Note : The following explanations apply to version 1.2.6.

Weekedit is a toolbox for editing within any site running a MediaWiki, the most famous being Wikipedia. Against Windows and Linux, it works with Firefox 1.5.*, Firefox 2.0.*, and Firefox 3.0.*.

When someone installs Weekedit, he usually works with two interfaces : (1) the user interface and (2) the configuration interface. (1) appears within the context menu, while (2) is within the add-ons (or options). The two following pictures show (1) et (2).

User interface (context menu)

Configuration interface (options)

Knowing this, it will be easier to understand the text.

To have the simplest user's guide, I use "Wikipedia" below. However, Weekedit can work with any Wikimedia project : Wikinews, Wikispecies, Commons, Wikiversity, etc. It will work with other Wikis driven by the MediaWiki engine, but not as easily since you have to do more setup. Once it is done, you should achieve good mileage.

The interface is available in English (en), in French (fr) and in simplified Chinese (zh-CN). However, the user's guide is available in French and in English. For interface translation to other languages, do a request to Babelzilla.

Table of Content    (TOC)

• Windows, Linux, et al.
• Available Options
• Operations
  
  • Base Domain
  • Context Menu
  • Selection
  • External Hyperlinks
  • Wikilinks
  • Searches
• Copy
• Repeat
• Operation Priority
• Tags
• Liners
• Placeholder %1
• Placeholders %[1], %[2], %[3]...
• Placeholders beginning by %inaddress_...
• Placeholder %Today
• Maps
• Custom
• Search
  • Find
  • Replace
• Misc
  • Parameters Export and Import
  • Makeup
  • Week-lets
  • Matching
• My Experience
• Bugs
• Projects
• Changelog
• I Recommend These Extensions
• Customizing Firefox
• Upgrading to 1.0.0 and Higher
  • Conversion to Unicode

Windows, Linux, et al.      (TOC)

Since February 2007, Weekedit works under Windows and Linux, but not MacOS (sorry, but I cannot get my hands on a Mac computer to test and correct) and Unix-variant OSes (I tried some BSD variants, with limited successes (2007-07-25). The first being my usual operating system, I give much less time to other operating systems. For this reason, those interface skins are less polished. About the Weekedit fonctions, there should be no difference, since Weekedit only uses high-level functions from Firefox. I tested those under Windows and Linux in different ways, and they work properly to my knowledge.

In the user's guide you are reading now, the pictures are captured from a Windows environment. For this reason, there is a discrepancy with the Linux (or BSD, or...) skin interface (colors, typeface, etc.), but the same functions are provided in all versions.

The most striking differences are :

• In the context menu and some pannels, the color can be grey. This behavior depends on the CSS engine, that I cannot change. I tried different workarounds (2007-02-08), without any success.
• In some dialogs, the title overflows. Again, this behavior depends on the CSS engine, that I cannot change. I tried different workarounds (2007-02-08), without any success.

Some Linux users run Firefox over Wine to load extensions inially intended to run under Windows. It may work for you.

Available Options      (TOC)

The options appear within a set of panels like the followings. Each colored button at top maps to one panel of the same color.

The Links 1 panel allows to easily navigate within Wikipedia.

The Links 2 panel allows to customize hyperlinks to any Wiki running the MediaWiki engine.

The Tags 1 panel displays a set of common Wikipedia tags.

There are 10 panels. In order to ease modifications within the options, Weekedit remembers the active panel, ready to show it upon next modification. Clicking on any icon within the context menu opens the options, this is shorter than the usual procedure.

Operations      (TOC)

The first panel we have seen applies to Wikipedia :

There are many options :

1. Base domain
2. Enable...
3. Select Language
4. Open New Tabs in...
5. Show
6. For Logged User

I will present the base domain later in this user's guide. Checking an item in Enable... forces the display of the selected operation.

When you right click on hyperlink or selection, you may get this context menu :

en.Wikipedia tells you that Weekedit will direct you to the English Wikipedia. You can read (Show), edit the entire article, or only edit its 1^st section. In that case, Weekedit opens the edition window in the same page (usually a short text, it is easy to edit). You may request the history of any article, as well its discussion page. Hovering the mouse over any option displays a tip.

