[WikiEN-l] MediaWiki is getting a new programming language

[stevertigo]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 9:55 AM, Sheldon Rampton<sheldon at prwatch.org> wrote:

> (1) No WYSIWYG editing system.

Browsers by limitation are not real "WYSIWIG editing systems," and
because WP is a website, its nearly entirely dependent on the browser.
New functionality, regardless of its development, is mostly either
proprietary or useless unless the W3C deals with it.  One improvement
that comes to mind is text edit fields that are readable and
formattable, so the distinction between presentation and editing text
is blurred - maybe quick shifting between edit and view modes.

> If you look at Wikipedia pages and really compare them to what has now...

Much of what is called "web 2.0", aside from Wikipedia itself, is just
video - some of it useful - all but all of it running on the
proprietary Adobe Flash plugin for the forseeable future. The rest is
organizational and layers that hide lower level functions. Wiki of
course came out of the widespread love people have for hand-coding
HTML. And Tweets could have shown up nine years ago, but they didn't.
Its the concepts that are changing, not the "technology" so much.

> So why aren't those features already in place?

Keep in mind also that most necessary improvements are subtle, while
overt improvements are often borking.

-Steven