2017 wikitext editor/Feedback/2017/11

Post your feedback about using the first iteration of the 2017 wikitext editor as a Beta Feature. While you can disable it by unchecking the New wikitext mode checkbox in your Preferences (Beta tab), the Contributors team welcomes your feedback and ideas, especially on user interface decisions and the priorities for adding new features. All comments are read, in any language, but personal replies are not guaranteed. You can learn how to structure well your submission.

If you are reporting a problem directly on this page, please include your web browser, computer operating system, and wiki skin (usually Vector, sometimes Monobook). Also, while editing to reproduce a problem, please try to append &safemode=1 at the end of the URL; if the problem disappears, you are using a gadget or script that interferes with the editor.

We are trying to keep the page tidy by providing links to relevant tasks while closing threads. You can help by adding {{tracked|T######}}. By all means, feel free to re-open a thread if you need to!

See also:

View open developer tasks – Complete workboard – Report a new bug in Phabricator – Join the IRC channel

buttons

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i can't save my edits because of the buttons Insintesicosojfp (talk) 18:33, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

@Qualcuno dei miliardi uguali e diversi, what would be the issue with them? Please see How_to_report_a_bug or How_to_report_a_bug/it to learn how to report a problem in a way that's actionable to others. Non si capisce cosa intendi. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:36, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Also: It's okay to write in Italian on this wiki. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

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Error editing

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only lets you edit the latest version of the page, not the previous versions Ortisa (talk) 17:53, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Hey @Ortisa. Would you give me a concrete example for this? Here's mine - it worked (I restored a version of the page that was blanked), so I need to figure out more. Thanks. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:50, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

@Elitre (WMF) Sorry. It was my mistake @Ortisa Ortisa (talk) 16:14, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

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no use for wikisource

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Hello,

I tried this tool on wikisource. It works fine, but all specific tools developped for our specific tasks disappear. It's not only useless, it's making it harder to work :( Hsarrazin (talk) 12:37, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback, @Hsarrazin. If Wikisource users haven't made a list of what isn't working with the newest editor, it could be time to start one, so we have an idea of who are the people we should be talking to/assisting in case we can provide guidance in getting code updated so that it is compatible. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:11, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

I think that @Tpt (our main developper and maintainer of the wikisource interface) has already reported the problems... Hsarrazin (talk) 10:31, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

The only thing that was discussed recently was the VE column at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/276/, nothing about the wikitext editor AFAIR. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:40, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

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Undo's and popup reverts don't work

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T78550

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T180737

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T179994
Resolved

Hello everyone!

One of the things I do a lot on Wikipedia is reverting edits, either because it is vandalism/disruptive or the revision before was better, etc. Although I have both rollback and Twinkle, I also use the revert tool in the popups and the undo link that everybody has access to, generally if I want to undo one or two particular changes while keeping others. However, with the 2017 wikitext editor I find that neither undo nor popup reverts work as they did before. Could anyone investigate and consider repairing this flaw soon?

Many thanks,

SGG Some Gadget Geek (talk) 17:10, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi! Your username looks very relevant here :) If you're talking about this tool, you need to investigate with its maintainers about why it may not be working as you'd expect. I am not sure about the undo links - a simple revert to last edition seems to work fine to me, but most importantly I believe that its interface is actually the same than the 2010 wikitext editor one, so if there's a problem there it's not due to the newest editor? Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:09, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi Elitre,

The undo function actually brings me back to the 2010 editing box, as you stated. But besides this, there seems to be no other way to access the old window. If I, say, go to an old revision of a page (for example, this instance in which a user blanked an article page) and click "edit" there (expecting to see an empty editor without any content), the 2017 editor loads the current revision, which is not what I expect. So it can't possibly have to do with just the popups, although I did post in that talk page (Wikipedia talk:Tools/Navigation popups). I do really like the 2017 editing UI and don't want to be forced back to the 2010 UI so I hope someone can look into this problem soon.

Best,

SGG Some Gadget Geek (talk) 15:11, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

SGG, I think you've found a VisualEditor/Single edit tab problem with the blank page/wrong revision. Can you please go to w:en:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing and tell me what your "Editing mode" is? For example, mine is set to "Show me both tabs".

By the way, if you ever need to open a page in the 2010 WikiEditor, then you can hand-edit the URL to say &action=submit (rather than &action=edit ). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:28, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Mine's is set to "show me both tabs" as well. Although at first I did not use the Visual Editor much, it has improved to the extent that I am now using it as much as the old editor. But there are still a couple of things that I get done using the old editor faster (especially making wiki-links), so it's highly unlikely that I will change my editing mode setting in the near future. Some Gadget Geek (talk) 01:01, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I think I've figured out where that &action=edit was coming from. Perhaps that's part of the problem. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:52, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Text and selection are shifted

