VisualEditor

VisualEditor is extending and improving the edit tools used at Wikimedia.
 * For help installing and running VisualEditor, see Extension:VisualEditor.
 * For changes made on this wiki using VisualEditor, see the filters [ visualeditor] and [ visualeditor-switched].

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

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

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

Rationale
The decline in new contributor growth is the single most serious challenge facing the Wikimedia movement. Removing avoidable technical impediments associated with Wikimedia's editing interface is a necessary pre-condition for increasing the number of Wikimedia contributors.

Status

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

Dashboards

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

History

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

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

Documentation

 * Generated code documentation
 * [[media:Page-retrieval.svg|Sequence diagram: Page Retrieval]]
 * [[media:VisualEditor_sequence-diagram_page-edit.svg|Sequence diagram: Page Edit]]

You can speak with us in our chat channel,.

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