Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-06-01/Technology report

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Please note that some bug fixes or new features described below have not yet gone live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version, and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.

New MediaWiki skin developed by Usability project team
The Wikipedia Usability Initiative project team has developed a new skin (Vector) based on the default Monobook skin, with improvements influenced by usability testing and research. Changes include moving the search box to the upper-right corner of the page. Monobook will remain the default skin, however users will be able to try out the new Vector skin by selecting it in user preferences. The skin will be available once r51094 goes live on Wikimedia servers.

StringFunctions extension merged with Parser Functions
The StringFunctions extension has been merged with the ParserFunctions extension, per bug 6455. These functions will be available once r50997 is pushed live to the Wikimedia servers.

The new functions include:


 * len - provides the number of characters in a string.
 * pos - Finds first occurrence of "needle" in "string" starting at "offset".
 * rpos - Finds last occurrence of "needle" in "string".
 * sub - Returns substring of "string" starting at "start" and having "length" characters.
 * count - Returns number of occurrences of "substr" in "string".
 * replace - Replaces each occurrence of "from" in "string" with "to", and "limit" replacements at most are performed.
 * explode - Breaks "string" into chunks separated by "delimiter" and returns the chunk identified by "position".

The string parser functions will only work for strings up to a maximum length of 1000 characters.

Other new features

 * More improvements have been made to the new search interface (development in progress), including adding select all/none toggle buttons for the advanced search page where users can pick any combination of namespaces to search, (r51228) an option to search all namespaces, (r51243) and the create article link will only be shown for content namespace and search everything searches. (r51246)
 * Subpages have been enabled in several namespaces: Help, Help talk and Category talk effective immediately, and MediaWiki as of r51153
 * ISO speed rating has been added to the default collapsed EXIF metadata displayed on file pages. (r51038, bug 11484)

Other news

 * The toolserver was out of service for some time on Thursday, May 28 due to a broken switchport.
 * New servers have arrived at the Amsterdam hosting facility, to be used for the toolserver. The new servers will provide a place for user home directories, and be used for replacing zedler (s2 database), a second login server, and the map toolserver.