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New Editor Scheduled for Sitewide Release

Sarah Manley Sarah Manley August 29, 2011
Our new editor is ready for sitewide launch!
Sarah ManleyAdded by Sarah Manley

Over the past few months, we've been working to improve the editing experience on Wikia by redesigning the skin of the edit page. After lots of bug spotting, fixing and tweaking, we are excited to announce that it is now ready for further rollout across Wikia. On Wednesday, August 31 September 7th, the new editor skin will be released on all wikis.

We want to offer a big thanks for all of your bug reports. During this development process your reports helped us identify lots of edge cases, especially specialized messages and unique wiki setups, browser issues (yes we so love IE), as well as other tweaks. It is important to note that this release is not the end of development on the editor, and we will continue to list the major bug fixes and tweaks on the weekly technical update as they are identified and fixed.

As we continue to develop the editor, we are still considering many other suggestions, such as further updated category module (initial improvements coming on wednesday), improved notifications, and dark wiki tweaks. Next we will be improving loading speed along with investigating a visual mode spell checker!

Thanks again for all your great feedback — and please continue to provide further suggestions (and any bug reports) below.

Contents

Update - August 30Edit

Quick update on a few things we are currently investigating. These bugs will likely not be fixed before tomorrow’s release but we are actively working on them.

  • Opening links in a new tab with Ctrl+click from preview does not work. However, using the right-click context menu does work as expected and can be used while we resolve this.
  • Custom CSS backgrounds that use the body tag will pull the image into the editing window (which can make it tricky to see your edits). If you use this tag in your custom CSS, please adjust it to body.mediawiki (and try and avoid !important declarations), so it stays just on the background. Backgrounds set via the Theme Designer are not affected.

For tomorrow’s sitewide release we will also be pushing the following bug fixes:

  • Removal of the extra scrollbar that appeared when editing with visual mode switched off.
  • Chrome users will no longer see the annoying ‘paste’ dialog in the visual editor - we are trying a different method of fixing the core issue that is far less, well, annoying.

Update - August 31st Edit

With the release of this week’s code update, we pushed the planned fixes listed above and identified a few new issues (thanks for the reports, as always). In order to allow our technical team to properly fix the identified bugs, we are delaying the new editor sitewide release to next Wednesday September 7th. An additional high priority bug we are currently working on:

  • If you have visual mode disabled in your preferences, the Category module on the right rail sporadically does not allow you to see, add or remove categories. We are working to identify when and why this occurs only occasionally and will push a fix as soon as possible.
    • Update September 1: A fix for this has been pushed live to the site so the category module should be working as designed.

Thanks for your patience as we roll out the new editor. Please continue to post bug reports below.

Update - September 7Edit

The new editor is now sitewide across Wikia. Along with this release we have fixed the following:

  • A scrollbar will appear in the right rail whenever its content is longer than your browser window. Apart from being a general request, this also fixes an issue in Chrome with the ‘page down’ key.
  • The template namespace will never show the category module (as templates often use complex category coding).

And a quick item to highlight from recent feedback, that we plan to work on:

  • When in source mode, we will add text to the category module to indicate to users where to type category text, as this has been indicated as currently a little confusing.

Update - September 9Edit

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Retrieved from "http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Sarah_Manley/New_Editor_Scheduled_for_Sitewide_Release"
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1,292 comments


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  • Sarah Manley

    HI All - This post has been open for almost a month now and has almost 1300 comments! In order reduce the places we need to check, we are going to close comments here at this time, We will continue to update you of editor bug fixes and tweaks on the weekly technical update - and ask that as with all other bug reports, you please send them in via Special:Contact. We want to thank you for all of your reports and feedback so far. Your participation has helped us make this a better product for all Wikians. Have a great weekend!

    by Sarah Manley
  • Garnet1

    Thanks for the advices. Here is a screenshot of 1/3 sized editor. It change yesterday, maybe because of the user toolbar in bottom. I have this issue in Firefox , Google Chrome and Opera. Photo - http://nehrim.wikia.com/wiki/File:Editor.jpg And another trouble with tables, the buttons "Choose" background color and Border color don't work.

    by Garnet1
    history
    • Kirkburn

      Thanks for creating a screenshot - yeah that is definitely wrong. What browser are you using? It looks like Firefox on Windows XP, but I'm not sure what specific version of Firefox it is.

      by Kirkburn
    • Garnet1

      Yes, is Windows XP with Firefox 6.0.2.4262 like default browser, and the same thing is with Google Chrome 14.0.835.186 and Opera 11.50.1074.0.

      by Garnet1
  • 210.56.91.171

    Way to throw up on the editor!

    by A Wikia contributor
  • Leviathan 89

    For the JS in the preview box, no news?

    by Leviathan 89
  • Roads

    I know this has already been asked, but why is the editor now all white? It drives you crazy on certain darker-themed wikis.

