Tech/News/2014/28
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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Tech News updates
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Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf12) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on July 3. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on July 8, and to all Wikipedias on July 10 (calendar).
- CirrusSearch was enabled on July 1 as the primary search method on 36 new wikis, including the Norwegian (no), Portuguese (pt) and Ukrainian (uk) Wikipedias. [1]
- It is now possible to create Atom or RSS feeds for Word of the Day, Word of the Week and similar entries on Wiktionary wikis. [2] [3]
- You can now use a graphical interface to edit TemplateData information on the English (en), French (fr) and Italian (it) Wikipedias. [4] [5]
VisualEditor news
- Saving an edit with VisualEditor will now be much faster. [6] [7]
- You can now add a caption when you add a file to a page with VisualEditor. You can also change the file to a different one and keep the existing caption. [8] [9] [10]
- When you switch to the Edit source tab, you are now asked to keep your changes. You no longer need to find the option in the menus. [11] [12] [13]
- The reference tool that adds empty
<ref></ref>tags is now at the bottom of the Cite menu, below references that use templates like{{Cite web}}. [14] - Context menus will no longer be shown over items that you can edit directly, for example formulæ. [15] [16] [17]
Future software changes
- Starting on July 9, it will be possible to globally rename global (SUL) users. The feature was first scheduled for July 1, but was delayed due to bugs.
- A plan to enable CirrusSearch as the primary search method on the 11 largest Wikimedia wikis has now been prepared. [18]
- If you use references on a page, you will soon always see them at the bottom of the page, even if you forget to add the
<references />tag (or a template). [19] [20] - Black-and-white XCF images will soon display correctly. [21] [22]
- Description pages of SVG files will soon always show download links for multiple resolutions (example). The links were previously shown only for SVG files in large original resolutions. [23] [24]
Problems
- Between July 2-3, there were problems with loading pages on multiple wikis due to a configuration issue. [25] [26]
- For a few hours on July 1, there were problems with uploading new files on Wikimedia Commons due to a configuration error. [27] [28]
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