User blog:TheGoldenPatrik1/An Introduction to Dev

Ever wished for a feature like being able to add categories to dozens of pages at once or being able to test CSS and have it instantly applied to a page, instead of waiting for your cache to clear?

As a matter of fact, there might just be such a feature! This blog serves as an introduction to these add-on features, which may be found at the Dev wiki.

What is Dev?
The short answer, Dev is a wiki. The long answer, Dev is a place where users with skill in code develop scripts that may be imported in order to add, remove, or customize features.

What are these features?
There are literally hundreds of different scripts and all of them are useful in some way. The ones you choose to use depends on your personal taste and what you do on FANDOM. However, I would like to list a few of my favorites...

EditConflictAlert
Ever gotten into an edit conflict? They're nasty, right? EditConflictAlert changes all that. If you get in an edit conflict, it notifies you about it before you even publish a useless edit. It also shows you what the other person's edit did so that you pick what content to copy and then add to the article. Say goodbye to edit conflicts!

MassCategorization
'' For more information about MassCategorization and Bots, go here. '' Need to quickly add a category to a bunch of pages, remove a junk category, or replace existing categories with better ones? If so, MassCategorization is what you've been waiting for, with all of these features and a bit more. However, it is strongly recommended that you only use this script with Bots to avoid spamming WikiActivity and falsely inflating Editcounts.

PortableCSSPad
If you do any kind of CSS coding on wikia, PortableCSSPad is a must have. It adds a little button in your bottom toolbar, that if clicked, pulls up a small, moveable module. Any CSS entered there affects the page you're on, immediately. This is a great way to check to make sure code works and optimize it, all without the tiresome cache clearing process.

How do I import them?
Importing these scripts is easy. Each page has instructions for how and where to do it, as well as specific information about parameters you can customize the import with. Just remember that the more clean and efficient an import is, the faster and better it is. So don't import it messily: Instead, do it efficiently (and in alphabetical order!):

Conclusion
Before you go and import everything on Dev, a quick word of caution. Importing large amounts of JavaScript will slow down load times. For this reason, it is recommended that you keep your wiki-wide imports to a minimum; import as much as you wish in your personal JS pages. CSS is much faster, thankfully, so don't worry about having too much of it.