Extension/VisualEditor

VisualEditor is the visual editing tool for wiki pages. It allows page content to be edited without using Wikitext. BlueSpice uses a customized version of the MediaWiki VisualEditor extension. VisualEditor provides tools for formatting text, structuring page content, inserting links and media, and adding other content to wiki pages.

VisualEditor overview

Visual Editor

The visual editor is optimized for editing wiki pages. Important characteristics and functions are:

1. Close page without saving: Close the editor without saving your changes. A confirmation dialog allows you to cancel or discard the changes.
2. Undo and redo changes: Undo and redo your most recent changes.
3. Page structure: Apply heading levels to structure the page.
4. Text formatting: Format text using options such as bold, italic, superscript, subscript, or text color.
5. Links: Add links to wiki pages or external websites.
6. Lists: Create numbered lists, bulleted lists, or task lists.
7. Insert special content: Insert images, filies, tables, templates, comments, galleries, formulas, status badges, and other speical content.
8. Page layouts: Add a predefined layout to structure page content.
9. Special characters: Insert characters that are not available on your keyboard.
10. Content Droplets: Insert predefined content elements.
11. Mentions: Mention other users on a wiki page.
12. Page options: Change page settings and access additional page information.
13. Switch between edit modes: Switch between visual editing, and source editing.
14. Save the page: Save your changes and add an optional summary to the version history. You can also mark the edit as minor.

Text editing

Menu in text editing

When text is selected in VisualEditor, a context menu appears with options for formatting the selected text and adding links. Available formatting options include bold, italic, and text color. The context menu also provides access to the AI editing assistant.

Applying text color

Switching between edit modes

When creating or editing a page, VisualEditor opens by default. Pages can be edited in source editing mode using '''Switch editor'''. Source editing mode allows editing the page directly using Wikitext syntax.

edit modes

NoteUnsaved changes cannot be restored using the ‘Undo’ button after switching between visual and source text editing!

Menu options

The VisualEditor menus provide tools for formatting and structuring wiki pages and for inserting additional content.

Text formatting

The text formatting tools are available in the VisualEditor toolbar.

Function	Description
Undo and redo	Use the Undo arrow to undo the last action. Use the Redo arrow to restore an undone action. The arrows are unavailable when there is no action to undo or redo.
Format paragraph	The Format paragraph menu provides options for applying heading levels and paragraph styles to the current paragraph. If a page contains more than three headings, VisualEditor automatically displays a table of contents. When editing a table, the available paragraph options depend on whether the cursor is in a content cell or a header cell. alternative-text=VisualEditor-paragraph2
Style text	Text formatting The Style text menu provides formatting options for selected text: Bold Italic Superscript Subscript Computer code: Displays the selected text as computer code. Strikethrough Underline Big: Increases the text size. Small: Decreases the text size. Language: Sets the language and text direction, such as left-to-right or right-to-left, for the selected text. Center align: Centers the selected paragraph. Indent: Indents the selected paragraph. (Note: Multiple indentation is only possible via the source text). Text color: Opens the color options for changing the color of the selected text. Remove: Removes all formatting from the selected text. If no text is selected, the formatting is applied at the current cursor position. For more information, see the VisualEditor user guide.
Insert hyperlink	The Insert link option provides the following link types: Wiki link: Links to another page in the current wiki or to a page in another wiki in the BlueSpice Galaxy. External link: Links to a page on an external website. If no text is selected before inserting the link, a numbered link is inserted: [1] Link to file: Links to a file description page in the wiki. To edit an existing link, select the link to open the link options. When editing a link in a table cell, double-click the cell first, then select the link.
Structure	The Structure menu provides options for creating: unordered lists ordered lists Task lists To add a paragraph break or image within a list item, press Shift+Enter. This keeps the content in the same list item. To create numbered lists with multiple levels, such as 1, 1.1, and 1.1.1, additional CSS must be added to MediaWiki:Common.css. See Numbering ordered lists for more information.

Insert special content

Use the "insert" (+)-menu to insert various media (images, videos) and text formats :

