Reading/Web/Release timeline

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).

2024

September

24th

Donation link added to top right corner of all wikis phab:T373585

11th

Donation link was removed on French Wikipedia and Wikifunctions due to unexpected bug. phab:T373585
Appearance menu deployed to all wikis for all users phab:T371020
QuickSurvey recommendation experiments launched to English and Spanish Wikipedia phab:T373039

9th

Appearance menu deployed to all wikis for logged in users phab:T371020
Donation link was added to top right corner of page on French Wikipedia and Wikifunctions phab:T373585

August

6th

Expanded dark mode for logged out users T371084

July

17th

Expanded dark mode for logged out users T367150

16th

Enabled dark mode for logged out users (tier 1) phab:T367150

15th

Enabled dark mode for all logged in users (mobile, desktop) T368795

10th

Enable dark mode for tier 1 wikis (logged in only) T368795

Banners restored on mobile until 18th T366296#9995713

5th

Paused banner campaign (due to 1 in 5 pages not working due to cached HTML).

4th

Expanded dark mode to more pages
Ran first banner campaign for mobile awareness of dark mode

2nd

Dark mode enabled for anonymous users on select wikis (enwiki,gawiki,kabwiki,zhwiki)

1st

Dark mode enabled on mobile for all logged in users

June

14th

Images are responsive in Vector 2022 T113101

11th

Enabled Vector appearance menu & larger font-size on wikipedias phab:T362148

11th-13th

New heading markup available on Minerva skin phab:T365736

4th-6th (train deployment)

New heading markup available on Vector legacy skin phab:T365736
Internal change to how we store preferences for Popups. phab:T366225
Dark mode gadget compatible with skin dark mode. phab:T365083

May

21st

The desktop watchlist is now used on mobile. phab:T363814

20th

New heading markup available on Timeless and Monobook phab:T363597

16th

Dark mode shipped as beta feature. phab:T363814

14th

Main page now appears in full width T357706

March

27th

Vector 2022 skin is now the default on most Wikisource wikis and internal wikis. phab:T360628

19th

Night mode is now available on the mobile site for logged in users of select wikis. phab:T359152

February

29th

Rolled back line height change to all projects. T358498

20th

The MobileFrontend diff page was disabled for all users. phab:T353388

Night mode was enabled on all test wikis for Minerva. T357759

15th

Rolled out a new line height for mobile users T349303

5th

The MobileFrontend mobile diff page was disabled for all logged in users. phab:T353388

January

29th

The MobileFrontend history page was disabled for all traffic. phab:T353388

17th

The MobileFrontend history page was disabled for all logged in users phab:T353388

2023

December

11th

🎂 Zebra enabled on all wikis phab:T353008

7th

🎂 Font size client preferences beta feature deployed everywhere phab:T351339

November

2nd Dropdown support in Vector skins for addPortlet API phab:T342815

October

19th

Enabled client preferences beta feature T347772

17th

Create new logos for all projects for DI header and make sure everyone knows how to use them phab:T322041

Enabled typography survey phab:T347208

3rd

Vector 2022 rolled out to Swedish, Hungarian, Dutch, Hindi, Norwegian T347321

Community Prototype launched T347208

September

21st

Table of contents now persists for anonymous users phab:T316060

5th

Completed Minerva Codex migration phab:T343920, phab:T344006

August

22nd

Migrated Vector's limited width to new client preference API phab:T341641

15th

Created new core API for client side preference manipulation phab:T341720

8th

Deploy Vector 2022 as the default desktop skin to several Wikipedias (zh, et, zh-yue, zh-min-nan, wuu, zh-classical, mg, xmf, ang, lad, nah, hak, cdo, gan, mdf) phab:T335886

MobileFrontend migrated to Codex components phab:T340262

1st

Introduced mw.util.addPortlet API phab:T303488

July

25th

Turned off Vector Zebra A/B test for multiple wikis phab:T337956

18th

Completed IP masking migration phab:T339994, phab:T340789 phab:T319260, phab:T339379, phab:T330510

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). (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

26th: Hindi mobile campaign goes live

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

Enabled HTML previews on cswiki.

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

Turned on EventLogging for Page Previews

November

15th

October

9th

Enabled print styles on Vector on test wiki

10th

Disabled OCG

11th

Enabled new Vector print styles on all wikis

18th

Restarted Page Previews A/B test on enwiki and dewiki

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

Launched Popups A/B test on enwiki and dewiki

July

11th

Firefox event logging duplicate event bug fixed

17th

Minerva separated from MobileFrontend in production

19th

Stopped RelatedArticles A/B test

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

🎂 First paragraph moved before infobox on all projects

April

3rd

Wikidata descriptions disabled in English Wikipedia

4th

ES3 JavaScript support dropped

5th

Page previews enabled on Hungarian and Hebrew Wikipedia

13th

20th

Non-JavaScript users can edit mobile site

March

20th

Page images restricted to lead section

29th

🎂 New header rolled out to mobile web

February

2nd

RelatedArticles shown to 90% of users

14th

Merged Popups frontend rewrite into master

21st

Reading depth schema deployed

23rd

New mobile header rolled out to cawiki and itwiki

January

19th

🎂 Wikidata descriptions shown on English Wikipedia

2016

December

5th

Wikidata descriptions enabled on French and German Wikipedia

November

8th

Began rewrite of Page previews codebase

October

3rd

Wikidata descriptions on Japanese and Spanish wikis

🎂 New footer pushed to mobile

11th

Disable bottom language button in Minerva

August

4th

🎂 New language switcher launched to all wikis

17th

🎂 Lazy loaded images enabled on mobile

30th

Enable wikidata descriptions on all but 6 wikis

Lazy loaded references experiments ended

July

5th

Lazy loaded images on Japanese wikipedia

12th

Lazy loaded images and references on Thai Wiki

18th

Lazy loaded images and references on Russian Wiki

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

Lazy loaded images on Tagalog Wikipedia

May

9th

Lazy loaded images on Bengali Wikipedia

April

26th

Lazy loaded references enabled in beta.

20th

RFC for page previews posted

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

Tablets redirected to mobile site (data)

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

Mobile uploads went live

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.

2011

October

Mobile beta introduced

2009

June

First version of mobile (Ruby gateway)