VisualEditor/changelog

For each weekly production deployment, the VisualEditor team write up a changelog of improvements made to VisualEditor.

2015-09-29 (MW 1.27.0-wmf.1)

VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.27.0-wmf.1 branch deployment on Tuesday, 29 September. In the week since the last deployment, the team focused mainly providing lots of bug fixes and some design tweaks and changes.

Link suggestions will now appear as search results instead of auto suggested list with description (T101169). This also resolves the page scrolling issue when link inspector was opened towards the end of a page which had a long list of link suggestions (T105418). We also moved the buttons (Open, Remove) down the link suggestions list so that they are visible to user (T71690). We changed the tab behavior for dialogs in a way that when users tab across a dialog they wont end up going outside the dialog (T69156).

We fixed a bad bug which meant user was not being able to select anything further after moving the cursor after a focusable node (comment/reference note etc.) (T108299). Earlier in mobile VE the edit conflict detection was not working, this is now fixed (T111894). We fixed several issues with link inspector in mobile VE. One of them was causing link suggestions open up off to the side of the search text box, we fixed this (T113643). Another one meant, link suggestion drop down would close when user tries to scroll through it to see more of those suggestions since it was only opening up on focus (T113636).

We fixed a bug specific to Firefox and Windows 7 where user was not being able to type Korean with dual script keyboard (T72353). Autolink was not getting applied when user pastes URL/ISBN as a listed item and press enter to go to a new line , now this is fixed (T113535).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on our integration server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.27.0-wmf.1 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-10-05 (MW 1.27.0-wmf.2)

VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.27.0-wmf.2 branch deployment on Tuesday, 6 October. In the week since the last deployment, the team focused mainly providing lots of bug fixes and some design tweaks and changes.

When editing formulæ and other blocks, errors are shown as you edit. This means the editor no longer bounces around when you type something wrong and correct it, in a message under the text box (T112610 and T113172). We improved the interface for the sheet music editor, so it now has separate tabs for different audio file options like MIDI (T114227 and T113354). This will enable users to discover them easily, and makes the design much neater. There is now a new parameter type for "URL" in TemplateData which will help users put the correct type of value for URL type parameter (T54880).

We quickly fixed a bug which meant the focus would always go to the info bubble (i) while clicking on a text input box (T114562) and we released this fix early, because of the irritating impact on users editing templates.

There was a minor regression where the automatic citation editor was not remembering which tab (Auto, Manual or Re-use) your most recently used (T114268). There was a minor bug which would cause the Add a template dialog to try forever to find a template when a search returning not matches; this is fixed now (T113647). Horizontal lines (<hr>s, sometimes written in wikitext as ----) are now wrapped, so that they are selectable and user can delete them (T52770) – adding new ones it not yet supported due to their infrequent nature. A minor bug, which complained about an error when you saved anything with mobile VisualEditor, is now fixed (T109525).

We quickly fixed couple of issues that we found during our pre-release testing. One of them meant it was not possible to edit an already saved wrong formula since it was not being visible to inspect it (T114455). Another one meant, unless the page was saved, while inserting a wrong LaTeX formula the last valid rendering was showing up instead of rendering error (T114480). Another, related bug which we fixed meant there was a Red highlight appearing instead of blue while selecting an image (T114527) The bug which caused the template descriptions to appear outside of the Add a template dialog was also found and fixed during pre-release testing (T114565).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on our integration server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.27.0-wmf.2 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-10-13 (MW 1.27.0-wmf.3)

VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.27.0-wmf.3 branch deployment on Tuesday, 13 October. In the week since the last deployment, the team focused mainly working on a new feature, on providing lots of bug fixes and on some design changes.

You can now directly upload images with VisualEditor to Wikimedia Commons whilst you edit (T40030). You can select any file from your computer to upload; in the details section of that dialog, you can specify Categories, Description and Date for the image file you are uploading.

We quickly fixed couple of issues around this new upload image feature that we found during our pre-release testing. One of them meant while switching to Search tab from Upload tab in Media Settings dialog it was clearing the input from the upload form which we fixed (T115059). Another one that we fixed meant, while renaming the name of the uploaded image there was an error without any error message (T114480). Another, related bug which we fixed meant the check-box for "This is my own work" that users have to mark themselves before uploading any image was remaining selected after user uploaded an image in that session (T114936) The bug which caused the Categories and Date value to remain sticky while uploading another new image was also found and fixed during pre-release testing (T114947). We also fixed the issue of drop down for Categories opening slowly during this period (T114945). Another related bug we fixed meant the date-picker in upload image dialog was not getting closed after selecting a date (T114942).