When you read a Web address, like http://ibm.com, and wish to browse the site, you must select the address, copy the text, open a new tab, paste the address in the address bar and press Enter. With Weekedit, you can do this faster : Select the address and request Show. It recognizes Internet addresses beginning by 'http', 'https', 'ftp', 'mailto', and 'www'. Moreover, it recognizes all top-level domains (TLDs), like '.edu', '.net', '.ca', and '.uk' (e.g., http://site.edu).

Still in the options dialog, checking an item in the second set (Open New Tabs in...) forces the browser to open a new tab in foreground or background.

Checking an item in Select Language tells Weekedit which Wikipedia you wish to consult. I set the None language to French. If I do not press the Shift or the Ctrl key, then Weekedit directs me to the French Wikipedia (fr.Wikipedia). If I press Shift, it is to the English Wikipedia (en.Wikipedia). If I press Ctrl, it is to the Deutsch Wikipedia (de.Wikipedia). The choices contains at least the ten languages listed first on the main Wikipedia page.

Wikipedia has more than 10 languages. If I am right, it has more than 250 languages as of April 2007. To accommodate this diversity, Weekedit provides a way to select any of those languages. Here is an example.

Open the Shift menu list. Select "cust" (for custom) in the list. Let's say that you wish to work in Ukrainian. Fill "uk" in the Set Custom Languages dialog. After that, Weekedit uses "uk" when you press Shift.

Note : The dialog opens twice for unkown reason with Firefox 1.5.* (2007-04-06). Just fill the value you wish, and click OK. When the dialog opens again, just click OK again.

After many test and observations, I noticed that when the context menu is open, Firefox does not transmit the Shift and Ctrl keys state. I tried differents ways to overcome this limitation, without any success. Thus, Weekedit cannot read those keys state once the context menu is open. This lowers the usefulness of those keys. For this reason, when the Shift or Ctrl key is pressed before the context menu opens, then Weekedit believes that those keys stay pressed as long as the context menu stays open.

In Show..., the displayed functions ease interactions with different users. In For Logged User, functions only available to logged users appear.

    Base Domain      (TOC)

Up until now, I postponed the explanations about the base domain. Since you are reading this section, you are ready to understand the text hereafter.

In the beginnings, Weekedit was intended to work only with Wikipedia. After a while, somebody asked me to "free" it from Wikipedia. I added Custom 1 and Custom 2. Recently, I decided to diversify into other Wikimedia projects, like Wikiversity. I found that operations from Custom 1 and Custom 2 are not as flexible as Wikipedia operations. This prompted me to offer a way to change from, say, "http://en.wikipedia.org" to "http://en.wikiversity.org".

The Wikimedia Foundation maintains the MediaWiki software, and a set of Wiki projects. For Web pages addresses, the foundation has a common rule set accross all its projects, be it Wikipedia, Wikiversity, or Wikinews. This common rule set allows Weekedit to provide more customization.

When you compare those four Web addresses :

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something
• http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Something
• http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Something
• http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Something

• wikipedia
• wikiversity
• wikinews
• wikibooks

It is tempting to capture any of these in Base Domain, but you must instead capture :

• wikipedia.org
• wikiversity.org
• wikinews.org
• wikibooks.org

This is necessary to retain the highest flexibility. You may use a base domain of any Wikimedia project, but Weekedit builds a complete Web address like this :

where <language> is "en", "fr", "de", ...

Added to the language customizing, this feature offers great flexibility in the way you can access any Wikimedia project running MediaWiki engine. Suppose you navigate between "en.wikipedia" and "de.wikipedia". The previous Weekedit versions were enough.

Suppose you wish to navigate within "commons.wikimedia.org" (usually called "Commons"). There is no language (e.g., "en" or "de") within the Web address. But Weekedit offers a way to overcome this limitation. Set the Base Domain to empty, and set the None language to "en.wikipedia.org", and the Shift language to "commons.wikimedia.org" (via cust). You are ready to navigate within Commons and en.Wikipedia.

