Misplaced Pages

Latest revision as of 00:13, 10 January 2025

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If you want to report a JavaScript error, please follow this guideline. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk. Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for five days.

view · edit Frequently asked questions (see also: Misplaced Pages:FAQ/Technical) Click "" next to each point to see more details. If something looks wrong, purge the server's cache, then bypass your browser's cache. This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown. No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box. This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences. No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot. You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker. If you have problems making your fancy signature work, check Help:How to fix your signature. If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link. Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem. If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page. If the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too. If it doesn't work, try again before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear. For server or network status, please see Wikimedia Status. If you cannot reach Misplaced Pages services, see Reporting a connectivity issue.

• Refining the administrator elections process
• Blocks for promotional activity outside of mainspace
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• Proposed rewrite of WP:BITE
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Can we do something about the ridiculous message displayed whenever syntax highlighting is taking "too long"?

Syntax highlighting on this page was disabled because it took too long. The maximum allowed highlighting time is 20ms, and your computer took 22ms. Try closing some tabs and programs and clicking "Show preview" or "Show changes". If that doesn't work, try a different web browser, and if that doesn't work, try a faster computer.

The threshold is probably set too low to being with, and most people couldn't care less about it taking 0.03s vs 0.02s, so to tell them that a mere 2/1000 sec difference is "not allowed" is pretty ridiculous. If someone really does have a slow computer, that's hardly by choice, and to tell them to try a faster one is like Captain Obvious rubbing salt into their wound. More often than not, it's not even the fault of the computer, but rather some background crap (thanks, MS!), or the browser, or simply a very large and complex page (and possibly even the (gasp) wiki JS code). Ideally this should be a pref configurable by the user. Or, they could click a button if they don't care about things being slightly slower on the current page as long as they can still get the highlighting (the way browsers pop up slow JS abort/continue messages; in this case it wouldn't be modal, of course). But I think mostly it's about the overly low threshold, because when a large page is taking a number of seconds to load anyway, a few extra thousandths for this hardly make a difference. 61.84.123.149 (talk) 16:26, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

This seems to come from the Gadget mw:User:Remember the dot/Syntax highlighter. This is a user gadget and is not enabled by default here (but available for users to enable). You should report the issue to the author. But also see mw:User:Remember the dot/Syntax highlighter#Timeout – Ammarpad (talk) 16:58, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, that will probably do it for me. I was uner the impression it was a standard feature. 61.84.123.149 (talk) 17:36, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Well there is a standard feature as well. You might even be using multiple. See WP:HILITE. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:57, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

And the problem with the standard feature is that it doesn't have a timeout, so on very large pages it just freezes up the page until the browser eventually offers to kill it. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 00:38, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

On what page does it actually freeze? CodeMirror is heavily optimized and much more performant nowadays. – SD0001 (talk) 09:00, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

@SD0001 I've been doing a lot of work cleaning up the top of Special:LongPages, and if I don't forget to disable syntax highlighting on any of those pages before editing the page locks up until eventually the browser offers to kill any running scripts. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:33, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Different assets for light and dark mode?

Is there any way to tell Misplaced Pages to display different images / media for Light vs Dark mode users? If not, could this be added in the form of a template, something like this?

{{adaptive|lightmode=]|darkmode=]}}

Due to transparency, some SVG and PNG images have bad contrast when viewed in Dark mode.

(repost from WP:TH as they said would be better here)

CrushedAsian255 (talk) 04:38, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

It would have to be hardcoded in CSS. Dark mode is configured on CSS pages through templatestyles. In order to specify a dark and light mode image in a template like that, Phab:T320322 would have to be fixed first. Snævar (talk) 05:07, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Have you tried using class=skin-invert-image already ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:55, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

{{If dark}} can be used to select what wikitext to display based on whether or not dark mode is enabled. isaacl (talk) 23:19, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Usage of which really should be avoided though. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:33, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

I agree that generally speaking, specific colours shouldn't be specified in wikitext, and using the CSS class to trigger colour inversion by the dark mode feature simplifies maintenance by having just one image. There are cases, such as a company logo with a variant designed for dark mode, where the ability to choose the appropriate image is desirable. isaacl (talk) 17:02, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

{{If dark}} may address the OP's question, although actual use of it may not be the best solution to the problem. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:44, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Template:Current time