    ---****--- Roads

    by Roads
  • Garnet1

    This new editor is a pain. 1. There is no more the unlink button. 2. In Preview i can't see the photos in slideshow 3. In fact, i must publish for see what is done 4. You can't check links in Preview 5. The table get automatically size width = height And today a special, the editor is 1/3 of the screen. Why this face-lift?

    by Garnet1
    • Roads

      You don't need the unlink button. Right click on a link, and select "Unlink" from the drop-down menu. And if that doesn't work, go into Source Mode and remove all coding from around the link's text until only the display text is there. Then switch back.

      ---****--- Roads

      by Roads
    • Sarah Manley

      You can also check links in preview - try right clicking on them. If that doesn't work, please let us know what browser you are in. What do you mean by the editor being just 1/3 of the screen?

      by Sarah Manley
    • Acer4666

      but ctrl+click doesn't work. That's a pretty necessary shortcut for people using laptop mouses I find

      by Acer4666
    • Kirkburn

      We're going to remove that block on direct preview link clicks, now that we have the 'are you sure you want to leave?' dialog. On unlink, yeah the right-click menu is the main option (or just delete the text) - we're not dead set on not having an unlink button, but it was very rarely used. Let me know if there are cases that this setup is a pain. Preview dialog JS will be looked at more. Not sure about the last one - could you give me some examples links/screenshots?

      by Kirkburn
      history
  • Acer4666

    Please make the summary back to the way it was, instead of this line break nonsense. It's impossible to paste lengthy links into your summary. ie, if I want to have the summary "see [[longpagenamelength#section]] for details", The thing puts a line break after the "see", and after the link, and you cannot view your summary properly. It boggles the mind why this was changed

    by Acer4666
    history
    • Kirkburn

      We are planning to tweak the edit summary back to how it was, though no ETA just yet (I want to improve the section title behaviour at the same time, especially that unusual code that appears in the edit box when you edit one). We wanted to make the box more like a normal edit box, but we recognize this has resulted some behavioural quirks (the line breaks, especially). First up, we're adding a label to the summary box.

      by Kirkburn
      history
  • Eladkse

    Still getting double scroll at Casualty Wiki.

    by Eladkse
  • Gourleyo

    How do you insert a template?

    by Gourleyo
  • Leviathan 89

    I have actually seen the "source mode" category suggestion working 2 times since it's was activated. I know it's the third times that I said this, but since everybody are saying it's working, I want to let you know that. (firefox 6.0.2)

    by Leviathan 89
    history
    • Kirkburn

      It doesn't start until you've typed about 3 characters, I believe, which could be the issue (similar to how LinkSuggest works in the source mode editor). Not ideal, we'll see about kicking it off earlier.

      by Kirkburn
  • ABX

    After month of break today I tried to edit one of my pages, and while I like most of the changes, MediaWiki:Edittools through popup made my working ten times longer. I have to often switch from latin to Cyrillic to latin and after trying many methods of input Latin keyboard with Cyrillic in edittools with mouse was my fastest way of input. Now with popup I lost it. Could it be possible to add checkbox to this popup to make it optionally embedded in right panel? There is a lot of empty space when other sections (with cats and templates) are not opened.

    by ABX
    • Sovq

      I like this idea. The ability to add/customize the tools available in the sidebar via Edittools would make my editing easier as well. The default 'Media', 'Categories' and 'Templates' blocks aren't doing the job for me.

      by Sovq
    • Leviathan 89

      I think the right side is too narrow, I opt for the bottom as a section which can be hidden/shown like the right sidebar

      by Leviathan 89
    • Sarah Manley

      Thanks for the feedback and example. That is one of the areas we are looking at tweaking.

      by Sarah Manley
    • Roads

      Tweaking? Remove it! Put in a bottom to the editor and put everything underneath that was in there before the change.

      ---****--- Roads

      by Roads
  • Weatherman22

    Would be good to be able to search this thread to see if it's been reported - so apologies if already known bug - it seems that the new editor baulks at editing any pages in visual mode that have footnotes. It claims that the page is to complex to edit in visual mode and throws you straight into source mode....

    Stuart

    by Weatherman22
    • SpikeToronto

      Searching would be amazing! But, article comments are not easily searched and don’t even have tables of contents. Sadly.

      by SpikeToronto
    • Kirkburn

      Weatherman22, I believe it's known - the complexity of wikitext presents some challenges for creating a true 'WYSIWYG' environment, meaning that sometimes we cannot properly render an editable 'visual' page. We will be working on reducing those cases, however.

