This page attempts to track notable changes that impact the reading web experience in production. For older years, these appear empty purely because we never documented our work back then. Feel free to jump in and do so, every data point helps! These will usually have an associated SWAT deploy due to the fact that the reading web team makes heavy use of feature flags.
🎂 is used to mark releases the team feels are worth celebrating and usually mark the end of a long line of work.
Dates should reflect a date the change went into production for all wikis (unless a specific wiki is stated).
See also:
2023
June
20th
Turned off Vector Zebra A/B test for enwiki and additional languages phab:T337956
9th
Changes to MobileWebUIClickTracking keys for main menu. Schema is not currently used but noting as notable, in case we need to refer to this data in future. T321746
1st
Removed popup indicator on page load phab:T336197
May
8th
Fixed width indicator deployed to English Wikipedia phab:T335307
4th
Deployed Vector 2022 as the default skin to Spanish Wikipedia phab:T335686
31st
Turned on Vector Zebra A/B test for enwiki and additional languages phab:T335972
April
27th
Performance improvement to mobile for lower end devices phab:T241139. Work likely resulted in a ~50% reduction in JavaScript execution time for the task on long pages like the "Barack_Obama" page which represents around ~260ms improvement in Total Blocking Time on the Moto G (5) phone.
3rd
PT wikinews makes AMC mode the default on mobile T290812
Polish Wikipedia becomes first wiki to separate Vector and Vector 2022 styles/scripts. T332809
March
27th
Enabled reading list on mediawiki.org and meta.wiki T322093
22nd
Page tools live for anons T331657
20th
Language links are now included in the page on mobile. T331905
February
27th Stop fragmenting ParserCache entries for mobile frontend phab:T326147
14th
Page tools live for all logged in users T328692
9th
Login button moved outside dropdown (T289212)
All ResourceLoader modules now target the mobile site by default. (T127268)
2nd
🎂 Fixed width persistence enabled on all wikis for anonymous users. (T327979)
1st
Fixed width persistence enabled on group 1 wikis for anonymous users. (T327979)
January
31st
Fixed width persistence enabled on group 0 wikis for anonymous users. (T327979)
18th
🎂 🎂 🎂 Deployed the new Vector 2022 skin to English Wikipedia. (T326892)
2022
November
15-17th
Via train - enables the visual enhancements next feature flag which adds the max width toggle and reduces icon sizes to 32x32 (T320101)
October
27th
Max width toggle preference completed (T319447)
September
27th
Nearby code was dropped from MobileFrontend (phab:T246494)
22nd
RFC goes live on English Wikipedia
20th
Extension:Nearby is deployed everywhere (phab:T246493)
12th
Extension:Nearby is deployed on French and Hebrew wikis (phab:T246493)
7th
Extension:Nearby is deployed on Wikidata (phab:T246493)
1st
Disabled sticky header experiment for viwiki and idwiki (T315264)
August
18th
Display locking on mobile (now possible to find in page within collapsed sections (phab:T216789)
Ran desktop improvements survey on English Wikipedia (T314286)
16th
Enabled sticky header experiment for viwiki and idwiki (phab:T312295)
8th
Disabled sticky header edit A/B test (T312296)
4th
Now possible to collapse table of contents in Vector 2022 (phab:T307901)
July
26th-28th
Codex Typeahead search and QuickSurveys deployed via train phab:T303558 phab:T310241
19th-21st
Grid deployment to all wikis phab:T312241
18th
Sidebar now collapsed by default in new Vector phab:T287609
6th
Enable sticky header A/B test (T311144)
June
30th
New toolbar order deployed everywhere except desktop improvements group 2 wikis phab:T310054
28th
New toolbar order deployed on group 0 and group 1 wikis phab:T310054
23rd
cawiki, plwikisource, arwikisource added to desktop improvements phab:T307903
16th
Table of contents A/B test was disabled phab:T309683
10th
Gradients have been removed from Vector namespace tabs phab:T310197
May
23rd [Vector 2022] A/B test enabled to French and Portuguese phab:T306607
17th [Vector 2022] A/B test enabled to all pilot wikis except French and Portuguese phab:T306607
April
26th [Vector 2022] Table of contents enabled on all non-pilot wikis phab:T306608
1st
[Vector 2022] Skin migration completed phab:T301930
March
24th Modern Apps API no longer use MobileView API for rendering language variants phab:T236733
22nd
[Vector 2022] Ran the skin migration database scripts phab:T299104
February
22nd Table of contents is now enabled on the beta cluster.
7th The mobile version of the Special:Contributions page is now the same as desktop as of this week's train deployment. phab:T293268
3rd [Vector 2022 skin] mw.config.get('skin') now returns 'vector-2022' for Vector skin. phab:T299927
2nd [Vector 2022 skin] Enabled on group 2 wikis. phab:T299927
1st [Vector 2022 skin] Enabled on group 1 wikis. See also Reading/Web/Notable_incidents phab:T299927
January
31st
- Indonesia Wikipedia added to pilot wikis (phab:T299676).
