VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive/2014/01

HTML output from template leaked into wikitext

Is this a known bug?

<ref>{{Internetquelle|...}}<span style="display: none;" class="Z3988" title="..." data-ve-ignore="true"> </span></ref>

Short explanation: The German template de:Vorlage:Internetquelle outputs a w:COinS record. This is basically an empty <span> element with a long title attribute. For some reason this <span> element made it into the wikitext.

Expected wikitext:

<ref>{{Internetquelle|...}}</ref>

Unfortunately I can't tell you how to reproduce this since it was reported by an other user, see de:Wikipedia:Fragen zur Wikipedia#VisualEditor. TMg 12:11, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi there, not sure if 59653 might be related. Pinging User:JEissfeldt (WMF) who might be able to investigate further. Best, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:03, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
I've seen several of these recently. The mess gets cleaned up if you edit anything on that page in VisualEditor again. (You'll get a warning about a potentially corrupted edit, but it's actually un-corrupting the page.) The cleanups, but not the original problems, are listed in RecentChanges under "visualeditor-needcheck".
I haven't been able to find a common theme. It happens on multiple templates, multiple browsers, Macs, PCs, and Linux. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:18, 16 January 2014 (UTC)
It seems it happens when you copy and paste the template in VE. Maybe something in the paste code makes VE think the empty element does not belong to the template.
I checked the German template and there is nothing wrong with the nesting:
<span class="cite">...</span><span style="display: none;" class="Z3988" title="...">&nbsp;</span> TMg 19:57, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

No keyboard shortcut for strikethrough

Hi,

There is no keyboard shortcut for strike-through. Something I tend to use quite often. More often than subscript for example, which has a keyboard shortcut.

Will this be added?

BR, /Daniel 195.60.68.156 15:20, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Who knows? But in the meantime, let's ask! ;) Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:28, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
As per James'reply to the bug, let's provide some suggestions for the keys, and possibly test that they might work before adding them to the bug :) Elitre (WMF) (talk) 21:51, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Feedback for the character inserter

Please post your ideas about VisualEditor's character inserter tool here. It would be helpful if you said what language(s) or characters you tested it in. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:47, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

