[Wikimedia-l] Beta Features Launch Worldwide

[Fabrice Florin]

Hi folks,

We're happy to let you know that the first version of Beta Features (1) has now been deployed worldwide on all wikis. 

Beta Features is a new program that lets you test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released widely. Think of it as a digital laboratory where community members can preview upcoming changes and help designers and engineers make improvements based on their feedback. 

This first worldwide release includes these features:
* Media Viewer — view images in large size (2) (7)
* Typography Refresh — make text more readable (3)
* Near this page —  see what other pages are nearby (4)
* VisualEditor Opt-in — edit pages without having to learn wiki code (5 - see below)
* VisualEditor Formulæ — edit algebra or equations on your pages  (6 - see below)
(Note that Visual Editor Opt-in is only on a couple hundred sites where it was already available, but not enabled by default.)

We invite you to test these new features on your sites and let us know what you think. You can share your feedback about this Beta Features program on its discussion page (8) -- or about individual features on their respective discussion pages (see links 2-6 below). And if you find any technical bugs, please report them on Bugzilla (9). 

We also invite you to join tomorrow's office hours IRC chat, this Friday, 22 November, 2013 at 18:00 UTC. (10)

Many thanks to all the community and team members who made this program possible! We hope it can help us improve Wikipedia together and provide a better experience for all our users around the world.

Enjoy,


Fabrice -- on behalf of the Multimedia, Visual Editor and Design teams



(1) About Beta Features:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer

(2) About Media Viewer v0.1:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer

(3) About Typography Refresh:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_Update

(4) About Nearby Pages:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Features/Nearby_Pages

(5) About Visual Editor Opt-in:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Beta_Features/General

(6) About VisualEditor Formulæ:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Beta_Features/Formulae

(7) Media Viewer - New Version 0.2:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Lightbox_demo
(This new version displays larger images, for a more immersive experience. It is now on MediaWiki.org only and will be released to all wikis in early December.)

(8) Discuss Beta Features:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:About_Beta_Features

(9) Report a Bug:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensions&component=BetaFeatures

(10) Office hours IRC chat - Friday, 22 November at 18:00 UTC:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours#Upcoming_office_hours


P.S.: If any community member would like to hide the 'Beta' link in their personal menu, they can easily remove it by going to their personal style page [[Special:MyPage/common.css]] and pasting in this CSS rule on a line by itself: "#pt-betafeatures { display: none; }" (do not include the quotes).


____________________________________________


Fabrice Florin
Product Manager, Multimedia
Wikimedia Foundation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)