[Wikimedia-l] Alpha version of the VisualEditor now available on the English Wikipedia

Wed Dec 12 10:58:58 UTC 2012

As Gerard says (dont' forget sister projects...)
Anyway, outstanding work.

Aubrey

On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 11:56 AM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Hoi,
> Is it only available on the English Wikipedia or is it also available on
> any other Wikipedia on the same opt in basis? If not why ?
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
>
> On 12 December 2012 04:30, James Forrester <jforrester at wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
> > TL;DR: Today we are launching an alpha, opt-in version of the
> > VisualEditor[0] to the English Wikipedia. This will let editors create
> > and modify real articles visually, using a new system where the
> > articles they edit will look the same as when you read them, and their
> > changes show up as they type enter them — like writing a document in a
> > word processor. Please let us know what you think[1].
> >
> >
> > Why launch now?
> >
> > We want our community of existing editors to get an idea of what the
> > VisualEditor will look like in the “real world” and start to give us
> > feedback about how well it integrates with how they edit right now,
> > and their thoughts on what aspects are the priorities in the coming
> > months.
> >
> > The editor is at an early stage and is still missing significant
> > functions, which we will address in the coming months. Because of
> > this, we are mostly looking for feedback from experienced editors at
> > this point, because the editor is insufficient to really give them a
> > proper experience of editing. We don’t want to promise an easier
> > editing experience to new editors before it is ready.
> >
> > As we develop improvements, they will be pushed every fortnight to the
> > wikis, allowing you to give us feedback[1] as we go and tell us what
> > next you want us to work on.
> >
> >
> > How can I try it out?
> >
> > The VisualEditor is now available to all logged-in accounts on the
> > English Wikipedia as a new preference, switched off by default. If you
> > go to your “Preferences” screen and click into the “Editing” section,
> > it will have as an option labelled “Enable VisualEditor”).
> >
> > Once enabled, for each article you can edit, you will get a second
> > editor tab labelled “VisualEditor” next to the “Edit” tab. If you
> > click this, after a little pause you will enter the VisualEditor. From
> > here, you can play around, edit and save real articles and get an idea
> > of what it will be like when complete.
> >
> > At this early stage in our development, we recommend that after saving
> > any edits, you check whether they broke anything. All edits made with
> > the VisualEditor will show up in articles’ history tabs with a
> > “VisualEditor” tag next to them, so you can track what is happening.
> >
> >
> > Things to note
> >
> > Slow to load - It will take some time for long complex pages to load
> > into the VisualEditor, and particularly-big ones may timeout after 60
> > seconds. This is because pages have to be loaded through Parsoid which
> > is also in its early stages, and is not yet optimised for deployment
> > and is currently uncached. In the future (a) Parsoid itself will be
> > much faster, (b) Parsoid will not depend on as many slow API calls,
> > and (c) it will be cached.
> >
> > Odd-looking - we currently struggle with making the HTML we produce
> > look like you are used to seeing, so styling and so on may look a
> > little (or even very) odd. This hasn't been our priority to date, as
> > our focus has been on making sure we don't disrupt articles with the
> > VisualEditor by altering the wikitext (correct "round-tripping").
> >
> > No editing references or templates - Blocks of content that we cannot
> > yet handle are uneditable; this is mostly references and templates
> > like infoboxes. Instead, when you mouse over them, they will be
> > hatched out and a tooltip will inform you that they have to be edited
> > via wikitext for now. You can select these items and delete them
> > entirely, however there is not yet a way to add ones in or edit them
> > currently (this will be a core piece of work post-December).
> >
> > Incomplete editing - Some elements of "complex" formatting will
> > display and let you edit their contents, but not let users edit their
> > structure or add new entries - such as tables or definition lists.
> > This area of work will also be one of our priorities post-December.
> >
> > No categories - Articles' "meta" items will not appear at all -
> > categories, langlinks, magic words etc.; these are preserved (so
> > editing won't disrupt them), but they not yet editable. Another area
> > for work post-December - our current plan is that they will be edited
> > through a "metadata flyout", with auto-suggestions and so on.
> >
> > Poor browser support - Right now, we have only got VisualEditor to
> > work in the most modern versions of Firefox, Chrome and Safari. We
> > will find a way to support (at least) Internet Explorer post-December,
> > but it's going to be a significant piece of work and we have failed to
> > get it ready for now.
> >
> > Articles and User pages only - The VisualEditor will only be enabled
> > for the article and user namespaces (so you can make changes in a
> > personal sandbox), and will not work with talk pages, templates,
> > categories, etc.. In time, we will build out the kinds of specialised
> > editing tools needed for non-articles, but our focus has been on
> > articles.
> >
> >
> > Final point
> >
> > This is not the final form of the VisualEditor in lots of different
> > ways. We know of a number of bugs, and we expect you to find more. We
> > do not recommend people trying to use the VisualEditor for their
> > regular editing yet. We would love your feedback on what we have done
> > so far – whether it’s a problem you discovered, an aspect that you
> > find confusing, what area you think we should work on next, or
> > anything else, please do let us know.[1]
> >
> >
> > [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor
> > [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback
> >
> > Yours,
> > --
> > James D. Forrester
> > Product Manager, VisualEditor
> > Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> >
> > jforrester at wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
> >
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