- A/B test for sticky header is turned off (phab:T297924).
- Sticky header is deployed everywhere for logged in users (phab:T297924).
19th
Enabled desktop improvements on arywiki, frwikiquote, ptwikinews, plwikinews, viwiki, viwikibooks, MediaWiki, Foundation-wiki, Collab-wiki, Strategy-wiki, thwiki (phab: T298519).
5th A/B test for sticky header is launched (phab:T295976). 50% of users should see the sticky header.
2021
December
16th Language moved to top of main page on eu.wikipedia.org phab:T293470
13th
Deployed sticky header to office wiki and test wiki with generic A/B test scheam phab:T295972
9th Sticky header enabled on office and test wiki phab:T295972
7th
Minerva skin PHP code is now consistent with Vector phab:T266072
1st
Instrumentation: scroll to top added phab:T292586
November
23rd Instrumentation: ReadingDepth restored. phab:T294777
15th Talk enabled for anons on English Wikipedia phab:T293946
October
28th Desktop Click tracking schema now oversamples for logged in users phab:T292588
18th Closed out epic relating to various accessibility improvements. phab:T287097
September
30th
Sticky header enabled on beta cluster. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T289721
16th
Completed various Page previews visual bugs (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T284095)
August
5th
Removed redundant CSS from legacy skins Monobook, CologneBlue and Modern, reducing render blocking CSS by approx 1.5kb (T278896)
10th
User links to deployed to all wikis (T288274)
12th
Deprecated longstanding legacy CSS, improving performance, and maintainability of all skins (T287410)
July
20th
A/B test for languages feature disabled, enabling the feature for all users. (T286459)
26th
Standardized icons across mobile and desktop experience improving design consistency (T191021).
27th
New user links feature is enabled on office wiki and test wiki. (T287391)
28th
Modern skin hidden in user preferences to new users. (T287616)
Desktop version of Special:Contributions becomes default on mobile for Wikidata.org and Commons (T283988)
29th
Removed redundant CSS from Modern Vector experience, reducing render blocking CSS by approx 1.5kb (T278896)
June
2nd
New User links feature is now on the beta cluster.
22nd
Language button is enabled for anons on all of the test wikis except Farsi. Language button A/B test begins for logged in users. (T269093)
30th
QuickSurveys ported to Vue.js (T282473)
May
5th
Language button shipped to all logged in users who have opted into the new experience. (T280526)
April
27th
Language button shipped to office wiki and test wiki (all users)
AMC mode on mobile now features move, protect and delete actions for privileged users.
March
1st Twitter previews now work, logos are updated for wikivoyage in preparation for roll out for desktop refresh, Vue search A/B test deployed (stage 2)
4th vue search a/b test is live (phab:T249297)
10th Error logging for Vue.js is live phab:T249826 following hiccup in phab:T277094
31st Vue.js search live on all wikis using new Vector. phab:T276917
February
11th wvui 0.1.0 (Vue library) is released to MediaWiki core phab:T271353 after security review. The new Vue based search is enabled on the Wikimedia beta cluster phab:T259798
January
25th JavaScript error logging is now live on English Wikipedia phab:T255585
21st Max-width is reduced to 500px. (phab:T264218)
2020
October
8th
A technical change enabled by desktop improvements simplifies the Modern skin so that it much easier to maintain (T259401)
September
30th
Deployed the new location of the search bar to new vector and begin A/B test on test wikis
16th
An error surfaced by the client side error logging blocks the train (T263047) - a significant milestone as this has never happened before.
August
28th
Lead paragraph transform now applies to images as well as infoboxes.
19th
SEO impact: Enable $wgMFNoindexPages for all wikis
18th
Technical debt payoff: PHP InlineDifferenceEngine removed
5th
Desktop improvements default for French Wikipedia
July
28th
Sidebar instrumentation enabled on Vector
Desktop improvements default for Persian Wikipedia and Hebrew Wikipedia
22nd
Desktop improvements default for Basque Wikipedia, French Wiktionary, and Portuguese Wikiversity
21st
New version of Vector skin deployed as a user preference to all projects (phab:T254228)
13th
First NPM development release of WVUI.
