Talk:WMDE Technical Wishes/VisualEditor template dialog improvements

We'd be happy to hear your thoughts on this project here.

Looks great!

I'm excited to see these improvements implemented! I think they'll help a lot, and make VE a more appealing way to edit. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:31, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Thank you very much for this motivating feedback! I have passed it on to the team. Best --Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 10:51, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Cursor focus

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T292980

I'm having problems with cursor focus. For example, to add Template:Tracked, I need to press Tab ↹+Tab ↹ to get my cursor into the correct location to fill in the main parameter.

Inside Flow/Structured Discussions, I need to press Tab ↹+Tab ↹ to be able to type the name of the template, and then I need to press Tab ↹+Tab ↹ to fill in the parameter. This is new, probably late August or the first part of September. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:43, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Thanks for pointing this out. Just to be sure, you're describing the current behavior in the VE template dialog, correct? -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:54, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that's what's happening now. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:02, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Thank you. I have filed a ticket so we can have a look at this. -- Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 08:16, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:31, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Editing a template vs the article

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T295313

Hello, @Johanna Strodt (WMDE). I filed this bug report, and I think it might be something that you want to look at. Editing templates isn't going to be easy if you think that the "edit" button on the template box is about editing the rest of the article. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:07, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, @Whatamidoing (WMF): I've added your request to our work board, so the team will have a look at it. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 13:59, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:55, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Related feature request – display when many aliases are present

Please see task T180542, which seems related to these potential improvements. Jonesey95 (talk) 21:31, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Thank you for reaching out. In fact, the template dialog in the Visual Editor was made larger overall and the new design might make the mentioned problem in the Phabricator ticket go away. It would be interesting to know your opinion if you recreate the situation in the Visual Editor now after deployment. You can try out the changes on one of the small default wikis or on enwiki.beta. --Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 11:58, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Bad and very impressive

Hello, i don't really like the new version of editor template... It looks very big and very impressive, it took all the place of my screen and i prefer something minimalist like it was before... Datsofelija (talk) 10:44, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

@Datsofelija: Thanks for your feedback, I've passed it on the team. It’s unfortunate you don’t like the new size of the dialog. The research has indicated that the window size is insufficient for the complexity of the work and the amount of information it must contain. The larger size is also due to the new sidebar, which was introduced to clearly display all parameters. Best, Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 13:34, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Majuscule pour les nome de modèles

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T296576

Bonjour @Johanna Strodt (WMDE) and Timur Vorkul (WMDE):

J’apprécie énormément la nouvelle interface pour insérer un modèle. Le fait de ne pas devoir recopier du code, et de comprendre l'utilisation, sans passer par la documentation, est un vrai plus pour l’accessibilité de notre encyclopédie. J’ai cependant trouvé une incohérence dans les majuscules de noms de paramètres. On met quasiment toujours une majuscule pour un alias, mais lorsqu'un modèle n'en a pas, il apparaît sans majuscule, ce qui est peu cohérent.

Je pense que dans le cadre de votre travail, vous pourriez très rapidement corriger cette erreur de rendu. Jetez y donc un œil : https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T296576 Merci encore pour tout, et au plaisir de voir Wikipédie continuer à s'améliorer ! -- Nemo ^Discuter 22:44, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

@Nemo Le Poisson: Merci beaucoup pour ce feedback aimable et généreux. Je l'ai passé à l'équipe, qui en a été très heureus(e). Tu as probablement déjà vu la réponse de Thiemo sur le Phabricator Ticket. Je suis désolé que nous ne puissions pas donner une réponse satisfaisante. -- (unsigned comment Timur Vorkul (WMDE) 18:20, 30 November 2021‎)

Thank you for supporting the Dagbani Wikipedia with VisualEditor template!

Hello, I just want to thank the WMDE Technical Wishes team for the technical support on the Dagbani Wikipedia. Please reach out to us if you need any information to help make our Wiki even better. Warmly, Shahadusadik (talk) 15:52, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

@Shahadusadik: Thank you very much for your kind message! We'd love to hear how you liked the improvements from our Templates project. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 11:27, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Not being able to search a certain template

Hey guys, thanks for the update!

So anyway, in Vietnamese Wikipedia, I was searching for the template Fact but it didn't show up. It is a redirect so I thought perhaps the new template insert dialog can't find redirects? So I tried some other redirect templates but it seems not to be the case here. Can you guys tell me what is the problem?

Also, I want to help translate the interface but I'm always get lost in translatewiki and don't know where to find all the messages. Can you just give me the direct link to it?

Thanks a lot. Bluetpp (talk) 15:17, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

@Bluetpp: I’m not familiar with how this tool works, but couldn’t it be because there are quite some results even without that? If not, my next guess is the namespace: vi:Bản mẫu:Fact redirects to vi:Tiêu bản:Cần chú thích, not vi:Bản mẫu:Cần chú thích—they should be equivalent, as Tiêu bản is an alias of the namespace Bản mẫu, but if there’s a bug somewhere, this difference may make it visible.