The same was asked at enwiki, , where a number of people left rather damning (but entirely correct) feedback. I'll repeat mine here:
I was going to test this and detail the individual shortcomings, but really, what's the point? Either you come here and ask for "what would you like to see and get in a 'special character insertion tool'", or you deliver us an at least half-finished but well-thought out product. Now, you present us with something that may not produce instant errors, but which has zero functionality for 99% of the wanted edits. The number of special characters, even for editors at enwiki, is minimal to the extreme; capital letters are missing; you can't add more than one character at a time; and so on.
Go back to the drawingboard, get some user expectations first (it looks as if you don't know what this tool is really supposed to do), look at the "special characters" insertion tool in normal editing mode, but don't bother use with this nonsense. You are only making a fool of yourselves, and aren't winning any souls for VE, while the actual practical benefit of these responses to you will be minimal. Really, you have developers, you always claim to have a QA team, you have enough people willing to give feedback if you simply ask "what would you like to get in this tool", you have an existing example, and still you dare to come here with this? Please, find the one who asked you to get input on this tool, and (assuming it is a paid WMF employee) fire him or her for gross incompetence. How many times will you (WMF) make the same errors before anything changes there? Just leave us alone and do your job. Fram (talk) 12:44, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
Hello, tested today on it.wiki while writing a new article. I didn't know it was a new feature, our community liaison just linked this discussion page. I found the tool not useful for my purposes: I was looking for greek letters to add as plan text, in order to avoid mass usage of the math mode. The current layout is almost useless for an Italian user: we already have more than 50% of those characters on our keyboards. Thanks. Baruneju (talk) 21:54, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
Hi User:Baruneju,
Thanks for your note. The current tool is just a very, very simple one—to give people a starting point, and perhaps to help them see the concept if they haven't used one before (or, for those who don't speak English, if they didn't know what it was called).
You said you need Greek letters, and I think every Wikipedia will need them. How would you like to get to the Greek letters? Would you like a bigger box? (If the box is big enough to show all the characters someone might need, then it won't fit on your screen, but it could be bigger than this.) Would you like some sort of menu or button or collapsible sections? Do you think it would make sense for each Wikipedia to be able to define the ones that show first (so that Italian users won't have é put in front of them, but English users would)? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:49, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
Hello,
the size of the box is not a problem, but of course it would need a scrollbar and a floating index/collapsible sections. Having a per wiki/per user setting to rearrange the sections (i.e. greek letters before symbols and so on) is mandatory, in my opinion. Baruneju (talk) 14:15, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
Hi User:Baruneju,
There is a per-wiki setting. Would you like me to request a per-user setting as well? It might be possible (I don't know, but I could ask). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:43, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
Hallo, I'm from eml.wikipedia. I tested yesterday your new way to insert the special caracters: I find that they are in a small quantity, instead of the major one that we usually need. I hope that in a future there will be more special caracters in your new medium, end the maximum, I think, it will be that we can find all the beautiful special caracters that are in the olt wiki-editing. Bye, Glory sah (talk) 07:19, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
Hello,
I think the main need is customization:
  1. (the most important) by sysops for default character set on a given wiki
  2. by users for basic changes, with preferences
  3. by advanced users, with a js API
...you will never have the right set for all regions/wikis, and never know who needs what. That is the main thing people will complain about. And yet they did.
Some needs:
  • uppercase equivalent for accents. In French keyboards most of it is on the keyboard, but it is painful for MS Windows users to have the capitalized equivalent (Linux and MacOS are fine on this)
  • propose localized quotes when a string is selected (« in French », „in German“, and so on).
Thanks for all the work! Turb (talk) 08:20, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
Carons are missing (č, š, ž) Smihael (talk) 15:26, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
Hi everybody, and thanks for the feedback so far! I want to make clear that as far as I know the inserter can be customized by the single wikis in order to get exactly what is needed at each of them ;) So, I'd suggest that we test the tool and take notes of what works, of what could be added and of what should be changed, and after that, that each wiki makes its list of needed characters, possibly excluding items which would not work in VE. Thanks, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:24, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
possibly excluding items which would not work in VE. Care to elaborate? I thought all characters were supposed to work in VE? Fram (talk) 17:05, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
