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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent software changes
- The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf16) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 27. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on March 4, and all Wikipedia wikis on March 6 (calendar).
- When users enable web fonts by default, Universal Language Selector will now log if they don't have fonts to display pages correctly. This information will be used by developers to improve font support in the future. Read more about missing fonts. [1]
- You can now use Guided tours on the Czech and Japanese Wikipedia. If you want this tool on your wiki, you need to translate it and ask in Bugzilla. [2] [3]
- You can now use information from Wikidata in all Wikisource wikis. [4]
- The multimedia team is now posting weekly updates on their mailing list. [5]
VisualEditor news
- You can now change image size to default for your wiki. If you add new images to pages, they will also be default size. [6] [7] [8]
- If you switch from VisualEditor to wikitext editing, your edit will now be tagged. [9]
- Template parameters now have a bigger, auto-sizing input box for easier editing. [10]
- VisualEditor now has Arabic, Finnish and Kölsch icons for text styling. If you want icons for your language, ask in Bugzilla. [11] [12] [13]
Future software changes
- The new tool for viewing media files will soon show a progress bar and a thumbnail while loading full images. [14] [15]
- You will soon be able to make user contributions show only page creations. [16] [17]
- Article Feedback Tool will be removed from the English and French Wikipedias on March 3. It will also no longer be possible to add this tool to any Wikimedia wiki. [18] [19]
- Wikis using the new search tool will come back to the old tool for a few hours starting at 00:00 UTC on March 6. [20]
Problems
- For about an hour on February 23, there were problems with page loading due to a MediaWiki bug. [21]
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