Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-11-20/Technology report

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Tables can now be made sortable via JavaScript. Any table with  will have arrows in each of its header cells, and clicking them will cause the table to sort according to that column's values. For instance, a table of countries could be sorted by the user according to country name, GDP, currency code, etc. A demonstration of the script can be viewed here. As always, the change might not be live for several days. (patch by Stuart Langridge, Lupin, Jonathan Snook, Robert Nyman, and Simetrical; r17803, bug 2001)

An extension written by Steve Sanbeg, Labeled Section Transclusion, was committed to the MediaWiki codebase in Subversion by Nick Jenkins. While it is not yet enabled on any Wikimedia site, it may be in the future. The extension allows pieces of pages to be transcluded without transcluding the entire page. It was requested for use on Wikisource in particular at bug 5881, where Dovi Jacobs and others noted how useful it would be for including things such as Bible verses.

A minor bug in retroactive autoblocking, where a user could be retroactively autoblocked even if the block failed, was fixed. (Andrew Garrett, r17802)

Several interface changes were made this week:
 * The external link icon for links to video, audio, and PDF files have been changed from the standard outward arrow to media-specific icons. Icons for image files and non-PDF document formats were not added because no one has submitted any at the bug page as of press time.  (icons by Flamurai, patch by Simetrical; r17593 and r17594, bug 1578)
 * Automatic edit summaries are now inserted for edits where the page is blanked or reduced in length by over 90%, and for new articles of less than 500 characters, where no summary is provided by the editor. These join Rob Church's earlier addition of an automatic summary for the creation of redirects. (Andrew Garrett; r17608, r17609, and r17804)
 * Edit summary previews now appear on the preview page. (Simetrical, r17660, bug 7811)
 * When previewing pages that have a float near the bottom (e.g., Template:Politics of Vatican City), the edit toolbar will now display in the correct place. (Simetrical, r17712, bug 7932)
 * When viewing an old revision of a page, there is now a diff link next to the link to the current revision. (Simetrical, r17714, bug 6873)
 * A rollback link is now available directly on articles' history pages. (Simetrical, r17715 and r17797, bug 3315)
 * When previewing a page, additions and removals of templates will be correctly reflected in the "templates used on this page" list. When editing a section, the list will display only the templates used in that section. (Mark Haidar [Fyren], r17738 and r17800, bug 7918)
 * When viewing a diff, if a summary contains an automatic edit section link, it jumps to the correct place on the diff page and doesn't load the latest version of the page. (Mark Haidar [Fyren], r17741, bug 7688)
 * JavaScript code on the page MediaWiki:Common.js will now be used by all users, even those who do not use the default Monobook skin (non-Monobook skins are available under the "Skins" section of "my preferences"). Previously the contents of MediaWiki:Monobook.js had been included in every page in Monobook, enabling admins to add custom JavaScript code, but only for users of Monobook.  Monobook.js is redundant to the new page, since skin-specific code can be added to Common.js using the   variable, and is therefore deprecated. (Simetrical, r17737 and r17755, bug 4178)
 * Users who have chosen to be prompted for edit summaries when they leave them blank will no longer be prompted if a "Redirecting to X" autosummary will be inserted automatically. (Simetrical, r17801, bug 7889)

Some updates were made to non-English messages, specifically: Internationalization help is always appreciated! See Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to Mediazilla.
 * Czech (thanks to Mormegil)
 * Hebrew (thanks to Rotem Liss)
 * Italian (thanks to BrokenArrow)
 * Kazakh (thanks to AlefZet)
 * Vietnamese (thanks to Minh Nguyễn)