I was talking about characters in the way they were used to create wikitext. For example, of course brackets would be ok, just not grouped as [[ ]]. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:19, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
Ah, like that... It sounded more ominous. Can you explain where people are able to change the characters in this inserter for their wiki? I would like to test this for enwiki, to see whether this works and what else we can configure locally for VE. Fram (talk) 17:39, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
Yup Fram, as I said, I (or someone else) will follow-up ASAP about this! Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:42, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
Apparently it's at I have requested some rights, no idea if it are the correct ones since the page has no explanation of what is needed to get the rights to edit it.
And this gives some examples of characters not accepted, including non breaking spaces. How does one add these in VE? Fram (talk) 09:33, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
Brilliant... I have now gotten the rights, and it turns out that I can change the insertor for every language... except English! Enwiki has to ask the devs at MediaWiki to change this for us... Fram (talk) 14:18, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
Changing them at Translatewiki means changing them for every single MediaWiki installation in the world, not just one Wikipedia. If you want to make a change locally, then any admin can edit (or create) a local list in MediaWiki:Visualeditor-specialcharinspector-characterlist-insert. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:45, 28 January 2014 (UTC)
Changing them at Translatewiki doesn't produce any result anyway. I'll try the other solution. Fram (talk) 08:08, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
Nothing works, no idea what the actual solution is supposed to be (or if there even is one). Fram (talk) 15:54, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
Any news on what one really has to do to change this? The two answers I received so far (translatewiki and local wiki) both seem to be incorrect. So, can we (i.e. people from a local wiki version) change this ourselves or not? Seems a rather important issue, to which someone at WMF should know the (correct) answer. Fram (talk) 14:47, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
Hi again. I am not sure what is not working for you? I tested this at it.wiki and it works, VE is already showing that letter. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:05, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Local wiki now works, Mdennis was kind enough to look at the problems (I had some missing comma's). Translatewiki doesn't work. Fram (talk) 15:38, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
I wouldn't do anything over there actually, speaking of the character inserter. Localization is something that should only be done at local wikis, as per their rules (Sherry already pointed out that everything that concerns specific Wikipedia settings should only be done on Wikipedia). I should know because people yell at me when I don't just translate. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:42, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Well, WhatamIdoing pointed me (or rather everyone) to Translatewiki in some Newsletter concerning the character insertor. It turned out, after some searching, that even with translator rights I couldn't change the English settings as these were the default anyway and were not allowed to be overruled there. Not having the possibility to change them also meant that no one could yell at me for changing them :-)
So yes, I have now changed it an enwiki only, to see how it handles more characters. It seems that is wasn't designed with that (or anything else that could be useful) in mind. It just becomes one very long but rather narrow screen. Fram (talk) 15:51, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Some languages probably will want to make changes to the universal defaults (for all WMF and non-WMF wikis using MediaWiki), but that's something that I'd leave to experienced translators, since they will have a much better idea what the minimum set is for that language. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Hi.
I observed that for Romanian language letter "Ă", "Ș", "Ț" doesn't appear. Cornel Punga (talk) 19:17, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
Hi. I've tested in English. So, first I think it's a must to have a brief tutorial about how you can start to edit, where you can find basic tools. Why I say it is important? Because once you edit an article and during editing you find a new tool that makes your article and work on that article easier and better, you think: "Man, If I knew about it at start of my work!?". I consider that most people will start editing without exploring every new tool or feature. It's my opinion. What you think about it?
I think it's great that toolbar just scrolls down or up while you're surfing through the article. Another great feature is that media, transclusion etc. appear under insert. Stuff in transclusion is just amazing. Also, great that special characters panel appears relative to cursor present position. Amazing possibilities with media, I like it.
I'll continue to test it and forward to you my impressions and other suggestions.
Thanks! :) Cornel Punga (talk) 17:59, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
Hi.
I observed that for Romanian language letter "Ă", "Ș", "Ț" doesn't appear. Cornel Punga (talk) 18:04, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
See my question above: VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive/2014/01#c-Smihael-2014-01-26T15:26:00.000Z-Whatamidoing_(WMF)-2014-01-22T19:47:00.000Z Smihael (talk) 19:23, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
