Technical Update: April 10, 2012

Here are the latest technical updates at Wikia. Keep in mind that our system updates happen every Wednesday, so we’re posting this on a Tuesday to give you advance notice. Also note that we change hundreds of tiny details every week, so these are just the highlights.

New Features

• We've updated the commenting interface for mobile users to improve load time and make better use of the small viewing space. Replies are now condensed under top-level comments, and can be viewed in a modal when tapped.

Major Bugs Fixed

• Copying and pasting code into the Visual Editor while using the Chrome browser will result in cleaner text. Previously, CSS and other inline HTML elements would be included in the copy-and-paste, resulting in many odd looking <div>s.
• Searching for images within the Gallery Builder will once again return results.
• Expanded Wiki Navigation will now work properly in Internet Explorer 8.
• Winning the "Unusual Bug Of the Month" Award, Message Wall posts will no longer also appear on Article Comments if the username is the same as the article name.
• Syntax Highlighter for CSS and JS pages will once again highlight syntax, which seems like something a Syntax Highlighter should do.

Other Notable Changes

• Sliders and slideshows will now work in preview mode.
• We're adding a special page known as Special:MyBlog. It will work the same way Special:MyPage or Special:MyTalk does, redirecting the user who either clicks the MyBlog link or adds it to their search or address bar to their User blog page. This is nested within the Blogs extension, so it will not work on wikis where blogs are disabled.

Select Known Issues

• Videos from a small handful of providers (Gamevideos, Southpark, and Sevenload) did not complete the video file migration process due to API restrictions, and now appear as empty files. We recommend you find an alternate video source for these files.
• Thumbnailing of SVG images (using .PNG for thumbnails) does not seem to be working properly at the moment.

And one additional note: Due to our Annual Engineering All-Hands, there will be no release or technical update next week.

Questions? Comments? Feel free to leave them below. And if you have additional bugs to report, please send them to us via Special:Contact.

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