Citron Phase I

From Wikimedia Usability Initiative

Citron Phase I Overview

Citron Phase I is the mid-March release from the Usability Initiative. The team is targeting the following features for the release:


Dialogues: We are introducing dialoges with Citron. These features were originally released under Babaco, but were disabled due to issues with the iFrame.

  • Links: The new link dialog allows users to more easily create links, both links to pages within the wiki (“internal links”) as well as link to other pages on the web (“external links”). When creating links, the link suggest feature automatically suggest internal pages based on what you’ve entered.
  • Tables: The table dialog automatically generates wiki-text for tables based on a given width and height and lets you add a header row with one check of a box.
  • Search and replace: Also new in this release is the search and replace tool which enables users to search for text and replace while editing.

Toolbar Reorganization: The toolbar layout will be revised based on click-tracking data from our users.

Page Clean-up: We are simplifying the edit page by cleaning up the footer and licensing information.

Side-by-Side Preview (under My Preferences): We are introducing a simpler method of viewing previewing changes by allowing users to preview their changes within the same editing window. This feature is available under the Editing tab in "My Preferences".

Template Collapsing and Editing (For Usability Testing Only): Templates have long been a source of confusion for our editors, particularly novice ones. We are making template editing easier by providing the following features. For the upcoming release, these features will be available for Firefox 3, though we plan on expanding browser coverage shortly.

  • Collapsing: In the editor, templates will be collapsed into a "capsule." Templates are often difficult for novice users to understand and can be a distraction to their editing. Collapsing the templates into capsules cleans up the editing space so that the template wikitext is less of a distraction. These capsules may be expanded into either the original wikitext or a user-friendly form.
  • Form-based editing: The form-based template editor will enable users unfamiliar with wikitext to edit the content of a template with an easy to use web form.