I guess that one main intended usage of this is for users of a certain wiki to insert characters that are not part of the standard character set for the language of that wiki since that's typically a situation where users may not have an appropriate keyboard layout at hands. In many cases, such usage would be as part of a template: an article title in its original language within {{Cite journal}}, a {{Quote}} in original language, just some foreign language words with {{Lang}} in the regular text, etc.
Well... I didn't find a way to use this tool within templates. Is it well hidden somewhere?
Other griefs include
  • Such a big tool for so few characters...
  • No apparent support for multiple characters sets (I mean switching the whole list of characters from a Latin set to a Greek or Cyrilic one)...
  • Insertion of just 1 character at a time...
At best, I'd say that this tool seems useless in such an early stage. I even fear that some fundamental requirements may have been overlooked and that this early stage is not even a good basis to make the tool evolve into something really useful. Klipe (talk) 11:06, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
Hi Klipe,
The inserter isn't hidden in the templates; it isn't there yet. It needs to be there, and in many other places, too. I've got a list at bugzilla:60657, and if you think of any that I missed, please feel free to add them there (or to ask me to add them for you). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:48, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
I completely agree with Fram and Klipe about their feedback.
What's the point of bothering us with feedback when developers didn't even look at the existing tools for the wikitext editor ?
One extra remark on the configuration for defining character sets and characters in each set. There are currently 3 different informations in the configuration:
{
	"symbols": {
		"−": "−",
	}
}
The first one seems to be the set's name, the second I'm not sure (maybe what is displayed in the button), the third one probably the character(s) that will be inserted. It would be nice to have 3 different informations for each special character: what is displayed in the button, a tooltip (would be useful for example for the various dashes), and the characters that will be really inserted. NicoV (talk) 09:23, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
What's the point of bothering us with feedback when developers didn't even look at the existing tools for the wikitext editor ?
The devs did look at the existing systems. However, they did not want to automatically assume that they way it's been done in the past is the best possible solution. There were pretty significant technical limitations in what could be done in the wikitext editor (e.g., no possibility of floating palettes—which we might not want in the end, but which simply were impossible in the old editor). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:45, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
They did look at the existing system, and decided to ignore it completely and make sure that the new one couldn't do anything the old one could. And then they and you were surprised when the feedback was so scathing?
That you wanted to add possibilities not available in wikitext is fine, but that is not an excuse to remove the most basic needs of a character insertor. Or was there some bugzilla entry that said "please make the character insertor single entry only"?
Did anyone, at any time, make an analysis of what a character insertor is needed for? What the few basic functionalities are? Can you link to that document? Fram (talk) 17:56, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm not the least bit surprised that people have identified deficiencies in the existing iteration; identifying them (and seeing which "missing" items and which "new" items people don't call out as deficiencies) is the point of this discussion.
As far as I know, none of the original design documents are available online. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:46, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Perhaps it's time that the WMF changes it appraoch then, and puts its discussions, documentation, ... online? It can't be that you have anything to hide, surely? Or worse, that there is nothing to show?
Anyway, as long as you have no evidence for your claims about prior discussions and so on, I don't believe anything of it.
And the point of this discussion is to get the WMF to change their approach drastically, so that they don't come across as a bunch of totally incompetent losers. Which is the effect you have with putting things into production which have no useful new features, but has abandoned all the useful old features for no good reason at all, and then come here afterwards to ask for feedback.
But I'm glad to see that if we haven't made our list of deficiencies exhaustive, then you consider the things that haven't made our listed as "not important", "not needed", "not wanted" apparently. Yes, you totally have the right idea there, everything we haven't yet complained about is a real gem to treasure, and everything we haven't said is missing can be safely discarded.
Have you perhaps considered that most people give up after noting the few most glaring deficiencies and realising that the WMF hasn't put any thought at all into this? Comments like "At best, I'd say that this tool seems useless in such an early stage. I even fear that some fundamental requirements may have been overlooked and that this early stage is not even a good basis to make the tool evolve into something really useful." say it all, really. Fram (talk) 07:54, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
Greetings,
here's what our French-speaking friends noted so far.
  • Not enough groups of characters, and not enough characters per group;