For the translation, I think you should find everything on translatewiki:Special:Translate/ext-visualeditor—and some other untranslated VisualEditor-related messages as well. 89% translated messages is pretty good, so you may want to bring it to (or at least near) 100%, including the translation of other, for example reference-related, messages. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 00:55, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

@Tacsipacsi Thank you for your reply. I don't understand you saying "because there are quite some results even without that", can you kindly explain? And, vi:Bản mẫu:Fact redirects to vi:Bản mẫu:Cần chú thích, not the "Tiêu bản" one, so... Bluetpp (talk) 01:17, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

@Bluetpp: If you start typing the name of the template, only a limited number of results (10) appears. The software needs to use some sort of heuristics to select which 10 of the possible candidates to show. It may happen that it prefers non-redirect templates containing the string fact over redirect templates, even if the latter is an exact match.

Yes, if you open vi:Bản mẫu:Fact, you’re redirected to the correct template. However, if you open the redirect itself for editing, you’ll see that it contains #redirect [[Tiêu bản:Cần chú thích]], not #redirect [[Bản mẫu:Cần chú thích]]. MediaWiki itself considers the two as equivalent, but if the template suggester uses some custom logic (which I find quite unlikely but not entirely impossible), it may be broken by this difference. (Background: Tiêu bản used to be the template namespace’s name before it was changed to Bản mẫu in 2009. Since this redirect was created in 2006 and hasn’t been edited since then, it still reflects the old namespace name.) —Tacsipacsi (talk) 14:56, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

@Tacsipacsi Oh, thank you for your clarification. I've just changed it back to "Bản mẫu" but no, it still doesn't appear, so I guess your first explanation may be the case. So maybe the team managing Visual Editor should do something about it? Because it's so incomprehensible when you search for a template and it doesn't show up even though it's an exact match? Also, you impressed me with your knowledge on viwiki's history... Bluetpp (talk) 15:04, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

@Bluetpp: Yes, the developers should definitely do something about it, I just thought I give them some tips in the meantime.

I’ve been working on cleaning up wikitext interlanguage links in some projects, where I’ve run into a lot of Tiêu bản links, this is how I knew about the change. Actually I didn’t know until today when it happened, since I was not that interested in it, but fortunately Phabricator didn’t give too much results when I searched for Tiêu bản. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 15:24, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

@Bluetpp: I'm very sorry I left your message unanswered for so long. And thank you to @Tacsipacsi for the extensive explanations. I just checked, and the issue does not seem to exist anymore, at least for me. Can you confirm that? What I did was adding a template in the 2017 Wikitext Editor via the jigsaw puzzle icon. Then I searched for Cần chú thích and the template dialog opened that template. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 11:37, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

@Johanna Strodt (WMDE): Hey, thank you for coming back to me, I've just checked and yeah it's there! Bluetpp (talk) 13:43, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

@Johanna Strodt (WMDE) and Bluetpp: If the bug was indeed due to the “wrong” namespace, it may still exist, just the redirect has been canonicalized since then. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 23:13, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Feedback for consideration

I didn't realize there was a rollout of a new template editing system (and was confused!). I like the changes, and I would like to provide some feedback for your consideration.

• Parameter values should have up to 3 lines shown initially, rather than 1 line, and expand when focused like normal.
• Ditto for parameter descriptions--more should be shown initially.
• I would like the chevron button that expands/collapses the description to sit adjacent to the parameter title, rather than hiding some of the parameter description.
• Clicking the "fall back to plain wikitext" doesn't toggle when focused on another field nvm it's going to be removed
• An option to hide the sidebar like before, defaulting to hidden.
• A quick way to jump up and down to the previous or next fields with a shortcut.

Side note, I recently (pre-change) had an issue with CMD+backspace deleting the selected parameter when the intention was to delete the whole line. This appears to be fixed(?), as I can't replicate it anymore. Looks great! SWinxy (talk) 00:20, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your message, SWinxy. Our work in the Templates project is mostly finished but I passed your suggestions on to the team anyway. I forgot to let you know – sorry about that. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 11:40, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you! SWinxy (talk) 18:07, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

I want add data by a personal bibliography

I can't insert the data ? 37.155.41.199 01:41, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Hello! Could you please provide more detailed info on which wiki and what the problem is exactly?

• What do you want to do and why?
• What are the steps you are taking?
• What problems do you encounter?

Thanks! Timur Vorkul (WMDE) (talk) 10:54, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

VisualEditor template is great to check parameters, but ...

Hello,

When I want to use the VisualEditor template dialog on the French article fr:Archives départementales du Gard to check parameters usage, I have problems:

1. as ville and adresse are synonyms in the template data, I am not informed that's an issue.
2. the non existing subdivision2 parameter is not displayed as an undocumented parameter, as if there was not the previous error in the code.