June
29th
Skins: Deprecation of various hooks and introducing SkinMustache
4th
Collapsible sidebar now on office wiki
May
11th
New Vector on office wiki (new header, Latest-mode opt-out)
April
9th
MediaWiki:MobileMainPage has been removed from Hindi and Russian wiki. T243996
1st
Kick off Vue.js discussions in earnest
March
16th
Vector is type checked without exception
February
12th
Ordered list styles are translated on Minerva https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T217616
January
9th
the mobile main menu now works without JS (more responsive) T225213
Lead paragraph transform available in other namespaces (T211063)
Mobile site now uses diff engine and PHP in core. (T117279)
2019
December
19th
Article and talk tabs, history button, and improved user pages now available to all logged-in users on mobile
5th
Talk pages no longer render as a modal via JS (Date may not be accurate, delayed because of thanksgiving)
3rd
The first of many Web changes to Vector are deployed.
October
24th
Main watchstar for Minerva uses core code (T234970).
17th
The mobile treatment of Echo now lives in the Echo extension T221007 and is live on English Wikipedia.
10th
The main menu is now being server side rendered as well as client side rendered (T234650)
September
17th
Icon refactor deployed after a couple of weeks working on several bugs & regressions. phab:T229440
August
28th
AMC outreach drawer deployed T231206.
20th
Cologne Blue hidden in Special:Preferences to users who are not using it T223824
7th
🎂AMC deployed to all Wikipedias (phab:228916)
July
30th
AMC user menu deployed.
June
5th
Deployed AMC history special page to Arabic, Indonesian, and Spanish Wikipedias (phab:T224970)
19th
Deployed AMC to Persian, Italian, Thai, and Japanese Wikipedias (phab:T225123)
May
1st
Removed Hogan from MobileFrontend. Mobile site now uses Mustache (standard template library of core). (task T220620)
2nd
Deployed AMC main menu to Arabic, Indonesian, and Spanish Wikipedias (phab:T216152)
31st
Deployed AMC overflow menu to Arabic, Indonesian, and Spanish Wikipedias (phab:T223883)
April
30th
SEO A/B test concludes. Rollout to 100% of main namespace pages on all wikis. phab:T209377
9th
History form is collapsible [wmf/1.34.0-wmf.1]
March
28th
History page is now an OOUI form [1.33.0-wmf.24]
20th
AMC now deployed to eswiki, arwiki, idwiki: phab:T217643
7th
AMC is now live on the beta cluster!
14th
QuickSurveys now supports targeting based on edit count, country and whether user is logged in or anon
15th
iOS scroll hacks disabled on mobile
18th
Thanks actions (and other log accounts) can now be tagged. Will now be tagged with mobile/AMC.
February
8th
MobileFrontend now supports ECMAScript 6 for code development (doesn't run in production).
25th
- First Humans of the Web (Readers Web, Editing, and Growth teams) gathering
26th
- Talk and language overlays now open without a delay (T215370, T215657)
- WebClientErrors updated to distinguish logged in bugs VS anonymous bugs.
- CentralNotice banners are now inlined under the Minerva header
January
🎂22nd
Page issues deployed to English Wikipedia
27th
✋ All Hands from 27th January until 2nd February — event outline, conference schedule . No releases.
31st
All JavaScript in MobileFrontend is now bundled with Webpack.
2018
December
18th
Page issues deployed to all wikipedias except enwiki. phab:T210553
November
19th
Staged rollout of SEO A/B A/B test concluded at 100%. phab:T208755
14th
Staged rollout of SEO A/B A/B test started at 1%. phab:T208755
October
1st
Page issues A/B test enabled for 5% and then 20 minutes later 20% of users on Japanese, Farsi, Russian and English Wikipedia. phab:T200792
3rd
setup beta cluster dashboard for monitoring events in beta cluster. This allows us to identify problems early before they hit production. phab:T202026
17th
client side error reporting for mobile added to production T206702
🎂18th
- After a big investment, we now have a new graph shows JavaScript errors in the mobile site across all Wikipedia's. At time of writing number of errors peaked at 3.9k a minute. Every minute 3,900 users experience an error and we have no idea why. We need Sentry!
- [Proton] RESTBase mirroring 100% of all production traffic to Proton (T186748#4677976)
September
27th
English Wikivoyage now has page previews. phab:T203981
26th
ReadingDepth was adjusted (1.32.0-wmf.23) to allow A/B tests to explicitly enable the schema where it was not previously possible. (phab:T204144)
25th
The sampling rate for ReadingDepth was bumped from 0.1 to 10% (phab:T205176)
19th
Page issues A/B test is enabled on Latvian Wikipedia (phab:T204609)
18th
[Proton] RESTBase mirroring 25% of all production traffic to Proton (T186748#4595101)
6th
- MobileFrontend using Webpack to build some of its JavaScript. Plans to broaden this to other files (phab:T199452)
- Client side error logging via EventLogging is now available on all wikis (but disabled) phab:T202026
August
21st
There is now a standardised way of obtaining a page token across our EventLogging schemas. This should help us link activity across schemas phab:T201124
24th
Mobile diffs now show moved paragraphs
30th
Bug fix: Restored action=init events to Schema:Edit from mobile [phab:T202786]]
July
12th (TBC) Page previews now do not display wide margin between text and image - phab:T192928
May
10th Desktop: mw-collapsible now doesn't cause flash of unstyled content. Messages can now be passed as LESS variables phab:T42812
April
3rd VirtualPageviews enabled for all wikis for page preview viewing logging. phab:T189906
4th DNT header now ignored in page preview view tracking phab:T4052896
11th Page previews to 100% of users on German Wikipedia [[phab:T191966]
12th Page previews to 10% of users on English Wikipedia
17th Page previews rolled out to enwiki. We deployed to 25%, 37.5% then 100% of users over the course of a morning. (phab:T191101)🎂
March
1st
Deployed html previews to all wikipedias.