  • the window should not close automatically;
  • the feature can't be used to add s.c. inside templates, external and internal links and so on;
  • The screenshot shows about only 40 characters right now and the window is already of a noticeable size. The [...] tool in the wikitext editor shows about 200 characters just for "Latin", and "Latin" is only one of the 18 character sets currently managed (which is probably only a portion of Unicode character sets). The current "mockup" doesn't address this basic issue of scalability, and the tool should grow in width;
  • The special characters tool shouldn't be a window, rather a kind of tab just like the wikitext tool or like tabs in Microsoft Word;
  • Where can one translate the labels of the groups, and why are the sets different (including their order; fr.wp lacks the Math one for example, but MediaWiki:Visualeditor-specialcharinspector-characterlist-insert wasn't changed locally)? Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:57, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Re: Missing math: The list at translatewiki wasn't replicated from the English version - whoever did it clearly made their own choices. Compare with . HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 03:13, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
Here is a summary of the suggestions and needs expressed at the English Wikipedia:
  • Must be able to switch between multiple character sets (access to math symbols, Greek, Hebrew, etc., depending on what you need). At the English Wikipedia w:en:MediaWiki:Gadget-charinsert.js has 11 charsets and the wikieditor toolbar has 18; about 34 sets exist.
  • Must support multiple character insertion, even if it's not the default mode. (Not mentioned: it's probably necessary to be able to insert multiple characters from different character sets, e.g., mathematical symbols plus Greek letters or anything plus IPA.)
  • Must be able to use within transclusions, language settings, or any other dialog/tool that you can type into (bug 60657).
  • Prefer having the dialog near the menu rather than floating with the cursor. If the cursor is near the bottom of the screen, then the character selector menu is mostly below the screen.
  • Prefer having a menu attached to the main toolbar in VisualEditor that uses the full width of the screen to maximize the number of characters that can be seen at once (bug 60770). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:55, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Sorry if this has been told already, but why not use the same special characters submenu as in WikiEditor? To be honest, I've never used it, but it looks good. So when choosing Insert -> Special character it could open same kind of submenu like in WikiEditor. Stryn (talk) 21:20, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Hey Stryn! The character inserter for VisualEditor is meant to be and is customizable for local wikis. We want communities to be able to populate it with what they need, rather than what we think they want. For example, since you're a admin on the Finnish Wikipedia you can adapt the character inserter directly on the MediaWiki page, just like I believe you can do for WikiEditor. VisualEditor should mimic as many functions as source editing as possible, and that includes local customization. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 08:25, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
I see that James kind of gave the same answer below about Annotation buttons. I hope the link to the Finnish Wikipedia page helps you adapt the inserter. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 08:35, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Hi,
IMHO, I think the V.E. special characters tool, I prefer a priority section with most used special characters.
Arrange of sections: I think:
  1. Accents
  2. Symbols
  3. Math
  4. others
The tool must remains visible until I want to hide it, I prefer the tool in a fixed position on screen (as startup) but I can drag it.
I hope my comment can be useful about develop of this cool tool.
See you soon! Joetaras (talk) 23:05, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Just wondering if it would be better to have the accents aligned with the letter going down and the accents across, and leaving space where the accents doesn't exist for that character.
Test1
|À
|Á
|Â
|Ã
|Ä
|Å
|-
|È
|É
|Ê
|
|Ë
|
|-
|Ì
|Í
|Î
|
|Ï
|
|-
|Ò
|Ó
|Ô
|Õ
|Ö
|
|-
|Ù
|Ú
|Û
|
|Ü
|
|} 71.189.7.23 08:37, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
I've been using VisualEditor for about 80% of the content I've added, and it's improving more and more. I like that the character inserter has been added; it makes things much, much easier. I don't use special characters very often, except for the em-and-en dashes, which I use almost every session, and sometimes a few times each session. I also like how the inserter has been set up thus far. IOW, I only have positive feedback for you. Nice work, and keep it up! Figureskatingfan (talk) 17:37, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
Great to hear that you're finding constant improvement, Figureskatingfan. Any feedback you have to build VisualEditor is always welcome. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 08:28, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Please add Devanagari character. Wikiuser13 (talk) 06:22, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for the request, Wikiuser13. We'll see about adding them to the default inserter. In the mean time, if you can help we'd like to make sure that local wikis are getting the support that they need, including proper characters for the Hindi Wikipedia. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 08:33, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Hi, french editor here :)
