Wikipedia:VisualEditor
The developers are working on VisualEditor (VE), a way to edit pages without needing to learn wikitext markup.
Try it out
You can use VisualEditor by logging-in, checking the feature and pressing save.
It sits alongside the original wikitext editor and lets you choose which one you want to use for each edit.
Unregistered users do not have the ability to opt-in. If you would like to try it out, you can use this link, without needing an account.
Bug reports
We welcome bug reports and comments at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. Your help in identifying bugs and training new users is invaluable.
VisualEditor is in beta testing. It can't yet do everything that the wikitext editor can do, still has some bugs, and is slow for some users and on large pages.
We intend VisualEditor to be a better editor for all users, new and experienced. You can insert a citation, an image or edit a complex template.
Internet Explorer
VisualEditor does not yet work with Internet Explorer 9 (and will never work with Internet Explorer 8 or older).
- Main page
- Feedback at MediaWiki
- Sandbox (no account required)
- Why are the developers building this?
- Documentation:
- Development:
- Customization
- Known problems
- Requests for Comments (RfCs): Jul 2013 a, Jul 2013 b, Jul 2015, Sep 2015
Welcome to the portal for the VisualEditor, a way of editing Wikipedia being developed by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Editors have long had to learn some wikimarkup to make most edits. In 2001, this difficulty was acceptable; in 2015, it drives away some contributors. VisualEditor will allow people to edit all pages without having to learn wikitext markup and will hopefully encourage more readers to become editors.
Even after the eventual anticipated full-feature release of VisualEditor, experienced editors still may prefer editing wikitext because they find it faster and more precise. Editing articles purely in wikitext is and will remain an option that the Wikimedia Foundation has no plans to remove. Even editors who enable VisualEditor will have the wikitext option available from the toolbar above each article, user page and section.
About VisualEditor
VisualEditor is a new, "visual" way of editing Wikipedia that allows people to contribute without having to learn wikimarkup. It was made available as an opt-in release on the English-language Wikipedia back in December 2012, in 14 other languages in April 2013, and in most other languages at the beginning of June 2013. As of April 2015, it is available by default to users of about 76% of the language editions of Wikipedias and as an opt-in beta feature to the rest, along with most non-Wikipedia projects except Wiktionary and Wikisource.
To learn more about using VisualEditor, please read the guide to VisualEditor and the list of common keyboard shortcuts. Your help with the many tasks that need to be done is appreciated. You can also receive regular status updates on your talk page by signing up for the VisualEditor newsletter.
VisualEditor still has many bugs and missing features. If you encounter an issue, please report it on the Feedback page.
Office hours
The schedule for monthly office hours with Product Manager James Forrester is listed on Meta. These discussions happen on IRC.
Limitations
Current known limitations include:
- Slow - Loading longer pages into VisualEditor generally takes more time than the old wikitext editor, although this has improved significantly.
- Not available in talk or discussion namespaces – At the English Wikipedia, VisualEditor is enabled for the following Wikipedia namespaces: Article, Help, File, Category, Book, Portal, Draft, and User (the latter allows editors to make changes in a personal sandbox). It is not enabled for any talk pages, or in the Wikipedia: namespace (because it is mainly used for discussions), or the MediaWiki: or Template: namespaces (which will need specialised editing tools). It is expected that Flow will provide discussion namespace editing. On pages other than those in the namespaces mentioned, the "Editbeta" button is not currently available.
- Cannot edit a single section – VisualEditor loads and submits only entire pages. In VisualEditor's model, editing sections would be paradoxically slower than editing the whole page. Section editing does not reduce edit conflicts. Template:Bugzilla
- Template parameters are wikitext, not rich edited – VisualEditor lets you edit the parameters of template transclusions, but only as "wikitext" (so "
[[Foo]]
" not "Foo"). - Nested templates aren't very easy (e.g.
{{Template1|{{Template2}}}}
) – VisualEditor lets you edit template transclusions which themselves use templates ("nested" templates). This is unlike the old Visual Mode editor of Wikia, which just gave up if this was used, but because template parameters are edited as wikitext it's clunky. - Limited browser support – VisualEditor currently works only in relatively modern (last three years) versions of Chrome/Chromium, Firefox/Iceweasel, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, Midori, Qupzilla, SeaMonkey and WebPositive (approximately 93% of all users).
- "Weird" templates – struggles with templates that pass a bit of incomplete code, with markup, to another template or table, such as ones that fill in multiple parameters of a table by passing, for example,
param1|param2
- this is a difficult problem to code around, but usually unnecessary. - Incomplete editing functionality – The content of some "complex" formatting, including definition lists and multi-column layouts, will display and can be edited, but editors using VisualEditor cannot modify certain details, and table editing on mobile doesn't work properly. Adding features in this area is one of the developers' priorities.
- Only supports Vector and Monobook skins – of the four skins available in user preferences, VisualEditor currently only works with Vector and Monobook.
Because of these limitations and the many remaining bugs in VisualEditor, the developers recommend that VisualEditor users click "Review your changes" before saving a page, and report any problems they see.
Timeline
How to help out
Help is needed to make VisualEditor as good as it can be: You can find and report bugs while using the software or lend a hand in many other tasks, such as:
- Updating help pages – All Wikimedia Foundation projects have help pages to make contributing easier for new editors. Unfortunately, the full launch of VisualEditor will make obsolete the screenshots and tutorials in these help pages, because they describe how to edit using the markup editor. Therefore, the VisualEditor development team needs help updating help pages. The user guide to VisualEditor is a starting place for text for the new help pages.
- Adding TemplateData to templates – VisualEditor features an interactive template editor—described in more detail in the user guide—and as you'll see if you use it on Wikipedia, some templates have named parameters and nice descriptions that make it easy to use. However, other templates lack them because they need "TemplateData" before this feature will work. If you're interested in adding TemplateData, then read the guide to it and the list of the most important templates to add it to.
- Help new users – The successful launch of VisualEditor might result in many more new editors than usual, and even though editing may be easier, learning policies and guidelines and how to interact with the community will still be challenging. Please try to spend some time at the appropriate venues: the Help desk, the Teahouse and the help chatroom. Additionally, please feel free to monitor the Category of Wikipedians looking for help.
Newsletter
- Click here to sign up for the VisualEditor newsletter! Just add
# {{#target:User talk:YOUR USERNAME HERE}}
to the appropriate part of the list. - Prior issues of the newsletter can be found at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Updates. Updates are sent out infrequently.
- This list is for the English Wikipedia only. If you want this newsletter delivered to a different wiki, then sign up on the global list at m:VisualEditor/Newsletter.
- You can unsubscribe at any time by removing your name from this list.
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External links
- The mediawiki.org page about VisualEditor, including the regular status reports
- The mediawiki.org page about Parsoid, the bidirectional wiki parser behind VisualEditor and its regular status reports
References