- Bug fix: broken thumbnail issue in page previews
- Bug fix: Page previews text and formulas cut off on arwiki
6th
Bug fix: Removing parentheses breaks chemical formulas
20th: Disambiguation popups
February
5th
Enabled a new mobile logo for Pashto Wikipedia.
6th
Bug fix: Download PDF button now limited to versions of Android that support PDFs (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T182059)
New settings page code merged to master
13th-15th
New settings page; fontchanger and expand all sections released to production (covers https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T67079 too).
20th disabled settings link on Special:MobileOptions due to persistent vandalism by anonymous users. Several years ago we had a contact form with similar problems. Lesson relearned: asking for anonymous feedback on mobile usually leads to vandalism.
22nd
January
8th
Language icon disabled on Wikidata and MediaWiki.
11th
MobileFormatter refactored. Infoboxes wrapped in mw-stack element will now be swapped with lead paragraph on mobile
17th
SWATed some fixes to new lead paragraph logic (changed last week to consider div.mw-stack elements)
2017
December
11th
November
15th
October
9th
Enabled print styles on Vector on test wiki
10th
11th
Enabled new Vector print styles on all wikis
18th
September
7th
Disable Wikidata descriptions on all wikipedias.
18th
Stopped page previews A/B test on enwiki and dewiki.
25th
August
16th
Page previews launched on all wikis except en and de
28th
July
11th
Firefox event logging duplicate event bug fixed
17th
Minerva separated from MobileFrontend in production
19th
June
2nd
Electron rolled out to all projects
7th
A/B test launched on RelatedArticles
14th
Cards removed from cluster
May
2nd
🎂 Related pages enabled for everyone
Print styles enabled for Minerva
3rd
Wikivoyage switches to new version of RelatedArticles
24th
April
3rd
Wikidata descriptions disabled in English Wikipedia
4th
ES3 JavaScript support dropped
5th
Page previews enabled on Hungarian and Hebrew Wikipedia
13th
Related pages enabled on Haitan wikipedia (desktop)
20th
March
20th
Page images restricted to lead section
29th
February
2nd
RelatedArticles shown to 90% of users
14th
Merged Popups frontend rewrite into master
21st
23rd
January
19th
2016
December
5th
Wikidata descriptions enabled on French and German Wikipedia
November
8th
October
3rd
Wikidata descriptions on Japanese and Spanish wikis
RelatedArticles enabled on mobile for all but 6 wikis
🎂 New footer pushed to mobile
11th
August
4th
🎂 New language switcher launched to all wikis
17th
🎂 Lazy loaded images enabled on mobile
30th
July
5th
Lazy loaded images on Japanese wikipedia
12th
Lazy loaded images and references on Thai Wiki
18th
June
6th
Enable page previews A/B test for 50% of users on Hungarian Wikipedia
14th
Lazy loaded images on Ukrainian and Farsi Wikipedia's
30th
May
9th
April
26th
Lazy loaded references enabled in beta.
20th
February
17th
New language overlay shown to 10% of users
21st
Gather disabled by RFC phab:T127509
2015
April
2
Gather deployed phab:T91341
2014
October
Anonymous editing A/B test on Italian Wikipedia for mobile (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Anonymous_mobile_editing_in_Italian_Wikipedia) leads to anonymous editing everywhere.
August
28th
Mobile uploads disabled on mobile web after vote.
June
17th
2013
For 2013 - the historical Extension:MobileFrontend/Deployments may also be useful.
August
27th
- enabled showing edit button in article sections (not just at the top of the page) + CTA for logged out users
- released Echo notifications to projects where Echo was enabled (en, hu, pl, pt, sv, ru)
July
23
Mobile editor launched, showed login CTA from upload & edit buttons to logged out users
30
disabled login CTA from upload button
March
28th
April
4th
enabled uploads and login CTA from upload button in articles
11th
disabled login CTA from upload button in articles (ending the selfiepocalypse)
2012
For 2012 - the historical Extension:MobileFrontend/Deployments may be useful.