Insert special content
Images and media	Inserting pictures, files, direct links to Office documents and videos. File formats with a preview option: jpg/jpeg, png, gif, pdf File formats without preview option are always inserted as links (e.g., Microsoft Office formats) (Details on MediaWiki)
Template	Include a template in the page.
Table	Tables are an important tool for formatting tabular page content.
Comment	Comments are not visible to readers, but only in edit mode. A comment can be inserted anywhere on a page. It is text-based and cannot be formatted.
Gallery	Allows to display a set of images as a gallery. A simple picture gallery can support many process flows. Formatting examples for the different settings can be found at mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Images#Gallery_syntax
Your signature	This option allows to add your wiki signature (User name and timestamp) at any location in the page.
Exclude from translation	Adds the tag set <translation:ignore>text</translation:ignore> around content to exclude it from the translation process in a wiki with TranslationTransfer enabled.
Code block	With code block various code examples can be entered, like e.g. in HTML syntax. The code is then displayed properly formatted and can be copied directly to the clipboard. <span style="color: red">red text</span>
Exclude content in PDF	Inserts tags around content in the source text, which are then not printed in the PDF. Only a short text can be entered here in visual editing mode. However, the start and end tags can be subsequently moved in the source text. This extends the area that is not exported to the PDF.
Tabber	Allows text sections to be displayed in tabs.
Tabber (transclusion)	Allows the integration of other wiki pages in tabs.
Chemical formula	The formula rendering uses an external service via Wikimedia's REST API.
Math formula	It opens an editor for entering a mathematical formula. More information on MediaWiki
References list	This menu item creates a <references /> tag at the location where it is inserted. The footnote references up to this point are then displayed at that location instead of the end of the page. Remaining footnotes in the page are still shown at the end of the page.
Soft hyphen	A long word can be hyphenated here. The hyphen is only inserted in view mode if the word needs to be wrapped at the end of the line.
Line break (br />)	Explicit insertion of a line break.
Basic reference	You can use this to create footnotes for scientific articles.
Re-use reference	Enables an existing footnote to be linked multiple times to different sections of text.
Mentions	Users can be mentioned directly on a wiki page. This can be done in combination with a task.
Content Droplets	Collection of the most important special content that can be used on a page.

Special characters

The menu item for "Special characters" opens a panel to select special characters that are not available on your keyboard. To close the panel, click the menu item again.

Page options

Page options
Options menu	The options menu allows editing of all page settings. It is not
Options	This button allows the page settings and page information to be updated simultaneously within a dialog box. To change any page options on the page, you need to be in visual editing mode.
Categories	Here, you assign the page to one or more categories while in edit mode. The page will then appear accordingly on all linked category pages.
Page Settings	Page redirection: When the page is redirected, the content of the page is no longer displayed, but the target page is loaded directly. Show Table of Contents: By default, a table of contents is shown if a page has more than three headings. You can use this setting to always force or suppress the table of contents.
Advanced Settings	Let this page be indexed by search engines: Only applies to public search engines. The wiki's internal search is not affected. Show a tab on this page to add a new section: Not supported in BlueSpice 4 Discovery skin. Display title: Sets a title that is shown as page heading. It can be found by the search and is used in page lists created by Semantic MediaWiki inline queries. Title visibility: This setting hides the entire title section of a page and is often applied on the main page or other portal pages of the wiki. If the title is not visible, the edit button is also not available. In this case, you can click on ...all actions > Edit in the page tools.
Languages	Menu item to access interlanguage linksShows wiki pages on different wikis that are connected via Interlanguage links. Depending on the wiki's skin, the links are shown in a specific location. In the BlueSpice 4 Discovery skin, the interlanguage links are shown in the top menu. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Links#Interwiki_links
Templates used	List the templates that are embedded on the page.
Syntax highlighting	Displays the source code highlighted in colour using the CodeMirror extension.
View as right-to-left	Support for languages that are read from right to left. Clicking this button right-side formats the page text. Click again to set the text flush left.
Find and replace	Words or characters can be searched and replaced directly on the page. The "Undo" button can be used to cancel the change.
Leave feedback about this software	Opens a form for submitting feedback.
Keyboard shotcuts	Link to the keyboard shortcuts
Toolbar search	Opens a search field with which you can search in all Visual Editor options and tools.
Read the user guide	Link to the helpdesk

Tips

Pasting content from your clipboard

If you paste content from your clipboard (e.g., copied from MS Word or MS Excel), you usually also paste many unnecessary formatting tags from the original application. To avoid, this you should paste the content as plaintext.

If you already pasted text which resulted in undesirable formatting, you can use the undo function in VisualEditor to remove the content again if you have not yet saved the page or switched between visual and source editing mode.

To paste content as plain text instead, use the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+v.

Shortcuts

If you want to apply multiple formatting options at the same time, shortcuts are often the quickest way. For example, to show text in bold and italic, highlight the text and press Ctrl+b (for "bold") and Ctrl+i (for "italics"). Even a link can be quickly inserted by pressing Ctrl+k. Pressing Ctrl+b again will cancel the bold. Multiple formats can be removed after text selection with Ctrl+m.

All available keyboard shortcuts are marked accordingly in VisualEditor next to each menu item.

For a list of all available shortcuts, click on "Keyboard shortcuts" in the Visual Editor page options menu.

Troubleshooting: Visual editing is disabled

If you only have the source editing option in your editor toolbar, please contact an administrator of your wiki. The following settings must be checked in this case:

• Global settings via the configuration manager
• Namespace manager settings