All,

[I am re-starting sending these to this list as requested at Wikimania; hope they are useful.]

As before, the regular updatehttps://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/status#2013-08-15_.28MW_1.22wmf13.29 about progress on VisualEditor (this covers the three week period over Wikimania):

VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.22wmf13 branch deployment https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.22/wmf13 on Thursday 15 August. In the three weeks since 1.22wmf12, as well as presenting their work at Wikimania, discussing and planning improvements and new features, the team worked on some changes to how VisualEditor integrates with MediaWiki, a few minor feature improvements and improving the performance of the system, and fixing bugs and stability improvements.

Firstly, on the integration, the "edit" and "edit source" tabs and section edit links can now be configured more flexibly (which has been taken advantage of on the English Wikipedia). The labels for these "edit" and "edit source" tabs and section edit links (however they have been configured for a given wiki) will be consistent on all pages, even those that cannot yet be edited with VisualEditor like templates (bug 50402https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50402). These labels are applied before the page is sent to the user, so they no longer "flash in" for some users (bugs 50542https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50542 and 50692 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50692). Further, the section edit links both appear at once, rather than only one appearing until a user hovers over the heading (bug 50540https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50540). We also made a more prominent welcome notice that appears the first time a user opens VisualEditor (or every 30 days for logged-out users), warning them about VisualEditor being in beta (bug 52366https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52366 ).

In terms of new features, you can now edit references that are defined inside a <references> block (bug 51741https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51741), references defined in templates and image captions will also display (bug 51289 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51289 and bug 52427https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52427), and nested references now display correctly (bug 50749https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50749). We also made some changes to the link inspector to make it faster and simpler to use - you no longer need to press enter twice to set a link (bug 51065 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51065) or click as many times (bug 51523 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51523), and you are warned more clearly that the title you've entered is invalid (* e.g.* "Foo{}bar") and so won't let you set it (bug 33094https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33094). We made some major performance improvements to deleting text (bug 52013https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52013) and scrolling pages (bug 52014https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52014), which should be visible on long pages.

You can now add and edit <code> (code) and <s> (strikethrough) annotations in experimental mode on MediaWiki.org - coming to production wikis soon (bugs 51590 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51590 and bug 51610 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51610), as well as <tt>annotations with the same code (bug 52352https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52352), and a more general solution for use with similar pairs of annotations built out too (bug 52477 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52477). We added a keyboard shortcut for the "Clear formatting" tool: Ctrl+\or ⌘ Cmd +\ (bug 51507 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51507). VisualEditor now uses the same kind of post-edit feedback message that the wikitext editor uses, for increased consistency between the different editors (bug 39632 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39632). Finally, we fixed the last known issues with Opera and so un-blacklisted it (bugs 37861 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37861, 47793https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47793 and 50813 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50813; tracked by bug 36000 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36000).

On the bug front, we fixed a number of issues. Firstly, we correct a problem where an ugly error was shown to the user on changing a template if there was an API issue (bug 52483https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52483). We now strip leading whitespace from paragraphs, so as to avoid users creating accidental <nowiki>s (bug 51462https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51462). A bug that made it impossible to save multiple consecutive references is now corrected (bug 52228https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52228), as is one that sometimes didn't get you a new edit token if your current one had expired (bug 51915https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51915). We also quickly fixed an issue where VisualEditor would crash on loading a page with a <nowiki> in it (bug 51948https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51948), and a corruption issue which led to categories getting duplicated (bug 52238https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52238 ).

Adding a link on an empty selection no longer crashes (bug 51404https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51404); if you press enter too quickly it still works (bug 51415https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51415); and the link inspector no longer aggressively picks a link for you in cases where there's only one suggestion (bug 52420https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52420). The save dialog briefly attached to whichever dialog you had most recently opened, rather than the main toolbar; this is now fixed (bug 52317https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52317), as has the toolbar floated to the top of the screen over the user's personal tools if a dialog had been opened (bug 52441https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52441). The link describing wikitext in the warning notice about not inserting it now opens in its own window (bug 52093https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52093), as does the link to the user guide (bug 52475https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52475). Embedded buttons' inspectors now display correctly, used in the forthcoming equation editor on large equations (bug 52845https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52845). Further, once you save the page, we re-enable the wikipage content handlers, so gadgets like those that make tables sortable will work again (bug 51565 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51565).

Finally, the Google Summer of Code work progressed well; early versions of the Math extension editor and tool for setting text language details are now available for testing on MediaWiki.org, and that for the SyntaxHighlight extension will be soon.

A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.22/wmf13 changeloghttps://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.22/wmf13/Changelog#VisualEditor, and all Bugzilla bugs closed in this period are on Bugzilla's listhttps://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&bug_status=RESOLVED&bug_status=VERIFIED&bug_status=CLOSED&target_milestone=VE-deploy-2013-08-15&product=VisualEditor&list_id=226546 .

Ahead of the normal schedule, this will be pushed to all wikis where it is enabled on Tuesday 20 August. If you have any questions, please do ask.​

Yours,