Firsts things first: the actual characters we have nowadays are useless in french (most of the accented characters already exist on the french AZERTY keybord, and the symbols are not the oft used symbols we need like the french quotation marks). Also I am not a big user of the Visual Editor, but I have tried it some, and even if I am still not convinced by its purpose, I think improving it is important.
To introduce my reasoning on the special character question, I would like to remind you that while templates can be mostly skipped when writing, and references are useful but most often added at a rate of 1 ref/multiple sentences, special chars on the other hand are part of the writing. If we need easy access to templates and references, then we doubly need twice easyer access to the special chararacters because if putting refs can be done afterwards, adding little [1] at the end of the sentences, writing your regular lengthy article will require the use of all those pesky little «» ± ó æ Á É right in the middle of the sentences we write.
So, answering some of the questions asked in the dedicated section of the VisualEditor french suggestion page:
  • Yes we would need the whole wikieditor special character toolbar. For one, nobody can predict what characters they will need while editing. I might need greek letters for a physics article, then edit some article about some czech woman or something and need some accents non accessible on the french AZERTY keyboard.
    • The whole toolbar won't be too much, it will just be enough. Even in the french community keyboard-related problems about apostrophes are a reoccuring matter because people won't have access to the same keyboard in a language community.
    • The pop-up sorta thing should go down the drain : special characters are too plentyful to be used as a pop-up. Microsoft Word is an example of the sort of thing a pop-up would become : a huge jumble of signs, symbols and letters, all together in a invasive pop-up window in the middle of the text frame, superimposed on the text, making it unnerving when we want to add just a single character, or multiple characters in different places in the text. Please, prettty please don't do that.
    • A good vertical or horizontal toolbar/tab, taking the whole length/width of the editing window would be good, that you can wrap/unwrap so as to have easy and quick access to the characters without the thing blocking your view from the text. Different tabs would allow us to go from one set to the other, since the worst possible thing would be to have all the characters in the same frame, making users go crazy finding the right character (Microsoft Word, again...)
    • For users without enough place to store all the characters in a few lines, two things should be done in my opinion:
      • For starters reduce the size of the little buttons to click. Seriously, being user friendly slash omg so cool and design doesn't mean we should have small letters/symbols encapsulated in huge squarish buttons. Reduce the size or use the whole space of those squares, because for the time being it feels like a ot of free empty unused space. That way, more special characters will be encompassed in the pop-up/tab/navigation bar/whatever
      • Second add a scroll. Really, scrolling is like, the basics. Not enough place to store everything ? Scroll.
  • A special section with the ten/twenty or so most used characters would be so so nice.
  • La barre d'outils a déjà trop d'options. Comment la simplifier ?/The toolbar has already too many options. How do we simplify it? Well... You have to ways of figuring this out:
    • The VisualEditor is only some sort of simplified editing tool, sorta like Wikipedia-for-dummies thing, adapted for people unfamiliar with the internet/the computers/whatever. Then you can already scratch all those template-adding, special characters and such, because this should be made simple and would be a tool designed for occasional editors
    • The VisualEditor is destined to be some sort of alternative for all the editors: well then you're screwed because the actual, nowadays, code-like interface does a humonguous number of different things, so the VE toolbar will reflect this state of things and be a humonguous thing. And thus, the VE won't be easy to use even for people unfamiliar with code editing: no amount of nice little buttons with cutesy little logos and images will be able to simplify the understanding of a newbie in front of Wikipedia. It takes time, practice, and help from humans... (Help that is made kinda hard to give since you just never know what tool the newbies will use...) Anyway, I am rambling and straying on another path here, sorry ;)
Good luck implementing the special characters in VE Euterpia (talk) 10:35, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
Hello,
Here is my feedback. I totally agree with Euterpia (just above). I proposed the idea of a tab on fr.wp a few weeks ago, I think using a vertical tab on the right side of the screen is better as it takes less place than horizontal tabs,if it it not too wide. One user on the French Wikipedia (TigH) suggested that VE should be able to analyse the characters of the page which is edited, so that special characters which are used the most on that page are displayed in a special "priority" section. It could be mixed with a general "priority" section, with special characters that are needed most often in the language of the wiki.
Then, reducing the size of the buttons would also be useful (and not only for the special character inserter): the toolbar on the top of the page has two drop-down menus, a few icons, and a veeeery large blank space on my computer. So you should add an "advanced" mode, in which only icons are displayed in the toolbar: this could avoid drop-down menus and allow a faster access to the different features.
Keep it up ! NemesisIII (talk) 18:44, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

