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Technology report

HTML5 adopted but soon reverted; brief news

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By Jarry1250

HTML5 adopted but soon reverted

HTML5-mode was briefly switched on for Wikimedia wikis this week, from the afternoon of February 23. This would begin the process of Wikimedia supporting features available in the newest browsers, and would generally put it on a better footing for the future. HTML5 had been the default for external installs since MediaWiki 1.16, but had been disabled on WMF sites due to the nature of some custom code in use. Version 1.17, now used on WMF sites, was thought to be much more stable in this regard (bug #27478).

However, after deployment, a number of errors were soon noted. As expected, virtually every tool which relied on "screen-scraping" (analysing the HTML source of Wikipedia pages) broke in some way. Though this method has been known to be vulnerable to changes in the underlying source code for many years – and MediaWiki provides an alternative, the much more stable API, for this purpose – no-one had yet seen a need to update many of the tools frequently in use on Wikipedia sites, including Twinkle and Friendly on the English Wikipedia. Even after HTML5-mode was reverted, work continued on these gadgets to move them over to the API before another attempted deployment. Just as pressing was a knock-on problem where the encoding used in citations and anchors changed subtly, breaking links which relied on them (bug #27694). It is not known when HTML5-mode will be tried again.

In brief

Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.

  • As of the time of writing, file description pages for images on Wikimedia Commons are no longer being transcluded into local file namespaces. The cause remains unknown (bug #27767). Update: this bug has been resolved.
  • With the WMF install of MediaWiki 1.17 complete, developers have been "sprinting" to get it ready for release to other sites. The main point of contention has been the new installer (wikitech-l mailing list).
  • The upload of 1.8 million images from the United Kingdom-based Geograph project has resumed after technical difficulties brought complaints (Gerard Meijssen).
  • XML dumps have been restarted after the 1.17 deployment. Reusers should be aware that their form has been updated slightly (wikitech-l mailing list).
  • Shiju Alex [1] and Gerard Meijssen [2] blogged about a new MediaWiki extension called "Narayam", which provides input methods for Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Bhojpuri, Sanskrit, and Bengali, making contributions in those languages much easier.
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I'm a newbie. Stop biting me. TCO (talk) 02:36, 3 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You're not a newbie. Your account dated all the way back to April 2007. OhanaUnitedTalk page 08:29, 5 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note, the switch to HTML5 is not neccesary to use the HTML5 <video> tag. In fact I think we already do use it on browsers that support it like firefox. Bawolff (talk) 04:54, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
when are we going to get things fixed so that the vast majority of NORMAL readers surfing on over here with IE can see videos? We are trapped in 2003. BTW, I have tried some of those workarounds and they don't even all work. Oh...and expecting people to change browsers or get extra plugins is so non-customer friendly. (this is not about me watching videos, it's about being able to display content readily to the masses. I sense a total techie versus user disconnect.) P.s. I am a newbie (only been editing for three months, before that I was mostly banned).TCO (talk) 05:11, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Mostly banned? As opposed to completely banned? Anyway, I have a hard time thinking of anyone with a couple featured articles as a "newbie" persay. Wiki-prodigy maybe, but not so much newbie. Qrsdogg (talk) 05:19, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)When Internet explorer starts supporting it. Based on this table, maybe never. The current version of IE doesn't support HTML 5 video at all, and the upcoming version only supports the format that other browsers refuse to support. But MediaWiki provides the option of using the Java-based Cortado player, which should work in Internet Explorer. Reach Out to the Truth 05:24, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have tried downloading the Java plugin and it didn't work. But besides, what percentage of users (not people with accounts, but READERS of our content) do you think are going to download those plugins, even if they did work? A random reader trial would show the level of inability to see our videos. Heck for that matter, the very sparing use that we have of them, is probably a sign of how poor they are supported in terms of actual info delivery to "civilians" (non IT jocks).TCO (talk) 05:28, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And what's the solution to that problem? Encode every video in every format? Reach Out to the Truth 05:35, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I guess the answer is encode it in some common format. Have you seen the percentage of WP readers on Firefox? It's like 1%. Seriously, the whole rest of the web works for everyone. But video on WP only works for some tiny proportion of specialist type computer users. You could have the uncommon format as a fallback or whatever. TCO (talk) 05:40, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(n.b. around 28% of visitors to Wikimedia worldwide use Firefox; full stats. No comment on the central debate. Note that 24.64% of all users - over 50% of IE users - are on IE8, so presumably can be expected to update regularly. IE6 controls just 3.65%. Of course, statistics for different countries will rank differently. - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 18:23, 7 March 2011 (UTC))[reply]