Be warned : If you select [[wikt:Horse]] while your language is not "en", "de", or any other language, then Weekedit will not open a page in the Wiktionary (i.e., en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Horse), but in the Commons (i.e., commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Horse), which usually does not exist.

    Context Menu      (TOC)

Using the context menu, you may request Wikipedia operations if hyperlinks or text is selected.

there is HTML code underneath :

Depending on the way you interact with hyperlinks, you will get different results, but each performs a request to Wikipedia.

Below is a list of items found in Web pages. The first is plain text, while the others are hyperlinks to Mailinator and Wikipedia. I will use them to explain some Weekedit functionalities.

1. Mailinator
2. Mailinator (Web site)
3. Mailinator (Wikipedia article)
4. Mailinator (Edit hyperlink)
5. Mailinator (History hyperlink)
6. Mailinator (Discussion hyperlink)

    Selection      (TOC)

The browser opens a new tab and goes to the article entitled Mailinator in Wikipedia.

In Wikipedia, template call is done through the double braces (e.g., "{{UK}}"). If the selection starts with the opening braces (e.g., "{{UK"), then Weekedit opens the template page (e.g., Template:UK), not the page article's (e.g., UK). If the selected text is an interwiki (e.g., "zh:Zeus" in "[[zh:Zeus]]"), then the Show operation opens the article in the target Wikipedia (e.g., "http://zh.wikipedia.org/Wiki/Zeus"). If the selected text is a Wiktionnay wikilink (e.g., "wikt:Zeus"), then the Show operation opens the article in the Wiktionnary (e.g., "http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Zeus").

    External Hyperlinks      (TOC)

The browser opens a new tab and goes to the article entitled Mailinator (Web site) in Wikipedia, which does not exist.

Since you selected an hyperlink outside the en.Wikipedia domain, Weekedit sees it as selected text (not the underlying hyperlink), which is covered in the preceding section.

    Wikilinks      (TOC)

Right-click the item 3 from the list and request Show.

The browser opens a new tab and goes to the article entitled N in en.Wikipedia.

This may appear counter-intuitive, but if you double-click on the item 3, this is exactly what your browser would do : jumping to the hyperlink, NOT what is displayed.

In this example, this is true only if the Wikipedia language is en. For instance, if it was French, then Weekedit would assume you wish to jump to what is displayed.

If you select the hyperlink, Weekedit sees it as selected text, which is covered in a preceding section.

To resume, Weekedit recognizes

• Wikipedia Edit hyperlinks (Mailinator (Edit hyperlink))
• Wikipedia History hyperlinks (Mailinator (History hyperlink))
• Wikipedia Discussion hyperlinks (Mailinator (Discussion hyperlink))

    Searches      (TOC)

Weekedit supports searches within Wikipedia. Select text in any Web page, and request a search. You must be aware that internal Wikipedia' search engine behaves erratically. As far as I am concerned, I prefer to rely on Google. I customized a google address : http://www.google.com/search?as_q=%1&as_sitesearch=en.wikipedia.org

Copy      (TOC)

Eqaully, Weekedit can copy the tooltip associated to a wikilink or an hyperlink. It is frequently the exact article's name to reach.

Repeat      (TOC)

Weekedit notes the last operation (like Show, insert [[]] tag, etc.) It is possible to repeat it by pressing F4, if activated within the options (Misc panel). Any function called through a key is not repeated by F4.

Operation Priority      (TOC)

Tags      (TOC)

MediaWiki engine recognizes different tags : [hyperlink], [[wikilink]], ''italics'', '''bold''', etc. The most common are available through the options, Tags 1 panel.

Select text and request Weekedit to apply the one you want.

When a text is enclosed within straight quotes ("), Weekedit will remove them when applying a tag. They are rarely used in French, contrary to English.