      SpikeToronto, wrong reply? :)

      by Kirkburn
    • SpikeToronto
      Kirkburn: I don’t think so:
      Would be good to be able to search this thread to see if it's been reported …
      My comment was related to the opening phrase. I realize, though, that I did not answer his question. Smiley.png
      by SpikeToronto
      history
    • Kirkburn

      Oh yeah, sorry :) It does sound like a good idea, though.

      by Kirkburn
  • Sarah Manley

    Hi all - Its been another busy week of bug fixing and tweaking to the editor. Notable fixes and changes you will see on Wednesday:

    • No longer need to “press enter” after adding a category from the suggestion menu
    • Your custom toolbar will now appear while you are in edit mode (anons don’t have this toolbar, but we have also made some layout tweaks for them)
    • MediaWiki:Editnotice (and similar) now correctly being put in a notice box
    • For wikis with Semantic Mediawiki we have disabled the visual editor on special SMW namespaces and the Category namespace on SMW wikis in order to prevent issues with the preview button

    If any others get fixed and added to Wednesday's code push - we will let you know here. Happy editing!

    by Sarah Manley
    • SpikeToronto

      Thanks for the update! Smiley.png

      by SpikeToronto
    • Roads

      Add a bottom to it (I still think the bottomless editor feels awkward) and put MediaWiki:Edittools under it, along with everything else that was there.

      ---****--- Roads

      by Roads
    • Eladkse

      Roads: The toolbar will provide a bottom to it.

      by Eladkse
    • Kirkburn

      These tweaks should now be live! As ever, more are coming, will let you know when they're about ready to go.

      by Kirkburn
      history
    • Roads

      I think anons should have a toolbar just with history and what links here. It's not as if anons don't like handy shortcuts.

      ---****--- Roads

      by Roads
    • Kirkburn

      That's true, it's just that the toolbar is a fairly good solution for logged in users, an anons don't get that. We've not forgotten them, we'll just have to think about them a bit differently.

      by Kirkburn
  • Arkenholz

    Dear Sarah Manley, I'm arkenholz. The wiki whose title was PUBLIC-HEALTH NEW PARADIGMS disappeared altogether a few day ago. Any attempt to open it leads to a page saying: "OOPS, was that the correct address?". Can you help re-establishing accessibility to PUBLIC-HEALTH NEW PARADIGMS ? Thanks in advance. Arkenholz

    by Arkenholz
  • Acer4666

    We have a template, w:c:24:template:icons, that isn't showing on preview (it used to). It uses direct URL image linking, dunno if thats the problem. Also, preview box is still the wrong width, which is very irritating. And, it's be nice to add/alter the edit summary from the preview pop-up. Thanks!

    by Acer4666
    • Kirkburn

      I'll add the icon issue to the list of things to look at. On the edit summary, we don't want to put too much on the preview dialog, but that might be a possibility.

      by Kirkburn
  • CzechOut

    I have a couple a questions about the space in which the MediaWiki:newarticletext resides.

    I asked a while back in this thread if it was going to be possible to auto expand to the actual height of a particular newarticletext message. It's fine if that's not going to be possible, but could I get a final sorta "ruling" on it, so I know whether I need to start adapting my various custom "newarticletexts" at w:c:tardis to fit the current space better?

    Also, is it always going to have that sky blue overlay? Is there a way to customise that? We have an obsession for "precision in the colour of blue" at w:c:tardis, and that is just, well, not TARDIS blue.

    Thanks for your help. :)

    p.s. Oh, and I give up. How the heck do you change the teal blue of the Publish button? I've been trying for days. It really stands out as being wrong for our design. If you can just give me an CSS element name for that one, you have no idea how happy it would make me.

    by CzechOut
    history
    • Tm T

      The style is defined by using #EditPage .module_page_controls .wikia-menu-button, #EditPage .module_page_controls input[type="submit"] { }

      But I think simple #wpSave { } suffice for overriding it

      by Tm T
      history
    • CzechOut

      Well, see, that's what I thought, too. I mean, looking at it, those should be the right things to set, but the long form of the element name (ending in "submit") does nothing at all. And the short form #wpSave styles most things, but not the colour of the button itself. There's something just weird about ti all, because the preview button's mouseover is not controlled by just using #wpSave, whereas with wp#Preview, you have to go the extra step of defining #wpPreview:hover. Somehow the publish button is inheriting something from somewhere, but I'll be damned if I can figure it out.

      by CzechOut
    • SpikeToronto
      This worked for us:
      #wpSave { background-color: #bdb76b !important; border-color: #1f5d04 !important; color: #000000 !important; }
      Substitute your own colors.
      by SpikeToronto
  • Kirkburn

    Quick update on one of the more major tweaks coming up: we're planning to add the Wikia toolbar to the edit page - that is, the bar that you see at the bottom of the page when viewing articles. Currently we're testing it out, and it should be ready for next week. The effect is that it lifts the bottom of the editor off the page end, and adds a bunch of (customizable) navigation links. While anons won't see the toolbar, we are also tweaking the page end design for them too, lifting it off the bottom.

    by Kirkburn
    • CzechOut

      This is great news. Navigability from the edit page is one of the few things I really miss from the old editor.