There was a minor bug where trying to re-use a reference that replaces itself was throwing an error, we fixed that (T90476).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on our integration server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.27.0-wmf.3 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-10-27 (MW 1.27.0-wmf.4)

VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.27.0-wmf.4 branch deployment on Tuesday, 27 October. In the two weeks since the last deployment, the team focused mainly working on a new education feature, infrastructure changes to support IME users, providing lots of bug fixes, and some minor design changes.

The first time they edit, users now get educational popups about links and references which explain how and when to use them (T108620). You can now drag-and-drop a file to start the upload dialog to insert it into the article (T40031).

The loading bar now shows a slight shadow beneath it to be clearer, in different colours depending on whether you're using Vector or MonoBook. You can now use three further sequences to quickly insert items without using the mouse – typing '<!--' will insert a comment, '{|' will make a table, and '<gallery' will make a gallery. The editor now responds much more quickly to enable the 'save page' button after the first edit you make (T115483). We removed the "open" button from all the different link editors, as you can click the link directly more easily and it was just clutter; we had already done this for one of the four link edit modes in August (T109646).

We found a bug, and immediately fixed and released a solution, that meant the link editor didn't work (T115448).

We fixed the ability to copy via right-clicking on a table cell (T113475). In our work to improve support for typing in different languages, we made a major change in the complexity of responding to editor events, which should significantly improve how well the editor works with input method editors (T113797, T113875). We also fixed a key bug that interfered with typing over the top of bold or linked text (T116269). We also fixed a bug caused during development that meant sequences would leave detritus in the document on use (T116180) and a pair which could interfere with IMEs and inspectors (T110378, T115811). We made a few improvements to the cross-wiki media upload tool which means you can still use it a second time, or if you get into difficulties (T115380, T116217, T116219, T116299). Cursoring next to unrecognised content no longer traps the cursor in an invalid place (T114545).

It is now possible to use the SyntaxHighlighter extension as a tool within the visual editor, which we will use in future to make editing formulæ easier (T49742). We switched a back-end API for talking directly to RESTbase to cope with a forthcoming breaking change. The Cite code now only loads if the extension is installed, speeding up load on third party wikis (T41621).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on our integration server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.27.0-wmf.4 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-11-03 (MW 1.27.0-wmf.5)

VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.27.0-wmf.5 branch deployment on Tuesday, 27 October. In the two weeks since the last deployment, the team focused mainly working on a new education feature, infrastructure changes to support IME users, providing lots of bug fixes, and some minor design changes.

Anyone can now switch from the wikitext editor to the visual editor and back as many times as you want (T49779); previously it was only possible one way, from the visual editor to the wikitext editor. You can do this by clicking the "wikitext" switch button in the toolbar of the visual editor (), and the "edit" (pencil) switch button in the toolbar of the wikitext editor (). If you have outstanding changes, you'll be asked if you wish to keep these changes or throw them away and start afresh. Note that this doesn't allow you to switch from a wikitext section edit yet (T117713).

We now show the sequences you can use in the help dialog in an "Insert" section, alongside other commands like copy, save or make heading (T116013). We improved the media search results by using the recommended ordering now provided by the search engine (T117036). When you use find and replace, we now start the search from the initial cursor position, which avoids scrolling back to the top in long documents.

We fixed and released early a bug that meant the new educational pop-ups introduced last week were always showing up for logged-in users, rather than only once (T117083).

We fixed a bug that meant you would get an error thrown if you opened page setting on a page after you'd blanked it (T107553).

We added a feature for showing a widget in an error state, which we will use to flag broken formulæ in the future (T114754).

You can monitor the live results of the automated browser tests (triggered every twelve hours) on our integration server. A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.27.0-wmf.5 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2015-11-10 (MW 1.27.0-wmf.6)

TK

2015-11-17 (MW 1.27.0-wmf.7)

TK

2015-12-08 (MW 1.27.0-wmf.8)

TK

2015-12-15 (MW 1.27.0-wmf.9)

VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.27.0-wmf.9 branch deployment on Tuesday, 15 December. In the week since the last deployment, the team focused mainly on merging the two edit tabs into one, which will be available for testing after the New Year, and lots of smaller feature and bug fixes.

