Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-01-15/Technology report

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  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  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  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  was wrapped around the unordered list in , 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  element containing the content actions can be obtained with , which will almost certainly work despite any structural change. (Simetrical, r18949)

Also, a new utility function was added for the benefit of JavaScript authors. 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:
 * The "undo" link on diffs now shows a diff demonstrating what changes will be made to the current page rather than simply showing an edit form. This is equivalent to clicking the "Show changes" button.  Also, the message explaining what happened was clarified.  (Andrew Garrett, r18907–8)
 * All interface messages now show the correct tooltip prefix for the user's browser, provided JavaScript is enabled. For instance, the tooltip for "Save page" will now read "[shift-alt-s]" for users of Firefox 2.0, not "alt-s". (Simetrical, r19036)
 * When viewing the difference between two revisions, users can choose via a user preference not to have the full text of the latter revision output below the differences. This should noticeably improve the time it takes to display diffs of large pages.  Adding   or   to the end of a diff URL will display or hide the revision text regardless of user preferences, respectively.  (Ilmari Karonen, bug 3446, r19141)
 * On user pages, the "user contributions" link will show up red if the user has no edits. (Leon Weber, r19219, 20, 22))
 * When printing, the user's browser font size preference will be used, rather than the text being forced to 11 points. (Simetrical, r19221)
 * A link back to the list of deleted revisions for a page is now provided on the undelete revision preview page. (Rob Church, bug 7842, r19258)
 * The block form now contains links to the unblock page and the block list. (Rob Church, bugs 8619 and 8628, r19259 and r19287)
 * Users with appropriate permissions will now see a deletion link for each entry on Special:Brokenredirects. (Rob Church, bug 8522, r19262)

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


 * Breton (thanks to Fulup)
 * Finnish (thanks to Niklas Laxström and Ilmari Karonen)
 * French (thanks to Rémi Kaupp)
 * German (thanks to Raymond and Leon Weber)
 * Hebrew (thanks to Rotem Liss)
 * Indonesian (thanks to Ivan Lanin)
 * Lithuanian (thanks to Edgaras)
 * Portuguese (thanks to 555)
 * Serbian (thanks to Sasa Stefanovic)
 * Spanish (thanks to Titoxd)
 * Swedish (thanks to Lejonel)

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