Weekedit replicates any tag when there is a carriage return (or line feed) in the selection. This is useful when creating bulleted lists, like :

becomes

You may choose which special characters Weekedit will strip when you press the Shift key : ", ', =, [, ], {, }, «, », , “, ”, \t (tab), etc. Go to the Tags 1 panel, then press the Chars button. Press the appropriate buttons in the dialog :

The Tags 2 panel allows to set custom tags (example, {{Cite| ... }}, where the left tag is {{Cite| and the right tag is }}).

Liners      (TOC)

If you are frequently inserting the same text, like "[[Category:...|...]]", then liners may alleviate the pain with this task.

Once set, select any text while editing an article, apply a liner, and Weekedit replace with the liner. If none is selected, it just inserts it.

The text is now :

Sometimes, it may happen that you need to insert more than one line :

If Weekedit only offered 1-liners, it would be very difficult to insert two lines or three lines of text, because Firefox needs a special character for the newline and it rejects in part text containing newlines. This explains why Weekedit comes with 2-liners and 3-liners. If you wish to insert 10-lines texts, for instance, modify a 2-liners or a 3-liners, Weekedit will reproduce it correctly.

    Placeholder %1      (TOC)

Weekedit recognizes %1 as a placeholder in liners. Whenever Weekedit finds %1 in the content, it is replaced by the selection. Here is an example.

Suppose the page contains :

* 1986 : ...
* 1987 : ...
* 1988 : ...
* 1989 : ...
* 1990 : ...
...


If it is a page on a musician, maybe you would like to see :

* [[1986 in music|1986]] : ...
* [[1987 in music|1987]] : ...
* [[1988 in music|1988]] : ...
* [[1989 in music|1989]] : ...
* [[1990 in music|1990]] : ...
...


You can edit each year by hand, or use %1 in a liner. Here are the steps.

In the options, create the pair Music in the Links panel :

Save this liner by clicking OK.

Edit a page, right-click on a year, and select Week Liners -> Music.

The job is done. With F4, you can repeat the same operation on any year (in fact, on any selected text).

    Placeholders %[1], %[2], %[3]...      (TOC)

While editing, suppose you wish to replace

with

You may do this by hand, since there are only 7 lines. However, if you have hundreds of lines like that, it becomes tiedous. You can automate this job through Weekedit.

Within liners only, Weekedit recognizes "%1" and "%[1]", "%[2]", "%[3]"... "%[99]" placeholders. If the selection is one line, then each word has an ID : 1, 2, 3... If the selection has many lines, then each line has an ID : 1, 2, 3... The placeholder "%1" orders Weekedit to replace with the whole selection, while "%[1]", "%[2]", "%[3]"... "%[99]" order Weekedit to replace with either a word or a line from the selection. If there are more placeholders to match then there are words (or lines) in the selection, Weekedit discards the unmatched ones.

For Custom 1 and Custom 2 hyperlinks, the only recognized placeholder is still "%1".

    Placeholders beginning by %inaddress_...      (TOC)

Weekedit can extract information from current address and insert it in custom hyperlinks. This is useful in Web forms/collaboration sites.

Suppose Firefox displays a posting from Chad and the current address is

Isaac would like to reply about this particular posting. Suppose the reply address is

As you can see, "user=Chad" is replaced by "reply_from=Isaac", the rest stays the same. It would be nice if Weekedit could automatically create the reply Web address.

Isaac can do this by creating this custom hyperlink

Weekedit replaces "%inaddress_title" and "%inaddress_id" with the values extracted from the current address.

Weekedit recognizes any placeholder beginning by "%inaddress_" : %inaddress_id, %inaddress_action, %inaddress_reply_from, etc. The variable part in the placeholder is case-insensitive (e.g., "%inaddress_id" == "%inaddress_ID").

    Placeholder %Today      (TOC)

Weekedit recognizes "%Today" as a placeholder for today's date. Whenever Weekedit finds "%Today" in a liner content, it is replaced by the date. You can set the date parameters (2001 or 01, Jul. or July, etc.) in Misc panel.

