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VisualEditor (on left) compared to wikitext or "source" editing (on right).

Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) developers have implemented a Beta version of VisualEditor (VE), a way to edit pages without needing to learn wiki markup. Both VisualEditor and the original wikitext editor are automatically available to all editors on all article and user pages (VE is disabled in all other namespaces). You can continue to edit wikitext directly using the "Edit source" tab.

Bug reports and comments are welcome 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, it still has some bugs, and it runs slowly for many users. While experienced editors will be more efficient with wikitext editing, VE is intended to be more user-friendly for new editors; for example, there are dialogs to insert a new image, or to edit a complex template or reference.

After a huge consensus in favor of an opt-out, the WMF developers have implemented a user preference to disable VisualEditor. Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing, and check the box labeled "Temporarily disable VisualEditor while it is in beta", then click "Save". If you're having trouble disabling VisualEditor, or to hide it instead of disabling it, see Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Opt-out for more detailed instructions.

Attention Internet Explorer (IE) users: At the moment, VisualEditor is disabled for all IE web browsers. For IE9 and IE10 users, this is intended to be temporary, with various issues being addressed by software fixes. But VE will not be made available to users of IE8 and earlier. If you use these older versions of IE and want to edit with VisualEditor, you will need to use a different browser.

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Welcome to the portal for the VisualEditor, a new way of editing Wikipedia being developed by the Wikimedia Foundation. Editing Wikipedia has, in the past, required people to learn some wikimarkup, for most changes to articles. In 2001, this was acceptable; in 2013, it drives away some contributors. VisualEditor allows people to edit without having to learn wikimarkup and will, it is hoped, encourage more readers to become editors.

By the end of July 2013, the VE team expects VE to be available to editors on almost all Wikimedia projects.

Experienced editors may well prefer editing wikitext directly, finding it faster and more precise. Editing articles purely in wikitext is still and will remain an option; the Wikimedia Foundation has absolutely no plans to remove this. Both editing options are accessible from the toolbar above each article and user page.

About VisualEditor

VisualEditor is a new, "visual" way of editing Wikipedia that will let people contribute without having to learn wikimarkup. It has been available as an opt-in "alpha" release on the English-language Wikipedia since December 2012, in 16 other languages since April 2013, and in almost all other languages since the beginning of June. As shown below, the VE team expects to deploy this to almost all Wikipedias by the end of July, making it available for all editors without their opting in, starting with the English-language Wikipedia on 1 July.

For those interested in using VisualEditor, there is a guide to doing so, as well as a list of common keyboard shortcuts. If you're interested in helping with the deployment, there are lots of tasks that needed to be done. You can receive regular status updates on your talk page by signing up for the VE newsletter.

Video explaining the "alpha" version of Wikipedia's VisualEditor

At the moment, VisualEditor has a large number of bugs. While some bugginess was inevitable, the current level is unacceptable and the developers' goal is to eliminate as many of these bugs as quickly as possible. Some entirely new features are still yet to be built. If you encounter an issue, then please report it on the Feedback page.

Limitations

Current limitations include:

  • Slow - Loading longer pages into VisualEditor takes more time than the old wikitext editor, although this has improved significantly.[1] Large articles may take 15 seconds or so to load. Pages can take a long time to respond to attempted scrolling. Speed depends primarily on the speed of your computer.
  • Articles and User pages only – VisualEditor is only enabled for the article and user namespaces (the latter allows editors to make changes in a personal sandbox). In time, VE will include the specialised editing tools needed for non-article pages, but the developer focus has been on articles. On pages other than those in the article and user namespaces, the "Edit" button will take editors to the old (wikitext) editor.
  • Limited browser support – VisualEditor currently works only in the most modern versions of Firefox, Chrome and Safari. A volunteer is working on Opera support, and the developers aim to have support for the latest versions of Internet Explorer once they release VisualEditor more widely.
  • Supports no skins except Vector and Monobook. [1]
  • Cannot edit a single section. VisualEditor loads and submits only entire pages.
  • Incomplete editing functionality – The content of some "complex" formatting, including tables and definition lists, will display and can be edited, but editors using VE cannot modify the structures or add new entries, such as an additional row for a table. Adding features in this area is one of the developers' priorities.
  • Relatively weak referencing support (albeit getting better).
  • Cannot copy-paste from one page to another without losing italics, bold, wikilinks, and other markup. In particular, footnotes and templates cannot be copy-pasted. Adding this functionality is a high-priority enhancement.
  • Odd-looking – The developers are currently struggling with making the HTML that VE produces look like what editors are used to seeing, so styling and so on may look a little (or even very) odd. Developer time is being spent on improving this, but their focus remains on ensuring that VisualEditor does not alter wikitext unexpectedly.
  • Cannot view hidden comments – Users using VisualEditor cannot view hidden comments, which often contain notes that are helpful in editing specific sections of articles.
  • Template within template - (e.g. {{Template1|{{Template2}}}}) Unlike the Visual Mode editor of Wikia, which will be disabled if a template is containing another template, VisualEditor of Wikimedia allows such usage and will display the preview properly. The only problem is that the template within can only be used in the source mode style, meaning you need to write the full source code of the inner template manually in the parameter entry window of the outer template.
  • Does not always edit link text properly. Attempts to edit the first letter or letters of visible link text result in this being placed outside the link

Because of these limitations and the many remaining bugs in VisualEditor, the developers recommend that VE users click "Review your changes" before saving a page, and report any problems they see.


Timetable

Week of.. Launch Target projects Status
1 July Launch to all logged-in users as the default editor English-language Wikipedia Done
15 July Launch to all logged-in and anonymous users as the default editor English-language Wikipedia Done
24 July Launch to all logged-in users on other first-stage projects German (de), Spanish (es), French (fr), Hebrew (he), Italian (it), Dutch (nl), Polish (pl), Russian (ru) and Swedish (sv) Done
29 July Launch to all logged-in and anonymous users on other first-stage projects German (de), Spanish (es), French (fr), Hebrew (he), Italian (it), Dutch (nl), Polish (pl), Russian (ru) and Swedish (sv) Done
? Launch to all logged-in and anonymous users on all other projects All Wikipedias, except those languages with language variants, such as Chinese. Please update

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 VE 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.

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to VisualEditor.
  1. ^ Pages for which VisualEditor is an option carry roughly 2% more Javascript, which is about 0.5% of the total page load. Furthermore, this only has to be loaded once and is cached for use on all pages (until your cache expires, usually once a week).
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