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I just tried the new wikitext editor. The first article I tried to edit was [https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Schwarzschild-Metrik&diff=170902272&oldid=170628851]. Unfortunately the text seemed to be not in the right place, so when I selected and typed something it appeared approximately two lines below (I took some screenshots which I can upload in case they help). Also it did not tell me that I deleted the first line of the table, neither in the editor nor in the preview, I could only see it the diff-view In general it feels very bad, because in this particular case which happened to be my first test for a while, the editor was unusable, the preview was not what it looks like afterwards in the article and the only way to tell is to save it and revert it afterwards in case it broke something. Apart from that it is terribly slow, one always has to klick again on something before being able to edit the edit-summary or something in the text. While I like the idea of being able to switch to the visual editor and autocompletion for the citation templates, it seems to be very far away from being able to replace the old editor. Debenben (talk) 22:02, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

HI @Debenben. I'd be glad to take a closer look at your issue. Can you say which browser, operating system and skin you have? Also, more specific steps to reproduce would be very welcome. Have you tried using keyboard shortcuts? They do wonders for people who are annoyed by extra clicks. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:41, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

debian stretch + firefox + vector skin

I tried it again and it is reproducible. The steps are

• enable new wikitext-modus
• go to Schwarzschild-Metrik
• click on "Quelltext bearbeiten" (edit source)
• press ctrl+f
• search for "mit dem Term"

and you will see that the selection is already two lines above the actual text Debenben (talk) 11:05, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

I had a closer look at the problem again and it appears only in combination with the new syntax-highlighting beta feature. Apart from a few glitches (e.g. w:de:Wikipedia:Umfragen/Konzept für mathematische Formeln the escaped chem tag inside the template) it always worked well in the old editor and I like the more discrete and consistent choice of colors, but does not seem to work together with the new one. One can notice a wrong positioning of the cursor with respect to the text starting from about the first ref tag and the red spell-checking marks are completely off. Debenben (talk) 18:14, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

I have also had some issues and also suspected it was tied to syntax-highlighting, but I still can't reproduce (also, one of my browsers is not up to date and I thought that could be the real reason). I can file a task anyway. What's the FF version? Thanks. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:00, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

It was version 52.4.0, I just updated to 52.5.0 deactivated all addons, went to the Italian Wikipedia where I did not change any settings and appended the &safemode=1 and it is still not working. Debenben (talk) 11:05, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

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unusably sloooooow...

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After typing in one sentence, I can watch the letters appear one by one over the course of half a minute or so. Chermago (talk) 13:08, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

@Chermago, thanks for your comment. That's not how it's supposed to work, of course. Mind sharing an example? Browser, operating system, skin? Getting the console log would likely help terribly, here. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:45, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Well, it appears to be related to JavaScript execution in general being a little slow over here (old machine, two big browsers, quite an amount of open tabs), and this new editor being much more JS-heavy.

Because, frankly, also the traditional editor is quite slow, but not nearly as slow.

From time to time some random script goes rampage and keeps one CPU thread at 100 % load. Then it's really devastating if responsiveness depends on executing some (competing) JavaScript. Chermago (talk) 17:57, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

For me, they appear about 1/10th of a second after pressing a button and that is already very annoying because one is used to them being visible instantly. Debenben (talk) 18:20, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

@Chermago, is there any chance that you're using Safari 11? I've been having problems with it. The Activity Monitor shows that the memory is slammed every day or two. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:58, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Oh, and would you mind trying something else? Try editing a page with &safemode=1 added to the end of the URL. If you have your prefs set to two tabs (not everyone does), then https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plötzlicher_Kindstod?veaction=editsource&safemode=1 should work. This will put your account in safemode, and if things are quite a bit better that way, then we have a better idea of where to look for the problem. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:03, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

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edit tools not appearing in edit window

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In the new wikitext editor the edittools from the mediawiki:edittools in not appearing below the edit window in Tamil wikisource. Hence it is very difficult to use the frequently used markups. Balaji (talk) 05:34, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

@Balajijagadesh, you may use the special characters menu for most purposes. It opens by clicking on the Omega sign. It can stay open as long as you wish. It has a Symbols section. Furthermore, you can actually customise it at the wiki level: this means you can put at the top of it a series of symbols, characters etc. that are locally very used. You can learn how to do that at VisualEditor/Special characters. You can see how it looks like on other wikis from that page, I added 3 screenshots there for you. Hope this helps. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:49, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi,

Thanks for the detailed reply. In addition to the symbols, the edittools page may also contain wikicodes, templates, etc like it is in this page https://ta.wikisource.org/s/1uu5 It would be very useful if there is way to add these codes in the edit box with less number of clicks. in the usual editor when we click edit the edittools are there right below the edit box. hence it is easy to add them in a single click. And also it is clearly visible to every one. But if all these are hidden in a omega symbol in the 2017 wikitext editor, then editor is going to be very difficult.

Regards Balaji (talk) 13:23, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

There isn't currently a way to display frequently used templates. (I added a comment here though https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T96710#3758967, FWIW.) Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:37, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

All of that could be added to the Special Characters menu, although I would encourage you to add only the things that are truly most needed (i.e., nothing that's already available from another button or through Insert > Template).

You only have to click the Omega symbol once. It stays open until you close it. Also, it stays visible at the top of the screen, so you don't have to keep scrolling up and down to see it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:10, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.