Technology report

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

The ImageMap extension by Tim Starling has been enabled on Wikimedia sites. It is now possible for images to be easily used to link to pages, including with different areas linking to different pages. Users should remember to keep in mind the needs of browsers not capable of handling graphics well, such as screen readers and perhaps some handheld devices.

In response to the rise of indirect vandalism on the Main Page (see this Signpost article for further details), a new protection mode was added: cascading protection. If a page is protected this way, any pages included in it will also be protected for as long as they remain included in it. This protection should take effect instantly and automatically even if templates are included dynamically by a mechanism such as that used by the Main Page. Administrators can enable cascading protection by means of a checkbox on the usual protection form. (Andrew Garrett, various revisions from r18958 to r19103)

The {{PLURAL}} magic word now treats -1 as singular. (Leon Weber, r19031)

Tooltips and accesskey shortcuts no longer require JavaScript to use. Consequently, the way in which sysops should edit tooltips and accesskeys has changed. While it is possible to continue using the ta array in MediaWiki:monobook.js or MediaWiki:common.js, it is preferable to delete that and migrate any changes to the new individual messages such as MediaWiki:Tooltip-userpage. (Simetrical, bugs 5051 and 5376, r19036)

A minimum protection level for all pages in a given namespace can now be set in the site configuration. By default, the only namespace thus protected is the MediaWiki namespace, which, as before, is only editable by sysops. (Ilmari Karonen, r19110)

A bug that prevented non-sysops from viewing the source of system messages left at their default values, such as (at the time of this writing) MediaWiki:About on the English Wikipedia, was fixed. The bug was presumably a side effect of the recent removal of such default messages from the database. (Ilmari Karonen, r19111)

The contents of <math> tags, when rendered as plain HTML text rather than as an image, will now always be rendered left-to-right, even on right-to-left wikis. (Simetrical, bug 8002, r19143)

The page-specific CSS class now works consistently in Monobook and non-Monobook skins. (Mormegil, bug 8643, r19299)

JavaScript authors should be aware that recently, a minor change to the document structure was made for consistency, related specifically to handheld rendering: a div with class of pBody was wrapped around the unordered list in p-cactions, to bring it in line with the other lists there. This will cause issues for some inflexibly-written JavaScript that depends on the precise document structure. JavaScript authors are advised to write their scripts so that they will continue to function even if wrappers are added or node order changes. For instance, the <ul> element containing the content actions can be obtained with document.getElementById("p-cactions").getElementsByTagName("ul")[0];, which will almost certainly work despite any structural change. (Simetrical, r18949)

Also, a new utility function was added for the benefit of JavaScript authors. addPortletLink() will conveniently add a link to any of the "portlets" in Monobook, including the content actions, personal tools, navigation sidebar, and toolbox. The syntax of the function can be found in wikibits.js. (Ilmari Karonen, r19185)

A number of interface changes were made:

Some updates were made to non-English messages, specifically:

Internationalization help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to Mediazilla.


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