Topic on 2017 wikitext editor/Feedback

This 2017 wikitext editor has its good points, but speed is not one of them. A solution is a quick-launch editing toolbar, similar in principle to the quick-launch taskbar in Windows. People choose a few single-click commands. 5 or 6, for example.

The 5 main things I do all the time take 2 clicks or more in the 2017 wikitext editor.

Whereas in the old 2006 wikitext toolbar, etc. they are all one-click tasks (not buried in menus, and no popup intermediaries):

• Bold
• Italics
• Internal link (adds double brackets)
• External link (adds single brackets)
• Signature

A customizable wikitext editing toolbar section would allow people to choose. No one would be imposing their choices.

These could all be added to VisualEditor/Special characters, which stays open, if you can convince your community that they are generally needed.

I wasn't clear in my original title. I just added "personally" to the title.

I did mention in my original post: "A customizable wikitext editing toolbar section would allow people to choose. No one would be imposing their choices."

Firefox browser lets one customize the top bar by adding, removing, and moving around the icons and buttons up there. Maybe developers here could adapt some of their ideas.

VisualEditor/Special characters might work if it had a personally customizable row. But it would only work if it stayed open even after logging out and coming back. It would have to work like a gadget and not depend on cookies for that row to stay open. And I would need only that row to stay open. The other rows take up almost all the remaining space in the edit window.

Why is there no talk page just for VisualEditor/Special characters? The talk page tab Talk:VisualEditor/Special characters goes to a general Visual Editor talk page. That is very poor design.

*Talk:VisualEditor/Special characters redirects to

*Talk:VisualEditor

Some more hot buttons I would want in that always-open row or toolbar:

*Show preview

*Show changes

*Publish now (no edit summary or preview. For my sandboxes).

phab:T136152 is about making it easier to add your own personal buttons. You can do it now, if you want, but it's not the easiest thing to do.

(We unify talk pages to increase the odds that you'll get an answer. Scattered talk pages result in overlooked questions.)

Toolbar needs to be simple. I want it for wikitext editor mainly.

We need both:

1. We need MediaWiki to copy comments from various talk pages, and then paste them (or just their titles) to several central talk pages, and/or to lists of comment titles.
2. And we need the comments to stay on the original talk pages. Improvement often happens from collaboration on talk pages concerning specific topics.

Was most of this meant to be posted to the Talk:Talk pages consultation 2019?

Thanks for the link. I may never get around to participating in that thread, though. Who knows. Feel free to share my ideas. I am probably not the first with the ideas.