I highly doubt IE8 users will be updating anytime soon, most of them can't upgrade to IE9 and tend to be very slow at upgrading anyway. Stats here. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 19:44, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'd like to know how youtube and other video sites get around the problem because they do, so there is some technical solution to the issue. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 19:44, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, why can't most IE8 users upgrade to IE9/10/11/n? That chart shows IE8 took ~1 year to reach saturation after mainstream release, which isn't quick, but isn't slow. YouTube and other sites use Flash video, which plays well across browsers - 99.99% of users have the requisite player - but is proprietary. - Jarry1250 [Who? Discuss.] 19:54, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Microsoft have decided that IE9 only runs on Windows 7 and Vista with patches. Support for Windows XP the worlds most common OS by far has been dropped, so none of those users can upgrade to IE9. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 13:46, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)YouTube uses Flash. There certainly are technical solutions, in fact MediaWiki provides three different ways of getting videos to play in a browser. That's more solutions than YouTube has. Reach Out to the Truth 19:56, 7 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Why can't the users change? That is such a techie answer. The average civilian has no problem with youtube and facebook. We should serve the masses. The more we stick our heads in the sand, the more we lose audience. If we lose audience, what is the point of the Project?
The YouTube way is out of the question, it's unacceptable. YouTube uses Flash, and the Foundation will not do that. Flash is also a separate application that needs to be installed, so in that way it is no different from Java. If a user can't install Flash, they can't watch YouTube videos in their browser. Yes, that's a problem that exists on YouTube too. Reach Out to the Truth 05:01, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oh and one of those "three ways" is to view it as a still image only! That's not a third way. We are NOT serving the viewers.TCO (talk) 04:12, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, the image is a fourth way. I did not count that one because I knew it's unacceptable for those who want to watch the video. There are three ways of watching the video in-browser, but Internet Explorer doesn't support all of them. That's why there are only two options available to you. Yet another option is to download the video, which may well work. Reach Out to the Truth 05:01, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I was wrong about the 1%. Still my recent IN ARTICLE experience (Painted turtle) was that only Firefox viewers could watch a video that was a relatively simple one (youtube sized, not talking full screen Harry Potter, even had lots of stills). So a quarter of the viewers have ready access. And then look at the typical content we show in articles. Seriously, any random gymnastics blogger does better at integrating video into articles than we do. And we are some badass Google juggernaut. But we are so behind the times. This is the path to irrelevancy. We need to get on top of this problem and stop expecting the world to revolve around us.TCO (talk) 04:22, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's not clear what you want done here. Yeah, we don't use a lot of video, but if we did we'd be alienating a small portion of readers who are unable to view those videos at all. Reach Out to the Truth 05:01, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Why not put the stuff in flash and have an OGG version as the backup. For that matter, the video, I got someone stripped it off youtube, so having the content itself in flash is NOT preventing others from converting it.TCO (talk) 05:04, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Preventing others from converting it? Huh? Reach Out to the Truth 05:08, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Bottom line is we ARE NOT sharing content well in a video format. AND there is a lack of perspective in acknowledging it and a lot of very obtuse comments about users should be on Firefox or "wait until IE evolves". This is techie-speak and not user-friendly. And I don't know exactly HOW to fix it. but I don't buy for a SECOND that it's not fixable. I've lived this in the work world before. It's a social dynamic with programmers versus users.TCO (talk) 23:10, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Bottom line, the Foundation will not support Flash. Reach Out to the Truth 02:05, 9 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well then find some other way to provide the content in a SEAMLESS fashion. And why not? Does it cost money (just shell out for a licence, get Jimbo to flash his mug on the pages a bit more.) And why does HAVING the content in flash hold us back in any way? Like I said, you can still have OGG in addition. You're not LOSING by having it that way. And we have JPEG images.

Seamless? HTML5 video that plays in the browser without any need for plug-ins is seamless. And we have that. If you really want more options that badly though, by all means ask the developers. Reach Out to the Truth 02:31, 9 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I personally was unable to get my video to play in IE (even after downloading the java plugin, twice). Two other, reasonably astute editors had the same issue. Only in Firefox could we get the thing to play. And I shudder to think of what "civilican granny" who just wants to read articles has to content with on trying to watch a video here. Other than that, I give you major props (I mean it) for putting up with my comments.TCO (talk) 02:58, 9 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]


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