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This information is now antiquated. We are no longer running the Uniwiki tools, and they are no longer supported.

issues[edit | edit source]

Serious[edit | edit source]

  • Sections box, top right, covers part of the top edit box
    • Try making the margins narrower in the edit skin. If that doesn't work, make the margins narrower site wide for now.
    • This seems to have been fixed by setting the show category selections to true.
  • Lost sections: I just chatted to Pasopati: she created Keripik Pisang (translating a page from English). She used the default layout, deselected unwanted sections, and added more using the "Add a Section" box. When she saved, only the last section was saved - all else was lost. I suggested using the "no layout" option in future and saving more often, but this will be a big problem for newbies. --Chriswaterguy 19:18, 20 November 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]


Important[edit | edit source]

  • Minimize load on computer - make it work better for old/basic computers:
  • Minimize use of java/js
  • Use a non-java edit bar, like the standard MediaWiki one? (That has more features too, like signature.) Note that other lightweight non-WYSIYWYG editors exist, such as the HTML editor in Wordpress, which has a small pop-up window for a link, for example, and seems very light on resources, and extremely fast.
  • No summary box in the main namespace (where sections are separate). --Lonny 05:55, 8 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
    • This is in the extensions/uniwiki/GenericEditPage/style.css:
/* summary is really hard to hide, because the
 * mediawiki markup is a steaming heap of... */
body.edit-generic #wpSummary,
body.edit-generic .editOptions br,
body.edit-generic #wpSummaryLabel {
	display: none;
}
  • We had to get rid of the autoinsert image feature for the tool bar extension to work on our servers. We should fix this, but also leave a way for already uploaded images to be inserted.
  • Can the authors extension be suppressed on a particular page, or made less obvious? We don't want it to be so obvious on the main page, and maybe not on portals. Currently we are not running the authors extension.
  • Currently uses unorthodox keyboard shortcuts, e.g. ctrl+A inserts media (which is normally select all). Better to use standard shortcuts for less confusion (and not too many, assuming they require Java or JS).
  • Long pages seem to cause errors for editing. See my user talk page.
  • "Add section" only adds a section to the end. Can't rearrange existing sections (or new sections).
    • You can add using the double equal signs and then clicking preview page.
  • Select categories list way too long
    • Made list scrollable by adding the following to extensions/uniwiki/GenericEditPage/style.css (which is an ugly hack that should be placed in some more general site skin, i.e. not in the extension skin, which is apt to change)
#editform #category-box .inputs {
max-height:50em;
overflow-x:hidden;
overflow-y:auto;
}
  • Select categories list is now in a scroll box, but now the Add Category is stuck at the bottom of the scrolled list (instead of sitting on its own below the list). This can be fixed by figuring out where to place the following css classes. Notice that #category-box .inputs is for the selection and #category-box .add is for the add box. (also #category-box .suggest is for a suggest box that we do not use).
#editform #section-box .add, #editform #category-box,
#editform #category-box .add, #editform #category-box .suggest {
	border-top-color: #888;
}
		
#editform #category-box .inputs {
	max-height: 50em;
	overflow: auto;
	overflow-x: hidden;
}
  • Custom edit breaks section titles at a tick mark '.
  • Certain characters not allowed when creating a page, including comma and question mark.
  • Piping in categories is removed in Generic (Uniwiki) mode. E.g. [[Category:Porting]] becomes [[Category:Porting]]. This happens even when the category is commented out. The deletion may go beyond just the piped text, all the way until it meets a final "]]".
  • Focus changes after using the format buttons - although the text is selected, the user often has to scroll to find it.
  • Doesn't display "Templates used in this preview:" or "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page:" in Generic mode.
  • When editing a page that was started with a layout, the sections sometimes force back into the original order... see abstract here.
  • No notice on the edit page in Generic mode (starting "Please note that all contributions to Appropedia" mentioning the license and conditions of contribution, warning against using copyright materials - I assume this is set in MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning if that page has content, and the present page is a default. --Chriswaterguy).