What's the point of adding a Gallery function (as announced in 2014-01-16 (MW 1.23wmf11)) when it offers "zero" functionality, you need to know wikitext (gallery code and plain formatting) to be able to use it at all? I thought we weren't allowed to use wikitext in VE under any circumstances? Was there some deadline that needed to be met? Bored of the constant "we need a gallery insertion tool" complaints (as if the people complaining about this will now be happy instead of even more pissed off)? Simply incompetent (let me present the "special character" insertion tool, or simply VE as a whole, as further evidence)? Perfection may not be required, but something useful and working may not be too much to ask once in a while, no? Fram (talk) 13:03, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

AGH WHAT IS THIS HORROR

Bloody LQT. Anyway, what I actually came here to say is that VE is pretty. -— Isarra༆ 00:14, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Isarra. And yes, I'm hoping to move this page from LQT to Flow as soon as the Flow team release the conversion script. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 17:38, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
One day everything will be shiny and pretty and all the folks what made it happen will be able to take a nice long nap. And hopefully not need too much counselling.
In the meantime, stay awesome. -— Isarra ༆ 07:48, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Problems on Portuguese Wikipedia

VE was recently deployed on the Portuguese Wikipedia, and introduces its usual bunch of errors and problems.

  • This edit totally ruins the page.
  • This edit makes the usual ref inside a header error, but also has some strange "span class" additions
  • This has a strange ref addition as well
  • here and then here, and here, it looks as if that ref under "Faixas" gets duplicated automatically, and testing it myself in VE, it turns out to be true...

In the first few hundred most recent VE edits on the Portuguese Wikipedia, I think I have seen one instance where the addition of a reference didn't cause or contain any problems. For simple edits, plain text, VE is somewhat usable, but as soon as you try anything different, you are likely to run into problems. That's rather depressing for something that has been tested and discussed for months and months now in live environments. Is it really wise to continue to bring this to more and more wikis? What benefit does that actually bring? Fram (talk) 13:45, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

You have the right premises, but the wrong conclusion.
We have two facts :
  1. Editing smoothly with a visual editor is indispensable to the future of Wikipedia.
  2. The visual editor in its current state is absolutely lamentable.
What solution do I see ?
Hire 1000 (good) developers.
Seriously. Wikimedia asks for dollars for various purposes, useful and useless. But Wikimedia never focus a campaign on hiring people. And Wikimedia employs, I think, very few people. So guess why MediaWiki has so many unfixed bugs and limitations. Wikimedia could highlight the fact of creating many jobs.
MediaWiki needs workers. A lot of workers. Nnemo (talk) 21:21, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't agree with your #1, but that's an opinion, not a right-or-wrong position. I obviously agree with your #2. As for the solution, I don't believe it needs more people, it just needs better people. Fram (talk) 08:13, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
FYI: I added a link to your topic on our local feedback page:
Thanks. I don't speak Portuguese, so I haven't tried this, nor will I be able to help much there... Fram (talk) 12:38, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
I thought this was solved, but I have found a very recent edit introducing a "☁" sign: Fram (talk) 13:15, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
More, from the 50 most recent:
  • goes all wrong
  • Here; at the very bottom, the "Portal" code goes wrong. Looks like something VE does, not something the human editor does, but I haven't tried to reproduce it.
  • Of course we still have unwanted "nowiki"s
And this is all from a cursory glance of some of these edits... It's a bit sad that VE still creates so many errors and problems when it has been in production on all the largest wikis and many smaller ones for over half a year now. Fram (talk) 14:22, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
In #1, it appears that the person pasted an image into a reference. I've been unable to save a page that has a pasted image in a ref, but I have been able to paste the image into the ref box in Firefox (Safari refused to even paste it). I believe that you aren't supposed to be able to paste images from external websites (how would you get the source and license information recorded at Commons?), so I'll file a bug report on this. (Update: it's bugzilla:60780.
In #2, the portal code isn't going wrong. The actual problem appears to be that the wikitext opens six tables but closes only five of them, causing a good deal of the article to read as a "table". This is probably very irritating to readers that depend on proper HTML for page navigation. VisualEditor (well, probably Parsoid) is trying to close the table, only it doesn't know where the table actually stops. I suspect that the problematic bit is this:
=== Comissão técnica ===
{|
|valign="top"|
{| class="toccolours" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" align="left" style="margin:0.5em;"
!colspan="2" align=center bgcolor="#00458A" | <span style="color:#FFFF00;">Comissão Técnica</span>
|-
| {{BRAb}} '''[[Paulo Porto]]''' || '''Treinador'''
As for #3, it appears that these nowikis will be there for as long as users type wikitext manually in a non-wikitext editor. Requests to change this behavior have been refused in the past. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:52, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
And as long as these requests are refused (for ideological reasons only, no technical reason to do so exists), these errors will be made with VE and people will turn back to the wikitext editor. Which is good! Fram (talk) 07:45, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Media

