VisualEditor/2012-13 Q2 forward-look

This is the forward-looking plan for the VisualEditor team (including Parsoid) for the 2012-13 Q2 cycle (i.e., from the start of October through to the end of December 2012).

Priorities for this quarter

 * Getting the APIs finished (so other people can more easily get involved)
 * Improve stability of the core platform on our target browsers (so it works when we…)
 * Deploy in some form to production in a way that lets test users edit real content

Browser matrix

 * This is not final, but work-in-progress for the VE team; data current as on end-September 2012.

The unofficial rule for Wikimedia's browser support is that we try to support reading'' (and not necessarily other functions) for all browsers used by at least 0.1% of page hits based on the WikiStats data. However, VE is complex and requires some specific advanced browser features (most specifically, ContentEditable support, but also very wide JavaScript support), which limits the platforms we can support either technically (indicated by being struck through) or resource-wise (indicated with a ).''

Notes:
 * Android : Android before v. 3.0 does not support ContentEditable, so we will have to fall back to wikitext editing.
 * BlackBerry : BlackBerry platform is very small and shrinking; VE team see no cost-benefit in supporting it.
 * Chrome : Chrome has auto-update (but rapid version increases); VE team roughly intend to support the current, soon-to-be-current, and immediately previous versions only.
 * Firefox : Firefox has semi-auto-update (but rapid version increases); VE team roughly intend to support the current, soon-to-be-current, and two immediately previous versions only.
 * Mozilla : Mozilla (as opposed to Firefox) is not a sufficiently-significant browser for the VE team to consider it a cost-benefit.
 * MSIE : MSIE is hideously broken but perplexingly popular; VE team intend to support IE9 and upwards.
 * Opera : Opera's document model and JS issues would mean a very high cost for minor benefit; Opera Mini does not support ContentEditable, so it will have to fall back to wikitext editing.
 * Safari : Safari on desktop and on iOS (iPad/iPhone/iPod) has very wide-spread auto-update; VE team roughly intend to support the current, and soon-to-be-current versions only.

Removed from plan

 * Parsoid
 * C++ implementation for December
 * We have decided to focus on the Node/JS prototype of the Parsoid for the December release as we do not expect to have the C++ version ready by then.


 * Node-handlers
 * Additional node-handlers for December
 * Due to the unexpected difficulties encountered, we do not expect to ship additional node handlers (for other content types) before December.

Areas of work
To come.

Open Questions
To come.