      Put a search input box on the bottom right of the Wikia toolbar, and I'd be very happy. I still find it cumbersome to have to open up a new window just to get a search bar that'll do existence checks for me. Something about autosuggest in the new editor is waaaaaayyyy to slow for simple existence checking. But then auto-suggest has always been a touch slower than a search box, for some reason.

      by CzechOut
    • TK-999

      If I change the background-color property of body.mediawiki, will it affect this? I'm only asking because "background-image: none;" caused some minor issues.

      by TK-999
  • Starfleet Academy

    Known/Unknown bugs?: I have found that adding categories in Visual mode is just as hard if not harder that in Source mode. I add the category and it doesn't appear on the page. I go back in and it is not in the category section of the editor. Adding it again, mostly, gets it to appear.

    I have also found that I can't add Category links in the text of the page. When I have typed in the link it doesn't appear on the page at all. No broken link; nothing at all. I'm an admin on Locomotive Wiki. :)

    by Starfleet Academy
    • Starfleet Academy

      Second 'bug': doesn't work in Souce mode either.

      by Starfleet Academy
      history
    • Starfleet Academy

      I should say that the second 'bug' only happens when I link like this: [[Category:example]]. Works fine when I click the link button, but I don't usually.

      by Starfleet Academy
    • Kirkburn

      To link to a category page, and not include something in a category, the wikitext you need to type is [[:Category:Example]] <-- note the extra ':'. The link dialog deals with this automatically :)

      I think you may be running into a known bug in the first part: for some reason the visual mode category tool asks you to press enter again after choosing a suggestion - we should be getting a fix out for that soon.

      by Kirkburn
      history
    • Starfleet Academy

      Thanks Kirkburn. I'm now more worried about the fact that I have linked like that in the past, without adding the page to a Category!! I will take that on board and click enter next time :)

      by Starfleet Academy
  • SpikeToronto

    Is there something wrong with PREVIEW? I haven’t been able to see a preview all afternoon. I just see the Facebook throbber, on and on, but no PREVIEW. Yikes!

    IE8, btw. Thanks!
    — SpikeToronto 21:47, September 15, 2011 (UTC)

    by SpikeToronto
    • IamJakuhoRaikoben

      I haven't been able to either. I use Chrome.

      by IamJakuhoRaikoben
    • Sarah Manley

      I haven't had any problems on firefox and just did a test on chrome and didn't see any issue. For IE8, is there a specific wiki?

      by Sarah Manley
    • Imanie

      I'm using firefox right now and sometimes the preview shows, but other times it lags and looks like it's loading, but it never does. If I publish the page and go to another one, or come back, it sometimes shows the preview.

      by Imanie
    • DaRanger

      I use Firefox, and I too cannot see previews.

      by DaRanger
    • IamJakuhoRaikoben

      It isn't working for another user either. Don't know what browser he uses, but we both edit over at the Fairy Tail Wiki.

      by IamJakuhoRaikoben
      history
    • Bermuda

      Me use Firefox. Ooohh. Preview not good. ):

      by Bermuda
    • Sarah Manley

      ok - i am seeing it. To clarify - Is it the preview button that's not appearing or is the window that pops up after you hit the preview button that isn't working?

      by Sarah Manley
    • SpikeToronto

      Clarification: Preview button works. Preview window pops up. “Throbber” shows in centre of preview window. Preview never occurs.

      Deets: IE8, Admin Tools Wiki

      Thanks!

      by SpikeToronto
    • Sarah Manley

      Oh I am seeing it intermittently - we are investigating. Thanks!

      by Sarah Manley
    • OwenDavis

      There were definitely some issues with a recent update to our javascript, an old version of some files were still being served. They should be up to date now... If it's still happening, it could be cached in your browser so make sure you refresh/recache/restart but if that doesn't work it might be a separate issue that we can investigate further.

      by OwenDavis
    • Starfleet Academy

      I have had this problem in the past. But not today after reading this. I just checked it, and all is better than normal. Normally I have to load the PREVIEWER, click back, load again, click back again and so on until it finally loads. I just thought that this was because of a slow data link. But it worked first time loading, twice today! I have to say that these edits were on my User page, that may make a difference. IE9, Locomotive Wiki

      by Starfleet Academy
    • SpikeToronto

      Sarah & Owen: Preview started working again for me around 8:00PM EDT. Thanks!

      by SpikeToronto
      history
    • Sarah Manley

      Good to hear it's working now. Thanks for your patience!

      by Sarah Manley
      history
  • Sarah Manley

    Quick update on a couple bugs fixes that are now live:

    • In IE7/8 images are no longer lose their formatting in preview
    • Minor edit checkbox no longer appears for anons
    by Sarah Manley

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