
 * There was a problem on right-to-left wikis with Wikidata log entries. The text was messy in watchlists and recent changes. The problem is now fixed. The same problem will be fixed soon for user names.
 * New users are randomly chosen for a test on 12 Wikipedias. They get messages with ideas of articles to edit. The ideas come from what they have already edited.

Problems
 * There was a problem with loading images on September 10.

VisualEditor news
 * If you don't select text when you add a link, the link now shows a number.
 * The citation tool no longer offers to reuse a citation if there are none on the page yet.
 * You can now use help buttons in the "" menu to see what the options are for.

Future software changes
 * The latest version of MediaWiki ( 1.24wmf21 ) is on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since September 11. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis on September 16, and on all Wikipedias on September 18 (calendar).
 * These changes are coming with the new version:
 * If you use Internet Explorer 7, JavaScript will no longer work. JavaScript tools and scripts will no longer work in that browser. You should update to a newer browser. [//www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Compatibility#Grade_C]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W38"/> 08:34, 15 September 2014 (UTC)