--Dom (talk) 15:03, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

@Dom: Thank you for your feedback and my apologies for not replying earlier. I hope I can give you an answer this week. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 15:01, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

@Dom: Sorry for another late reply. I have a few questions to understand the issue better:

• By synonyms do you mean alias? Both terms are aliases of "siège" and if you search for either adresse or ville, "siège" will appear as a search result because of it, so you can still add the parameter. What was the behavior that you were expecting instead? What is the issue?
• subdivision2 is not added to this template as an undocumented parameter. Did you want the option to add it outside of wikitext? (You can do this with the shortcut Ctrl+⇧ Shift+D inside of VE if you like.) If added, it will be marked as undocumented. Again, could you explain more what the expected behavior is here? -- Thanks a lot and have a good weekend, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 11:21, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

@Johanna Strodt (WMDE), you are right, I was meaning alias. As I have update the fr:Archives départementales du Gard since my request, so I have created some test cases that will help to better understand the 2 issues.
--Dom (talk) 21:32, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

@Johanna Strodt (WMDE): Why do I need to use an obscure hotkey to add undocumented parameters? I wouldn’t mind if it was hidden under an “advanced” drawer or something like that, as it’s indeed rarely needed, but if for example {{TNT}} had TemplateData documentation, adding undocumented parameters would be totally normal, as they are passed to an arbitrary template specified in a parameter of {{TNT}}. (Although it doesn’t have TemplateData, probably exactly for this reason.) Currently there’s no way to find out this hotkey on one’s own; this talk page thread is way too little visibility even for a such rarely needed feature. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 23:21, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Support wikidata where the template makes use hereof

Making it easy to maintain infoboxes on the different language versions will support more facts to be placede on the language pages. I would recomend a support for updating data in Wikidata, when a template relies on data from here. Then there could be support for smaller languages. Poul G (talk) 08:26, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

@Poul G: Thank you for your comment! Our work in this project is coming to an end. But I was wondering: Have you heard of the Wikidata Bridge? -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 06:58, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Interesting, but has been stalled for a year. Poul G (talk) 09:14, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

@Poul G. That is true. I hope it can be un-stalled again. -- Wishing you a good week, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 07:54, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I saw the announcement

...in the Wikidata chat and was mildly disappointed to learn that I had already been using the new version on dewiki and wouldn't get anything shiny to test-drive. Nonetheless: thank you for your work. I have no specific requests (unless you consider world peace to be within scope). Karl Oblique (talk) 08:56, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

@Karl Oblique: Thank you for your message and your kind words. Maybe I can get you excited about our work on Kartographer? We plan to make it available on dewiki around May 24 beginning of June. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 14:56, 9 May 2022 (UTC) updated: Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 07:53, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Population by age graph

I don't know of I'm in the right place so if I'm not, my apologies. The Hebrew version of Wikipedia uses a component of a country to display the population by age (תבנית מדינה, גרף אוכלוסיה לפי גילאים) but this component does look good in the mobile version. The width of the columns in the graph is too narrow. Please contact me if you have any questions. Was tested on Australia as an example. 77.137.71.234 21:12, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

This page is about improvements to VisualEditor’s template dialog. With general support questions concerning Wikimedia wikis, please go to Tech, and be more specific (e.g. link to the page/section where you see the issue). —Tacsipacsi (talk) 00:38, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

It's true, we can't help with that. Thanks for the explanation, Tacsipacsi.

@77.137.71.234: I hope you find someone who can help you! -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 11:45, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

I love the changes thank you soooooo much

That's it. You've made editing templates sooooooooooooooooooooooooo much easier. --Scann (talk) 00:40, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

@Scann: Oh, that makes us so happy! That was the whole point of this project, so we're really glad it's helping you. -- Greetings on behalf of the Technical Wishes team, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 07:13, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Confused

I am new to using the visual editor. I am trying to edit some tables on the NFL Rookie of the Year page. On some of the tables, I can click the individual cells and start typing in them. On other tables, I click on the table and get a popup that says "Template content." This behavior is probably very confusing for most new users. I still am not sure how I can edit these tables, so I just went back to the source editor. LitanyOfBoredom (talk) 09:37, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Hello LitanyOfBoredom, thanks for reaching out. I agree that this can be quite confusing. Here's why it happens:

• It is possible to create tables the "normal way", by using the "insert table" feature. These types of tables can be edited directly on the page in VisualEditor.
• And there's also the alternative of using a template to create a table. These types of tables are edited via the template dialog, which is the dialog through which all templates are edited in VisualEditor.

The authors of this page have chosen both methods to insert tables, and they probably had good reasons to do so, but it can be quite confusing for anyone who just wants to edit this page.

I'm afraid there's nothing we can offer from a technological side because it's the authors' decision which way of creating tables they pick, or if they combine both. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:53, 13 February 2023 (UTC)