Maps      (TOC)

The use of a telephone book is simple to anyone who knows how it works. Finding a person's name in the book allows to get its telephone number, at least. That book is very useful for us humans, since we are geared to easily remember names, not telephone numbers. In mathematics, to switch from a person's name to its telephone number is called a map.

Maps allow to automatically replace one word with something else. For instance, while editing, you may wish to replace "US" with "[[United States of America|USA]]". Go to Maps 1 panel, and create pairs like these :

Once the map set is filled for your needs, select the word and request the mapping.

Weekedit looks through the map list to find a match. If any, then the selected text is replaced.

You may change the lettercase : all in uppercase, all in lowercase, inverted case, etc.

Within Wikipedia categories, the alphabetical order is not properly handled when a word contains a diacritics (acute accent, cedilla, etc.) The No diacritics function removes the diacritics sticked to letters. Useful to software engineers, the Get char codes function displays the Unicode of selected letters.

The titles in English follows some simple rules for titles : Almost all the words are in capitals. Short words (e.g., "a" and "in") must be in lowercase. However, there a different rules (for instance, "with" is not necessarily a short word, while "I" must always be in uppercase) For this reason, Weekedit offers a short words list to edit.

Chronologically inverted lists are common :

• 1996 : ...
• 1995 : ...
• 1994 : ...
• 1993 : ...
• 1990 : ...

The Revert order alleviates this problem.

• 1990 : ...
• 1993 : ...
• 1994 : ...
• 1995 : ...
• 1996 : ...

Maybe you did remark that long number like "1 000 000" are not well-rendered by MediaWiki engine : it sees it as three text blocks. To ensure that long numbers hold in one block, they must be enclosed within "{{formatnum:...}}". Weekedit does it with Format measures, which equally links the units with number (ex., "1 023 kJ" becomes "{{formatnum:1023}}&nbsp;kJ"). Since the thousand and decimal separators change from one language to another, Weekedit offers a dialog to adjust it to your needs (click the Set separators button in the Maps 4 panel).

I regularly perform maintenance within fr.Wikipedia : orthography, wikilinks, punctuation, etc. Some of these operations come back again and again. Many are purely mechanical, like changing "etc..." to "etc." Within the Maps, the "Correct wikitext" function does that. The function is only meaningful within fr.Wikipedia, but will do no harm if called by mistake for any other Wiki. It is not as extended as I would like, but I expect to add other corrections.

1. Replace etc... with etc.
2. Replace ... with … (ellipsis)
3. Replace &nbsp; after «, !, ?, :, …, etc. with a space
4. Replace &nbsp; before », !, ?, :, …, etc. with a space
5. Replace two spaces with one space (HTML only recognize one)
6. Replace <space><return> with <return>
7. Replace <return><space>== with <return>==
8. Replace
   • "Liens internes" with "Articles connexes"
   • "vis a vis" with "vis-à-vis"
   • "c'est a dire" with "c'est-à-dire"
   • "category" with "catégorie"
   • "cessez le feu" with "cessez-le-feu"
   • "ca" par "ça"
   • "caparacon" with "caparaçon"
   • Etc.
9. Weekedit displays those warnings :
   • if a same-domain hyperlink (e.g., http://fr.wikipedia.org/... in a page from fr.Wikipedia) appears within the page.
   • if the word "çe" or "çi" appears within the page. It is faulty in French, but not in Turkish.

Weekedit displays a report once the function has completed.

Custom      (TOC)

Weekedit offers a way to create your own hyperlinks to easily navigate Web sites outside Wikipedia.

In options, select Links 2 panel.

For the purpose of teaching, I will set the Custom 2 parameters by clicking on the Set Parameters button. It launches a dialog with two panels : Parameters and Hyperlinks.

Let's say that I do lots of searches on Google. After playing a while with Google searches, I found how the hyperlinks are built :

I am now ready to interact with Google.

I select Lucas number, open the context menu, choose Searching and pick Google "". Since the generic hyperlink contains "%1", it is replaced by the selected text.

Note : Weekedit accepts any text as Generic hyperlink. For instance, you could capture http://pbs.org (without %1) or http://I.do.not.know, and Weekedit will try to open the page without checking the address validity : Firefox does it better.

