Sorry for the spam, but the ContentHandler changes especially may affect you -- if you have any time this weekend or next week to do some testing, we'd appreciate it. Thanks. -Sumana

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Please notice and report big glitches - changes coming Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2012 17:14:05 -0400 From: Sumana Harihareswara sumanah@wikimedia.org Organization: Wikimedia Foundation To: Coordination of technology deployments across languages/projects wikitech-ambassadors@lists.wikimedia.org

On Monday we start deploying a new version of MediaWiki, 1.21wmf2, to the sites, starting with mediawiki.org and 2 test wikis (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.21/Roadmap). 1.21wmf2 will have 3 big new things in it and we need your help to test on the "beta" test site http://deployment.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Main_Page now to see if there are any really critical bugs.

1) The new ContentHandler ( https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ContentHandler ) might affect handing of CSS and JavaScript pages, import/export (including PDF export), and API stuff, especially when rendering and editing. I'd suggest we also look out for issues in template rendering, images and media handling, localisation, and mobile device access. (merged on Oct 9)

2) High-resolution image support. This work-in-progress will try to give higher-res images to high-density screens that can support it, like new Retina displays. More info at https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/24115/ . One of the bigger risks of the high res stuff is load-based, since we may see substantial new load on our image scalers. So *all* image scaling might be impacted. (merged on Oct 11)

3) "Sites" is a new backend to represent and store information about sites and site-specific configuration. This code is meant to replace the current interwiki code, but does not do so just yet. Still, keep an eye out for site-specific configuration or interwiki issues.

Right now the version of MediaWiki on the beta cluster dates from 9 Oct and thus has ContentHandler but not the high-res image support or Sites. So please test on the beta sites now and look out for these issues on your sites in the weeks ahead. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:MediaWiki_test_plans has some ideas on how to find errors.

Thanks! With your help we can find bugs early and get them fixed before they affect lots of readers and editors.