Help talk:Edit toolbar

Search and replace

How's about adding the search-and-replace function to the table? benzband (talk) 09:40, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Cite templates on edit toolbar

Is it possible to have a default selection under Preferences, for American style or European style for the access date inserted with any citation template on the Edit toolbar? Currently, "Insert Date" brings up only the European style, which is inconsistent if the article text contains American style dates. And if this is the wrong place to put this request, please provide a link to the appropriate place. Thank you. Maile66 (talk) 00:15, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

This is just the help page for the Toolbar. To make a suggestion about the way it should work, perhaps go here. Also–and this is no big deal–this page is only semi-protected, so the template is {{edit semi-protected}} to make an edit request. Just an fyi for the future. Danger ^{High voltage!} 04:50, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Changing the toolbar to help prevent test edits

I think the buttons on the edit toolbar should be changed. For example, right now if you click the "Bold" button, you get '''Bold text''' inserted into the edit window. What I'd like is that if no text is highlighted, a pop-up window opens saying something like "Insert bold text" with a line for adding the text to be bolded (and possibly with a note on when to add bold text in pages). If text is highlighted, then it is made bold. If you don't get what I'm talking about, click on the "Link" button—that's the model I'm looking at. The same design would apply for "Italic text", "Bulleted list", "Big text", etc. I think this would help cut down on test edits and make the toolbar more usable. David1217 ^{What I've done} 05:10, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi David, although i agree with you about the test edits i'm not sure this is the best place to ask for such a change in the software… How about trying the Village pump (technical)? benzband (talk) 09:29, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Okay. Will do so. David1217 ^{What I've done} 15:13, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Disabling this

This toolbar is showing up unannounced and unwanted on several users' edit boxes no matter what preference settings we twiddle with. How can we disable it? Timrollpickering (talk) 22:28, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Have you tried deselecting the box under "Editing" in preferences that says, "Show edit toolbar (requires JavaScript)"? David1217 ^{What I've done} 23:19, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

Enable enhanced editing toolbar	Enable dialogs for inserting links, tables and more	RefToolbar version	RefToolbar style
Off	Off On	RefToolbar 1.0	Cite icon on right
On	Off	RefToolbar 2.0a	{{}} icon in middle
	On	RefToolbar 2.0b	Cite button on right

You can change the settings at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. benzband (talk) 07:25, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

The box was not selected in the first place and attempts to turn it on then off did not work. Fortunately the intrusion has now been resolved. Timrollpickering (talk) 10:54, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

That's good, then. David1217 ^{What I've done} 16:27, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Help please! It's not resolved for me. It was working a couple of days ago, but today the v1.0 toolbar appears momentarily but then gets overwritten by the v2.0. Turning Enable enhanced editing toolbar off and on again hasn't helped. The v2 is missing some features for which I don't care to memorize the mark-up. Thanks, --catslash (talk) 13:48, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

This has been happening to a lot of users. Perhaps you should go to WP:VPT. David1217 ^{What I've done} 16:35, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Additional functionality

I would sure love to have <pre></pre> and </code><code> available as advanced tools and - this is a biggie - to have underscoring and strikeout available on the mail toolbar. Or - if not - instructions on how to add these.
RiverStyx23{^talk_email} 14:32, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Edit bar intruding on editing space.

As of this morning, the "New line" and "redirect" arrows from the toolbar are poking down into my editing area, and are in the way when I am working on the top line there. Someone please fix this. Cheers! bd2412 T 19:20, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Signature

All over Wikipedia we are exhorted to sign with four tildes, ~~~~. So why does the signature button on the edit toolbar insert two hyphens and four tildes, --~~~~? Considering the war on hyphens that currently being waged throughout the project, that is faintly surprising. It's also mildly annoying to have to delete those two hyphens every time I sign. I'd like to ask if there is any reason for it? And if it could be changed? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 23:17, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Main reason is visual clarity. The dashes give a clear indicator that the message has ended, and the author's username is now beginning. This is especially useful when a message ends with a link, or a list of links. The blue username might initially be read as part of the list. Especially when the username is a phrase, for example. (Personally, I'm currently using Special:Preferences purely to add an en-dash in front of a standard looking sig. I either type the 4tildes manually, or I click the sig-link in the "Insert" or "Wiki markup" boxes underneath the editing window.) HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 22:30, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, and for the reason you give. So, just get this clear, we have a specific policy against using two hyphens:

• Do not use substitutes for em or en dashes, such as the combination of two hyphens (--). These were typewriter approximations.

and then we have an edit toolbar button that inserts precisely those two hyphens that we are not supposed to use? I think something is wrong here, and can't help wondering why the same reasoning would not then equally apply to the signature tool on the Special Characters bar, or whatever the one below the edit window is called (which of course is the one I use on WIkipedia, but which as far as I can see is not available on, say, Commons). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:35, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

(Note: if you go to commons:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing and disable "Enable enhanced editing toolbar", you will get their version of MediaWiki:Edittools made visible. :)

Good point. I'd support a change, to the default output of this button. Possibly replace it with a en-dash, to keep the visual-clarity-seperator? I'm not sure if we need a {{edit protected}} (or similar) request here, or elsewhere, to get action/discussion rolling. –Quiddity (talk) 23:53, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

The toolbar below the edit window is CharInsert. --  Gadget850 ^talk 10:19, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Search and Replace not working in IE10

"Search and replace" seems to not work in IE10, everything else does though. Not sure whether this is the same issue, but also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Toolbars#IE9_and_IE10 Timmyshin (talk) 04:39, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Thumb or Thumbnail?