I am posting this here in hopes of getting more eyes. I am using this on my user page—specifically, {{current time|UTC-8}}—and the way it's set up, it displays Current time for UTC-8 is 22:52. And, of course, if daylight savings is in effect, I make that UTC-7. Is there a way to use 12-hour format instead and change it to only show the time instead of the whole "current time for..." such as 10:52 PM? Because the infobox parameter is already called current time, having "current time for..." is superfluous, and since in my case I already list my time zone above, the "...for UTC-7/8" is also superfluous. Is there a way to do this, and if not with this template, with another one? Thanks. Amaury • 06:52, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

@Amaury: You can customize this template in your userspace and use it. I can set it up for you if you'd like. – DreamRimmer (talk) 07:14, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

It's a long time since I thought about it, but if someone doesn't provide the #time magic syntax, {{extract}} seems to work: {{extract|currentdatetime|add=-8h|show=%X}} → 4:15 pm. Johnuniq (talk) 07:22, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @DreamRimmer: Thank you for the reply. If you could just show me how so I can learn, that would be appreciated. I took a look at the template page, and it doesn't show any way to customize it, like other template pages do, so I thought maybe it would require some coding on my common.js page: User:Amaury/common.js. All I want it to show is the time in 12-hour format: 11:38 PM. I'm also possibly looking at a way to add the current date parameter and template. I think I could use a custom field for the parameter and Template:Currentdate for the template. While I don't see it on the page, I'm sure there's a way to customize it so the month comes first. Amaury • 07:38, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: Thank you also for the reply. That would work as well. Is there a way to make the AM/PM capitals? Amaury • 07:38, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

@Amaury: I have created User:Amaury/Time. You can now use {{User:Amaury/Time|UTC-8|d=n}} to display the time, like 08:03 AM. If you set the 'd' parameter to 'y' ({{User:Amaury/Time|UTC-8|d=y}}), it will show both the time and date, like 08:03 AM, January 3, 2025. – DreamRimmer (talk) 08:15, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer: Thank you. I'll take a look through it when I can, as it's late here, and follow up on your talk page with any questions. Amaury • 08:34, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

You could also try this: {{#time: g:i A|now-8 hours}} → 4:15 PM. Johnuniq (talk) 08:51, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

This isn't specifically related to this, but it is semi-related and also applies to the template mentioned here. I also don't want to create another section just for this. I've always had problems with anything related to time for as long as I can remember. Is there a way to have my user page and talk page automatically constantly purge the page cache? Because, at least on my user page, I've been having to constantly manually purge the page cache in order to make the time actually show the current time. So, in theory, I would have to do this every single minute. For example, it is currently 1:47 PM here, and my user page is still stuck on 12:31 PM, which is when I temporarily went back to what I was using before creating this section, while my talk page did eventually update at 1:27 PM, but has gotten stuck again and is still saying that. Amaury • 21:47, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

You would need a Javascript user script to update the time periodically. Regenerating the page on the server is a bit of overkill; it would be more efficient for the script to just update the time displayed on your user page. Just curious: is your workflow facilitated by looking at your user page for the current time rather than using another method? isaacl (talk) 22:49, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

@Isaacl: Are you asking if I use it specifically for the work I do on Misplaced Pages? If so, no. I just have it on there just to have it there. Basically just as an interesting piece of info. Amaury • 22:52, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

@Amaury: I have created a userscript to automatically purge your userpage and talk page. You can copy the code from User:DreamRimmer/test.js and paste it into your common.js file or create a separate script page and install it. The script will purge these pages every minute while they are loaded in your browser, and you can customize it to include additional pages or adjust the purge interval to suit your needs. – DreamRimmer (talk) 07:14, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Pages don't auto-purge for a reason, namely that Misplaced Pages is designed to do as much caching as possible. One user doing a purge every minute won't be noticed, but people sometimes ask for a particular page to be purged regularly and they are told that it's not going to happen. Johnuniq (talk) 08:09, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Noted! – DreamRimmer (talk) 08:13, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

@Amaury: You can add ({{purge|refresh}}) after the time to make a purge link saying (refresh) for all viewers of the page. {{current time}} is rather misleading without a purge link and should add it as an option. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:33, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

@DreamRimmer, Johnuniq, and PrimeHunter: Thank you all for the help. You've all been incredibly helpful. :) Amaury • 09:48, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