Here are some hyperlinks I am using.

The generic hyperlink at entry 14 points to a search engine (IMDb in this case). The check mark at right is used to indicate to replace any space " " with "+" (this is what search engines do). Say another way, Weekedit can perform request to search engines (this is very useful when you search text in Internet).

Note : Do not mix Wikis and search engine requests, or else some requests will fail. More precisely, if the selection contains a space " ", then the Wikis are correctly requested, but not the search engines.

With Custom 1 and Custom 2, Weekedit may open many Web pages at the same time for the same term.

Suppose that, for John Doe, you wish to know what EN.Wikipedia, FR.Wikipedia, and DE.Wikipedia have to say. In the options, open Custom 1 (Links 2 panel) and create :

Three WPs	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%1 |
	http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%1 |
	http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%1

Search      (TOC)

    Find      (TOC)

Weekedit comes with a Find dialog, helpful when working on long texts. It recognizes Unicode used in all Wikipedia pages. It is deactivated by default (Misc panel in the options).

If it is in foreground, then press F3 to find the captured text. If the text is found, then Weekedit usually places it on the first or the second line within the edition window.

The search is performed with case sensitivity or not, as well as whole words. Starting at cursor position within the edition window, the search direction is either up or down.

Note : The Find function coming natively with Firefox 1.5.* does not perform any search within an edition window, but it may sometimes move the whole window while searching in the rest of the Web page.

Note : When an edition page is opened for the first time, Firefox always positions the caret at the end of the text. This has an effect on the search success. For instance, if you do a search toward the bottom, it will always fail.

Note : With Firefox 2.0.* and Firefox 3.0.*, the found text is not highlighted. I tried different avenues to fix the problem, but I have not yet found any good solution (2007-04-26).

Find comes with an history, that you may configure.

The history elements may appear in chronological order, i.e., from the newest to the latest, or vice versa. The elements can be sorted in alphanumeric order (the most usual in dictionaries). It may seem overkill yo give so many choices, but the history may have up to 40 elements. If you are unsure of which sort to use, rely on the default settings.

Being launched by a key, Weekedit does not open it when pressing F4.

    Replace      (TOC)

Weekedit comes with a Replace dialog, helpful when working on long texts. It has the same properties as Find and is deactivated by default (Misc panel in the options).

If it is in foreground, then press Shift-F3 to replace the captured text. If the text is found, then Weekedit replaces it and selects the next occurence.

Misc      (TOC)

    Parameters Export and Import      (TOC)

Weekedit can export and import all its parameters (see options, Misc panel). This feature is useful if you use Firefox at different places, or when Firefox garbles its parameters (it happened twice to me). This works even if you export against Windows and import against Linux, or vice versa.

I decided to implement this feature when I found that MozBackup was not able to restore parameters :-(.

    Makeup      (TOC)

See the Misc panel in the options.

In targeted IP domains (e.g., fr.wikipedia.org and en.wikipedia.org), Weekedit may apply makeup to MediaWiki pages. This behavior borrows heavily from Greasemonkey.

You can add your custom set of hyperlinks, up to 20. You can add an history of viewed pages, from 0 to 50. You can remove many graphical elements surrounding the text, and customize the page display. In this case, Weekedit applies CSS. If you are familiar with the language, you can change the script to your liking.

    Week-lets      (TOC)

Weekedit can store and apply up to 30 different bookmarklets. For convenience, I call them Week-lets. You can set them in the options, Links 2 panel. They are executed just like any other Weekedit command, i.e. through the context menu. However, they usually apply to whole pages. For this reason, they are available whenever you right-click on a page.

You do not need to fit their script on one line. Weekedit removes all control characters (e.g., line break) before applying any.

    Matching      (TOC)

Suppose I have this text :

text, text, [[Churchill]], text, text

It would be helpful to select "[[Churchill]]" when pressing a key, and change it for "[[Winston Churchill]]".

Weekedit is able to match many duos when Ctrl-Shift-B is pressed : ( ), [ ], { }, « », and “ ”.