Minor issues[edit | edit source]

(We won't deal with this until the major issues are solved.)

  • One very minor formatting behavior change (not to worry about, just to be aware of if formatting problems occur): I had to move a </center> tag on my talk page so that a table of templates was not inside the tags. This only caused a display problem since the Uniwiki installation started. --Chriswaterguy 20:39, 7 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • The option of section editing would be nice. (But change text to "edit section".)
  • Very minor: I used to tab from edit box through edit summary to save/preview. Can't do this now - have to use mouse. --Chriswaterguy 17:56, 9 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • No edit section links in any namespace. Editing a section still seems desirable, especially on long pages. --Lonny 10:14, 13 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Toolbar shows more tools in classic mode than generic mode.
  • Toolbar needs ref and a few other tools.
    • Curt exchanged horizontal line for ref (good choice as horizontal line is a minimal use tag).
    • Is it possible to bring back the standard MediaWiki edit toolbar while running these extensions? Not perfect, but lighter and easier to use for an experienced user. (E.g. don't lose your place in the edit box after clicking one of the buttons). We could then work on improving that toolbar, while keeping it light.
  • I didn't see it here but I know it has been brought up: There are some rendering issues on Google Chrome and some Safari versions (including iPhone). The left toolbars are dropped to the bottom of the page. Both of these browsers run on an engine called Chromium. -- Joey 15:10, 15 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Uniwiki removes and adds line breaks around the level 2 headers, adding a lot of noise to diffs in a page's edit history. It changes them to 2(?) empty lines before the headers, and none after. The standard formatting on Wikipedia is 1 line after (and 1 before?) and this is probably the most common format on Appropedia, and if Uniwiki changed everything to this format, there'd be less noise.
    • Also (very minor) standardizes the header formatting with a single space between the ==s in the header markup, and the header text. Creates a little noise, but less confusing/distracting, and might be a good thing overall. --Chriswaterguy 21:37, 13 November 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • Annoying only for experienced wiki users: When starting to edit from a previous version of a page (in order to revert changes), clicking "Save" leads to an "edit conflict" error, and the need to copy and paste between the boxes. This occurs even though there is no edit conflict in reality (no one had edited the file for several hours before I started doing this.) Tried twice, happened both times. --Chriswaterguy 17:24, 25 November 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Comments[edit | edit source]

This is great at lowering the barrier to entry, and (presumably) increasing contributions from non-geeks. However it would be great if it could cater slightly better for the most obsessive contributors who know wikis very well, and also give a way for new editors to explore wiki editing and its conventions if they wish (e.g. signing comments, using references) without making this seem daunting. A more user-friendly version of the MediaWiki edit bar is another option.

Questions[edit | edit source]

  • Is bandwidth an issue for Uniwiki? If so, how do we minimize it?
  • Should these extensions be uniform across all namespaces? Editing a user or category page is a different process than a page in the article namespace.


Lonny's notes on the install[edit | edit source]

Most of this is solved now. 

----CustomToolbar----
When enabling require_once("$uw/CustomToolbar/CustomToolbar.php"); we receive the following error:

        Content Encoding Error
        The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression.
            * Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.

----GenericEditPage----
We have encountered the following two problems with GenericEditPage:

    * Add section has no effect.
    * Sections with apostrophes only show title up to the apostrophe - this change is saved (e.g. just going into generic mode and back again on this page changes == Lonny's notes on the install == to == Lonny ==.

----Layouts----
We already had a namespace under 100 and 101 (Portal and Portal_Talk), so we edited Layouts.php to say:
if (!defined ("NS_LAYOUT"))      define ("NS_LAYOUT",      104); # even = content
if (!defined ("NS_LAYOUT_TALK")) define ("NS_LAYOUT_TALK", 105); # odd  = discussion
This seems to have worked.
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