We should really have a template gadget for times and countdowns. – SD0001 (talk) 10:27, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Gadget-UTCLiveClock ? Snævar (talk) 11:47, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

I think most people prefer having their notifications unified as much as possible. Thus I can see a better case for building a notification feature in a Misplaced Pages app than into the web-based interface (as the web interface has no access to the underlying platform notification/timer APIs). isaacl (talk) 17:19, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Not sure if you got the indentation wrong or if this is actually a response to my comment. What I meant is to have a gadget loaded on use of a template which is controlled by its parameters to show live time for any given time zone (enhancing the wikitext output of {{time}}, {{current time}}, {{current time in time zone}}, etc), to show live countdowns (enhancing the output of {{countdown}}), and so on. Apart from userspace use cases, it could be used on datetime-related articles like (eg. Eastern Time) where the live time seems more appropriate than one lagged by the parser cache and containing a refresh link. – SD0001 (talk) 17:41, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

I was responding to your comment, but a different use case more along the lines of the original post (user-customized timers and countdowns). I'd suggest that the live update capability be togglable, with the default being no extra moving text or client resource usage. Although personally I don't think a live up-to-the-second (or even minute) countdown is needed, I appreciate there is an audience for it. isaacl (talk) 18:34, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm not arguing for up-to-the-second precision (at least for mainspace use cases). The display format can remain the same as produced by the templates, just that it won't be lagged and would live-update (removing the need for showing a refresh button). I think client resource usage is the last thing to worry about. Timers in JavaScript are implemented with setInterval() which is very efficient and has been widely supported across browsers since Netscape 4 and IE 4 launched in 1997. – SD0001 (talk) 08:50, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Like I said, I understand that others value different tradeoffs on the cost/benefit ratio of default dynamic behaviour. I'm old-school and often prefer that dynamic updates be initiated by me, but even so I can imagine situations where I wouldn't mind updates being generated live by default. isaacl (talk) 18:12, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Unanswered and not archived comments for a project

Is there any way to get a feed of the above onto a pageWakelamp db (talk) 03:57, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Please provide more info. What comments are you talking about? Where are they? Polygnotus (talk) 00:42, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Appending ?safemdode=1 alters infobox layout

I've tested this logged out and the problem persists. Are we testing a new infobox style or something? JayCubby 19:16, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

It is because infobox styling comes from MediaWiki:Common.css. There is currently a project to convert to infoboxes to use TemplateStyles, but that requires cleaning thousands of pages manually (see MediaWiki talk:Common.css/to do#Description of work). HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 19:42, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

@JayCubby: ?safemode=1 omits reading CSS and JavaScript pages from the wiki, both sitewide like MediaWiki:Common.css and personal like User:JayCubby/common.js. See mw:Safemode. I find it so useful for testing that I made User:PrimeHunter/Safe mode.js to add a safemode link for the current page. A "suicidal" script which also prevents itself from loading when you activate it. I wonder whether some users have enabled "Always enable safe mode" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering without knowing the effect on infoboxes and other things. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:21, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I didn't realize that safemode affected CSS (well I sort of did, but somehow differentiated the mainspace and important CSS from custom CSS, if that makes sense), merely user scripts.

This probably isn't a huge issue, but the current explanation for 'always enable safemode' is Disable on-wiki scripts and stylesheets., which could be changed to Disable on-wiki scripts and stylesheets. May break page layout. JayCubby 20:41, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Honestly think that's kind of assumed with "turns off CSS"..... Izno (talk) 20:44, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

code editor character position counter?

Where did it go? Used to be that the code editor displayed certain information in the lower right corner of the editing window among which was the character position from the right margin, character highlight info – number and position of characters selected, etc. Now gone?

The CTRL+, configuration menu for the editor (version 1.32.7) doesn't appear to have a setting for this so that suggests that sommat else has happened? What happened and can it be undone?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:02, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

It was lost accidentally, and it will be back next week, see T380034. Matma Rex talk 00:07, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. Will that also make the 'Live Autocompletion' (and all other options for that matter) sticky? Unsticky autocomplete is icky.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:08, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Sticky options are currently not supported out of the box, but User:Nardog/CodeEditorAssist provides it. – SD0001 (talk) 08:55, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure if that's what Trappist means by "sticky". Nardog (talk) 09:22, 5 January 2025 (UTC)