Work on the single edit tab feature continues, which will replace the extra 'edit' tab with the ability to remember which editor you used last. Users will be able to set a preference to never or always try to use the visual editor, or show both tabs if they so wish. The feature is now available in a very early form for initial testing on test2.wikipedia.org. Further changes will be coming before the full task is completed, after which we will seek feedback before commencing a staged deployment of the feature to each wiki (T58337). Additionally, in the save dialog, the 'return to save' button is no longer bold and coloured-in, and the media dialog is now a little taller to compensate for an adjusted file upload process as part of T120867.

We released early a fixed to a bug arising from a fix last week which meant that galleries displayed oddly (T121557); our apologies.

We fixed a bug where the educational pop-ups that show the first time you edit could be obscured by other things in the interface (T116577). Clicking the 'remove' button for auto-numbered links now deletes them rather than doing nothing (T120705). Clicking the 'remove' button in the link context now works even if the cursor is at the beginning of the link text (T119923).

There was a bug which meant that when a link was deleted and replaced with text the screen wouldn't match what was saved; this is now fixed (T115001). We fixed a bug that arose during development before it was deployed for users which threw an error when the document started with a category or a template (T120975). We also fixed a bug which meant that an error would happen if you deleted a focusable node on a page which had no text (T121156). The loading of the editor is now tweaked slightly, which should avoid rare cases when the 'read' and 'edit' pages were fused together (T99139).

Internally, the code for creating a visual editor widget was re-written to let other tools like Flow re-use it more easily (T97166), and support pointing the user feedback tool to pages on another wiki (T92661).

A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.27.0-wmf.9 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2016-01-12 (MW 1.27.0-wmf.10)

VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.27.0-wmf.10 branch deployment on Tuesday, 12 January. In the four weeks since the last deployment, the team focused mainly on merging the two edit tabs into one, few smaller features and bug fixes.

The context menu for formulæ now shows two edit buttons: 'Quick Edit' and 'Edit'. Quick Edit will let user edit the formula inline, without displaying the large menu with mathematical symbols; Edit will open the full large dialog to let you change the formula (T120382). The RTL images with numbers in them will maintain the directionality and won't be flipped (T117949). All wikis where the visual editor is installed will now by default show new users the Welcome dialog (this was already the case for all Wikimedia wikis).

We quickly fixed and released the fix for a bug around Single Edit Tab during testing phase which meant then when a user had the option "Show me both edit tabs" enabled in the Preferences section, switching to wikitext editor was showing a blank page (T120987). We also released early a bug fix which was causing the context menu for template and code block to be broken (T121596). Also a fix to a very bad bug which was preventing users saving any edit on mobile was fixed and deployed early ( T121308).

There was a bug which was causing text inside Reference and Media dialog to appear without any left margin, we fixed that (T121450). We fixed a bug that arose during development before it was deployed for users which threw an error while trying to open VE (T122857). The bug which was not removing the link applied when cursor is at the beginning of the link text is now fixed (T119923). The switching to Read mode while VisualEditor is still loading won't make it unresponsive anymore (T99139). The bug which meant when user tries to insert a formula for the first time there is no input box appearing inside math dialog has been fixed ( T121164). The old revision id of a page will be preserved now when user switches to Wikitext editor from VisualEditor without making any changes (T120898).

A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.27.0-wmf.10 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2016-01-19 (MW 1.27.0-wmf.11)

VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.27.0-wmf.11 branch deployment on Tuesday, 19 January (and then again on 26 January after issues unrelated to these changes). In the week since the last deployment, the team focused mainly on merging the two edit tabs into one, with a few smaller features and bug fixes.

When you merge multiple cells, we now use the first value with content, if the very first cell or two don't have any contents. We made another pair of fixes for IMEs, this time one which meant you had to double-click to write into a table cell, unlike with normal text entry (T86589), and one which would end up with the wrong selection and so insertion oddities when you selected across a paragraph or list item break (T123716). Our work to provide a single edit tab interface into whichever editor the user wants continued with simplification and wider testing.

We made some improvements to the TemplateData system. First, the message about related pages (e.g. /doc) now shows as a warning, not an error (T103753). We show the icon as well as the label for layout options (T119361). The editor will avoid adding an extra blank line before the tag (T86917).

We fixed a bug that meant centralised feedback wouldn't work on posting to a Flow board if the subject was blank (T122414). A bug during development which meant that undo and redo steps were in the wrong order was fixed (T123793). We also fixed a bug which meant that an error happened after you saved a page because of an over-optimisation from December (T120699).

We dropped support for adding prefix/appendix labels to edit tabs/links, a feature we hadn't used for over a year.

A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.27.0-wmf.11 changelog, and all tasks closed in this period are on Phabricator's list.

2016-02-02 (MW 1.27.0-wmf.12)

TK