Tech/News/2014/07

The Tech News weekly summaries help you monitor recent software changes likely to impact you and your fellow Wikimedians. Subscribe and contribute.

Recent software changes

The latest version of MediaWiki (1.23wmf13) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on February 6. It will be added to non-Wikipedia wikis on February 11, and all Wikipedia wikis on February 13 (calendar).
The Vector search box was changed to fix old display and accessibility issues; for example, you can now use full-text search even if you have disabled JavaScript. Please report any problems you see. The option to disable the "simplified search bar" on Vector will also be removed. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
You are now notified when someone adds a link to your user page on wikis where it didn't work before (wikis with dates in the year-month-day order, including Hungarian, Japanese, Korean and some variants of Chinese). [6]

VisualEditor news

You can now set media items' alt text and position, and directly set their size, in the media tool. [7] [8]
The gallery tool was improved and several issues were fixed. [9] [10] [11]

Problems

On February 3, all wikis were broken for about an hour due to a traffic balancing issue. [12]
On February 6, some wikis were broken for about half an hour in total due to a problem with the Math extension. [13]

Future software changes

Some methods from Scribunto's mw.message library will be removed after February 18. If you use them in your templates or modules, please check to make sure that things will not break. [14] [15]
You will soon be able to use GettingStarted on 23 new Wikipedias. It helps new users by listing possible tasks and giving help. The new version was also added to the English Wikipedia on February 7th. [16]
You will soon see results from other wikis when you use the new search tool (CirrusSearch). [17] [18]
The WikiLove tool was redesigned and should also load faster. [19]
Edits made with WikiLove or after a GettingStarted suggestion will be tagged. [20] [21]
It will soon no longer be possible to hide section editing links in your preferences. [22]
You will soon be able to use the revision deletion feature via the API. [23]
You will soon be able to choose mobile view on non-mobile devices using a Beta Feature option. [24] [25]
If you have questions about Universal Language Selector, you can join an IRC meeting on February 12 at 17:00 UTC, in the #wikimedia-office channel on Freenode. [26]
Developers are preparing for Google Summer of Code 2014. You can propose ideas. [27]
bugzilla.wikimedia.org will be updated this week. You won't be able to access it from 22:00 UTC on February 12 until 01:00 UTC on February 13 at the latest. [28]
The <poem> tag will be renamed to <lines>. The old tag will still work. [29]

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