It's nice that you try to introduce new media options. Perhaps you need to think a bit more about them though before implementing them? If I add an image, it gets a default size (200px width). Now, if I have changed the size (thanks to the rather ill-advised drag-to-change dimensions option), I may end up with something I don't want. Hurrah, I can now "Set to original dimensions". Sadly, these aren't the ones you expect, but the utterly useless "maximal dimensions in Commons". So you go from standard size to this. Why is this considered to be a useful option? When will someone ever need this? Wouldn't it be a tad more useful and logical if the "original dimensions" would put this back at 200*150? Perhaps someone from the mythical QA team can indicate whether they tested and approved this, and why... Fram (talk) 08:29, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh, and why does the width and height indicator in the advanced settings show a different width and height (good!), but the saved code not? The saved code always goes to 200px*200px, not to 200px*150px. If you then change the height to e.g. 200px, you end up with 267px*267px. Any reason that you can't produce the same behaviour on both sides?
And of course, the "display" is terrible when you manually drag the image wider, and then reduce the size again (manually or with the dimension changer. getting some consistency in appearance, behaviour, results of actions would have been nice. Fram (talk) 08:57, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
If you look here, it appears that the "square" image size defaults to the larger of height or width, and that it displays correctly despite being "too big" in one dimension.
I don't know if there is a need to specify both dimensions. It's common to specify only the width (when a particular size needs to be specified at all), but sometimes what's common is not what's most efficient. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:18, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
Bugzilla:50379 is about the need to use unspecified default sizes, and it's still open.
Looking at the commit message, it appears that "set to original dimensions" means "set to the file's original dimensions". This is consistent with the behavior that you see.
This feature would be useful for small images, like File:Notepad icon small.svg, or if you needed to know the original dimensions so that you can figure out the correct proportion. However, in the current context (i.e., without these other useful and expected features present), that button looks more like a "generally undo whatever size changes I've made", so it's behavoir will be an unpleasant surprise for some editors. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:14, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
"Figure out the correct proportion"? VE doesn't let you change the proportions anyway (if you change one property, the other is automatically changed as well), so that is a useless "benefit". So the only time it could be useful would be for small images. Seems like another case where the use it could have in some cases is given more weight than the disadvantage it will have in most cases. Bad habits die hard, I suppose.
By the way, the Gerrit message you link to also claims "Maximum size is limited to the image's original maximum size.". As could be expected, no it isn't: . What is probably meant is that the "initial" size on insertion is no more than the full size of the image, but the maximum size is unlimited. Really, it is! Fram (talk) 07:43, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
The label on the button has been changed to say "Make full size", which should be less confusing than "original size". Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:37, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
I want to add here that on English Wikipedia Fram reiterates his opinion that this is not a very useful feature, regardless of title.
He writes, "What may be needed is "Put back default size", for when you have changed the size of the image and no longer knows what the 'original', pre-change size was, or what the size would be if you wuold insert the image anew. Hardly top priority, but useful. What we have now though is scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel-priority, when there are countless other things to do. Define position (left/right/center)? Thumb? Alt text? Change an image without deleting and readding it? All 100 times more importan than what we have gotten now." permanent diff Mdennis (WMF) (talk) 14:26, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
Most of these features are in the pipeline (half of them are already here at MediaWiki); they just didn't make the same release cutoff as the simpler pieces. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:50, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
When I read “Original dimensions”, I expect the original (big) dimensions of the image. Nnemo (talk) 14:19, 1 June 2014 (UTC)