mediawiki update brings new goodies for wikinews

Now that Wikimedia got updated, we get to have all the cool new features, which is exciting! I always love software updates. Furthermore, almost none of the javascript broke (well one minor thing we stole from commons did, but otherwise all is well. None of *my* js broke ;) Well actually one thing I did broke due to the mediawiki and user namespace on wiktionary becoming first letter case insensitive, but other then that nothing broke. On the bright side, due to the software update, my WiktLookup gadget now works in IE (or should anyways, haven't tested).

The one feature we [at wikinews] were waiting for was changes to DynamicPageList that allows us to put our developing articles on the Main Page without them being picked up by Google news. (Google news assumes any article on our main page with a number in the url, that does not have nofollow is a published news article. Since we allow anyone to create an article, we don't want our articles in progress being picked up by google). Thus {{main devel}} is back on the main page after a long absence.

Speaking of DynamicPageList (to clarify, the Wikimedia one, not DPL2), it has a number of cool new features for us at Wikinews, and other wikis that use it. (I'm especially happy about this, as I contributed a patch for it, and its really cool to see something I've done go live). Among other things, it can now list articles alphabetically (a feature request from wikibooks), and you can specify the date format that the article was added to the category (before it was just a boolean on/off switch). However, one of the coolest new features (imho) is the ability to use image gallery's as an output mode. One can now use DynamicPageList to make a <gallery> of say the first 20 images in both Category X and Category Y but not in Category Z.

Here's to all the devs for continuing to do an excellent job with Mediawiki.

Cheers,
Bawolff

forging the lqt signature

Today I discovered the little known fact that you can override the automatic signature in liquid thread.



(from [[Comments:Red Shirts cause state of emergency in Thai capital]])

This ought to be fun ;)

-bawolff


update: Apprently this is now in the liquid threads UI. I was feeling very cool about myself when i thought you could only do it with the API ;)

Wikinews Writing Contest begins!

The 2010 Wikinews writing contest is off to a good start, with Blood Red Sandman submitting the first article. Good luck to all the competitors.

P.S. Want to sign up? Its not to late, see [[Wikinews:Writing contest 2010]]. Both newbies and old contributors are welcome (newbies get a handicap). There's even a small prize for the winner.

new bottom mode on wiktionary lookup gadget

Just wanted to mention, I've added some new options to wiktionary lookup gadget. One of them is to display it as a bar at the bottom instead of as a tooltip. (This idea comes from [[:fr:wikt:Utilisateur:Darkdadaah]] who made a gadget on the french wiktionary to display definitions on a bar at the bottom.)

Here's what it looks like so far. Its the wiktionary logo (or at least in some languages anyways) in the background.

Quick update on WiktLookup

Wiktionary Lookup is a tool that allows you to double click on a word, and have a little popup with its definition from Wiktionary. (Its enabled on this blog, and several wikis). So far it is translated into:

• English
• Spanish
• Italian
• French
• Japanese
• Dutch
• And several other languages pending

The script itself has improved quite a bit. Words can now be selected by highlighting and pressing ctrl+shift+L in addition to double clicking. It should be able to determine what language the word you are clicking on is in (in some cases anyways), to make sure it gets the right definition. There is now also several configuration options:

• showWord - determine if it should display the word that was looked up (its set to bold on this blog)
• count - number of definitions to return
• height - max height of the popup box
• width - max width
• key - the key combo to look up a word when highlighting
• reverseShift - change the role of the shift key from preventing the popup from appearing when double-clicking, to requiring the shift key be pressed when double clicking

In the future, there will be even more options (such as say the word if audio pronounciation is available), more languages, and more awesomeness ;) See [[n:WN:WiktLookup]] for more details and how to use the script on your own webpage/wiki.

Introducing Wiktionary lookup. Now for blogs

At the urging of Amgine, I've been developing a gadget for Wikimedia projects that looks up a word you double click in Wiktioary. (It is based on a gadget from french Wikinews by User:Conrad.Irwin and User:Bequw) Anyways, I've been told that some people want to use it on there blog, so now you can. All you have to do is insert somewhere in the <head> of your html document:


<script src='http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki%3AWiktionaryLookup-external.js&amp;action=raw&amp;ctype=text/javascript' type='text/javascript'></script>

Then whenever someone double-clicks a word, the definition will popup (See diagram at top). Its currently enabled on this blog (as well as several Wikimedia projects). Please try it out and let me know what you think.

Some notes:

• It detects the language from the lang attribute on <html> (note thats lang, not xml:lang) It will also look in js global variable wgContentLanguage for the current language.


• Supports english (EN), french (fr, frc), Dutch (nl). Translations welcome.


• This is still a work in progress. Expect improvements. Bug reports can go on [[n:Mediawiki_talk:Gadget-dictionaryLookupHover.js]]. There are also some generic instructions on [[n:WN:WiktLookup]]


• Current browser support is: Full support on Firefox, Safari. Partial support on Konqueror, Internet explorer (requires xslt support for full support. IE doesn't work due to mediawiki using a mime type that IE doesn't recognize as xslt). Theoretically should have full support on Opera, but have not tested.

Update: now with compound word support.

Wikinews gets a new Main Page!

Wikinews's Main page has finally been updated to ShakataGaNai's redesign. (The delay was due to me not being avaliable to make the automated lead generator work with the new main page. I was a little worried today when i logged in i would be beheaded on irc for not being arround to do that for so long.)

I think the new design looks absolutely excellent. There have been so many failed attempts at redesigning the main page, I'm glad to see we've finally agreed on one and that it looks so nice.