It can block in some situations, mainly when duos are disjoints (e.g., "[[United [[States]] of America]]", the inside duo "[[]]" is misplaced). However, this is only annoying, since the Wikipedia engine requests that all tags, minus a few exceptions, being balanced in order to ensure proper display.

This function is off by default (Misc panel). Being launched by a key, F4 does not repeat it.

My Experience      (TOC)

The more I work with Weekedit, the more I am delighted.

For instance, while in fr.wikipedia, I see a red link in Sudoku. Suppose it is "Nikoli". I Weekedit-Show to the Sudoku article in en.wikipedia. I find that Nikoli is created. I Weekedit-Edit Nikoli. I copy the whole content, since I will translate it in French. I directly Weekedit-Edit Nikoli in fr.wikipedia. I copy and I translate it. Voilà!

I saved many clicks, but this is not the most important thing from this experience. My brain stayed in edition mode, I did not search for the different buttons and hyperlinks in a Web page.

I like properly formatted texts. The Strip feature (in Tags 1) is another gem, because it easily removes tags (e.g., [[]]).

Bugs      (TOC)

• (Firefox 2.0.* and Firefox 3.0.*) Any text found with the Find dialog or the Replace dialog is not highlighted. If you click on the window scrolling bar, then the highlighting is visible. I tried different ways to force the highlighting, without success. (2007-04-26)
• The No diacritics function does not recognize many letters with diacritics, since I do not know them. (2006-10-18)

The followings are not bugs pertaining to Weekedit, but you may encounter them.

• A user had a problem with the display of Weekedit options. The Noia skin was the bad guy in the story.
• A user tried to send me an email, without success. If I am right, the bug was coming from its mail client sending secure mails (SSL), which my ISP was not able to handle. Just in case, I added a way to send me a mail from this page (see the link at top left). If all else fails, please drop me a line at my Wikipedia's talk page.

Projects      (TOC)

• If possible, users' suggestions will be implemented.
  • sloyvy.at.free.fr asked me to "free" Weekedit from Wikipedia. I implemented Custom 1 and Custom 2.
  • Aleksander Blokha requested a way to create and update a list of categories by directly polling the Wikipedia engine. I cannot yet measure, to my satisfaction, the workload. I tried different things in order to get a better estimate, but I cannot get enough informations. For now, I put this project in standby. (2007-01-28)
  • Request Wikipedia engine to edit the section under the cursor. I tried one avenue to implement this function, but I cannot get enough informations from the browser to build an efficient function. It may happen that I get those missing informations in the future. For now, I put this project in standby. (2007-01-28)
  • Many persons asked me to support Linux. It is done.
  • Find & replace within edition boxes. This is done since the 0.13 version.
  • Chad R. Anderson requested more flexibility in the Web addressing scheme in order to interact with social networking sites. This is done since the 1.2.2 version.
  • Chad R. Anderson asked for bookmarklets support. This is done since the 1.2.2 version.
  • Inspired by Wikimedia+, I decided to offer a way to makeup specific Web pages, like Greasemonkey does. This is done since the 1.2.2 version.
• Add customizable accelerator keys (e.g., Ctrl-Shift-0 maps to Strip)
• Better handling of Wiki site outside Wikimedia Foundation
• Macros (to automate some tasks)
• Yehuda asked for a more thorough table editor than what is provided through MediaWiki interface.

Changelog      (TOC)

For each version officially available at official site, the changelog lists modifications.

This changelog may contain informations pertaining to a version not officially available, either because it is about to be cleared for public release, or because it is in development.

changelog

I Recommend These Extensions      (TOC)

I have set many parameters within Weekedit : tags, maps, liners, etc. From time to time, when Firefox crashes, the Weekedit parameters are lost. To alleviate this problem, I rely on FEBE (Firefox Extension Backup Extension) to save and restore my settings.