When I add a file using the "embedded file" button on the toolbar, the default size option added is "thumbnail". An editor has changed that to "thumb" in an article I've edited. Looking at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Images#Image_syntax, "thumb" is used, though I see that Wikipedia:Extended_image_syntax, after initially showing "thumb" as the word to use, then refers to ""thumb" (or "thumbnail"...". It looks as if the RefToolbar is offering the less preferred word here: could it be changed so it adds "thumb", please? PamD 09:04, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Not the RefToolbar; this is part of the the Edit toolbar. I'm not sure we can change this locally. --  Gadget850 ^talk 10:07, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

And you should really ask this at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), as this talk page does not seem well watched. --  Gadget850 ^talk 10:36, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Enhanced editing toolbar's Cite drop menu is obscured

Enhanced editing toolbar's Cite drop menu is obscured suddenly as of today. I had made no changes to browser or preferences; I merely was in the middle of editing a page and when I tried to use the enhanced editing toolbar's cite drop menu ("Templates"), it appears as if the menu does drop but it goes behind the editing section and only Cite web is clickable (and only as a tiny sliver that is unlabeled). I use this cite program quite frequently... Ogress _smash! 08:14, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

@Ogress: I think this is the same as Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#RefTools. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:06, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

My bad; I wasn't really sure where to ask. I think someone's looking into it at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) already, someone else reported the same error starting from the same time as me. Ogress _smash! 19:14, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Toolbar windows

I may not be able to use technical jargon but I'll try to expalain. When you press the "Search and replace" button there opens a subordinate window, that allows a user to simply drag the text from the background text editing area into that opened window. But this trick does not work with other windows ("Link", "File", "Cite"). Is it possible to allow these windows to behave like "Search and replace"?--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 14:00, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

"Help" & "Cite" suggestion

Would you include a link to Manual of Style/Text formatting under "Help", and another to Citing sources under "Cite", for a quicker access? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hexafluoride (talk • contribs) 23:12, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Line break button not XHTML-compliant

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T152172

The "Line break" button generates <br/>. It should generate <br />. Strangely, the Help Page for the toolbar shows it correctly. Even though the Wikipedia code parser allows one to "get away" with badly-formatted XHTML, the standard calls for a single space before the slash when closing empty elements such as <br />, <hr />, <img />, etc. — Quicksilver (Hydrargyrum)^{T @} 01:37, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Hello Quicksilver, Wikimedia doesn't want support prefer XHTML anymore in replacement of HTML5, so the real correct tag is <br>. → User: Perhelion 00:32, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

@Perhelion: — If Wikipedia is leaning toward HTML5, there's a big problem with the syntax highlighter gadget, which I use constantly. Unary tags such as <br> are considered open, and once used, change the highlighting from the point of first use all the way to the bottom of the document. The only way to turn off the highlighting so one can see normal text unhighlighted is to apply strict XHTML rules. Who is coordinating these things? Nobody, obviously. We have ill-informed groups of three or four individuals declaring a "consensus" and pretending that every one of the 2000+ active editors and coders on the English Wikipedia have heard of their decision and have agreed to it. There is nothing wrong with XHTML: It is used internally in Wikipedia and isn't revealed to the average site visitor. As far as I can see, there is absolutely no compelling reason to prefer HTML5. Wikipedia could be built and maintained indefinitely into the future using XHTML; there are COBOL and FORTRAN software projects older than most of today's programmers have been alive that still work just fine. Sorry if I sound argumentative, but that's the way I see it. — Quicksilver (Hydrargyrum)^{T @} 15:52, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

I understand your arguments, but there is still a problem, Wiki-syntax is neither XHTML nor HTML but borrowed it elements for some good reasons. But unfortunately this is a from Wikimedia independent standard. But on the other hand you are right, it is a decision of Wikimedia what it will be used, there is indeed something needed like "declaring a consensus". PS: I personally mean HTML3 fits even better to Wiki-syntax (for example center and font tag and some other like big) → User: Perhelion 21:01, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Missing toolbar 2

I am unable to see the edit tool bar at the top of any page. The problem persists on different computers and browsers. Is there a solution? - MainlyTwelve (talk) 15:33, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Mine disappeared a few days ago too. Help please. - BilCat (talk) 18:56, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

@BilCat: Check out this link, support for the old toolbar apparently ended.--MainlyTwelve (talk) 19:57, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Helpful portion is under "Missing edit toolbar"--MainlyTwelve (talk) 19:57, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. - BilCat (talk) 04:36, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

See below

Special characters Special characters See below.

There is nowhere to "see below". --Error (talk) 11:21, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Addressed in Special:Diff/1335855135. —⁠andrybak (talk) 11:19, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

Requires update?

Does this not need an update since to me my Edit toolbar whilst in source editor mode and visual editor mode look identical? waddie96 ★ (talk) 21:39, 27 December 2024 (UTC)