Wikimedia engineering report

The Wikimedia engineering report for February 2014 has been published. A summarized version is also available. Major news include:

• a call for volunteers to test the upcoming multimedia viewer;
• improvements to VisualEditor's media and template editors;
• the launch of the Flow discussion system on two pilot talk pages on the English Wikipedia;
• the launch of guided tours to 31 more language versions of Wikipedia, including all of the top 10 projects by number of page views;
• improvements to the tools and process used to deploy code to Wikimedia production sites;
• the release of the first archive of the entire English Wikipedia with thumbnails, for offline use.

Some highlights from Tech News in the last weeks:

Recent software changes

• You can now view smaller versions of PNG images bigger than 20 megapixels. [1]
• Article Feedback Tool was removed from the English and French Wikipedias on March 3. It will no longer be possible to add this tool to any Wikimedia wiki. [2] [3]
• It is now be possible to use CSS to style buttons in templates on all Wikimedia wikis, without needing JavaScript. [4]
• You will now be able to use a Beta option to show a shorter list of language links. That way, Universal Language Selector will only show languages that are relevant to you. You will still be able to search for other languages. [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]
• VisualEditor now has Arabic, Finnish and Kölsch icons for text styling. If you want icons for your language, ask in Bugzilla. [9] [10] [11]
• It is now easier to edit templates. Complex tools are now in the "advanced" mode. [12] [13]
• It is also easier to edit images. You now have more options and they are explained better. [14]
• We have improved the tool to add special characters. The buttons are now larger. More changes are coming. [15]
• You can now use new keyboard shortcuts to undo the last action, clear formatting, and show the shortcut help window. [16] [17] [18]
• Searching for template parameters in now case-insensitive. [19] [20]
• Required template parameters now have an asterisk (*) next to their edit boxes. [21]
• Several template dialogs are now smaller, and their insert buttons have changed wording. [22]

Future software changes

• You will soon see an error message if you try to log in or register with an invalid or taken username. [23]
• You can now test the first version of a tool that includes OpenStreetMap maps inside the UploadWizard. Comments are welcome. [24]
• You will soon be able to use the Hovercards tool as a beta feature. [25]

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• Thanks for the useful report Edokter! --Pine^✉ 05:33, 24 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Offline thumbnail

Regarding the offline archive, the search result seems to be performing poorly if you don't type in the exact term (and I'll ignore hints provided by AJAX since it's intended for offline use). For example, if I want to search for Pearson r, the search result is nowhere close to the actual term. Will this be something to be addressed in the future? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 06:16, 25 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• The Hovercard stuff looks awesome. Can't wait to see that enabled in Beta. Zell Faze (talk) 20:08, 25 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]