When I add a watch to an article within Wikipedia, its engine replies with a short page telling me that it is done. And after 10 seconds, the watched page reloads. I know that it is on my watch list, I do not need to view it again. To eliminate this behavior, I rely on Refresh Blocker. It works with white list (the pages from a site can load automatically) and black list (no automatic load allowed). Once set, it does magic for me. You may experience some problems when downloading files from a site not on the white list. Just add it to the list, and voilà!

It happens from time to time that Wikipedia fails to respond. It equally happens that my ISP fails to handle my requests. If I am editing something, and I want to save before quitting, Save Text Area is quite useful. It saves and restores the content of the edition window, with the proper character encoding. This is important, since Wikipedia works with Unicode.

If you are like me, you open many Wikipedia pages at the same time, either for validating informations, or for performing multiple edits. I always found that decorating every Firefox tab with an icon and a title's page is annoying in many cases. But this has changed with FaviconizeTab. This extension may remove text on any tab, just leaving the icon. It can set this behavior for a whole set of Web pages falling under the same domain, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*.

If you are like me, you open and close many Wikipedia pages in one day, either for validating informations, or for performing multiple edits. Sometimes, I close a tab too fast. This is where Undo Close Tab comes handy. If you use Firefox 1.5.*, you must install it, the later Firefox versions come with it. Once installed, just right-click on a tab at top, request Undo Close Tab, and the last closed page will reopen.

Customizing Firefox      (TOC)

Firefox allows many customizations through its preferences system. While reading Hacking Firefox: The secrets of about:config, I discovered some tricks to make my Wikipedia surfing easier.

When I double-click a word within a page, Firefox always select the space after it. I changed the preference layout.word_select.eat_space_to_next_word to false, and now it does not select the space after. This preference appears within about:config (in the adress bar, type about:config, then type, within the Filter bar, layout.word_select.eat_space_to_next_word).

Within Firefox address bar, if you capture "ROTK", then Firefox launch a Google query. However, this query returns the "I Feel Lucky" match from Google search database. You can change the default query. In the about:config page, search for keyword.URL. Its value is a Google Web address ending by &q=, an incomplete Web address. As long as it is not an URL, Whatever you capture within the address bar is appended right after that incomplete address. Since it has a complete address, Firefox launches a request.

The best way to create a valid address is to query your favorite search engine with an uncommon word, like "appaloosa". Once the search is correctly processed, copy the address from the address bar, paste it in your text editor, find "&q=appaloosa", and move it to the end of the address. After that, erase "appaloosa". This is the new value of keyword.URL. This trick, mutatis mutandis, is equally good for Wikipedia.

Upgrading to 1.0.0 and Higher      (TOC)

Compared to previous versions, the 1.0.0 (and higher) interface is different in many ways. In my opinion, those changes give you a better experience when you use it.

• In the options, there are only two maps panels. All the maps parameters fit within them.
• In the options, there is only one liner panel. All the liners fit within it.
• The options interface is more liquid, i.e., you can stretch the panels and many graphic elements within them will stretch as well.
• Custom 1 and Custom 2 panels changed. The same information is still there, but presented differently, and more logically.
• The context menu only displays the Weekedit functions in sub-menus. This is a necessity since there are too many items to fit within the context menu.
• Regarding custom addresses, if they do not contain %1, Weekedit displays them in the context menu. Those addresses are valid without further processing.
• The license is now "GPL 3.0 or later/LGPL 3.0 or later". I believe this license provides a better protection against abusive practices from corporations, while protecting your rights to use and modify this software.

    Conversion to Unicode      (TOC)

Weekedit 1.0.0 (and higher) provides better support to non-english writing people. It recognizes strings in Unicode, a character encoding not compatible with previous versions. By using this encoding, a recurring bug happening in Firefox 2.0.* and in Firefox 3.0.* disappears for good.

However, Weekedit 1.0.0 (and higher) must convert old parameters. You just have to accept the conversion when Weekedit ask to do it. Once it is done, you can go on as before. The converted parameters are not lost, nor changed. They are visible when using previous versions.

You can request conversion at any time. Go to the Misc panel in the options, and press To Unicode button :

After that, follow instructions, and wait for the conversion to be completed (Weekedit will inform you when it is done).