HelpTo edit articles, the knowledge base provides an efficient editor toolbar.
The editor toolbar
The functionality of the editor toolbar can be separated into 5 areas:
- Page structuring with headings.
- Consistent text formatting.
- Linking of articles.
- Inserting special content (files/media, tables, templates, "magic words")
- Adjusting page options.
Text editing
Typical text formatting options such as bold, italics, or text color are available as a context menu. When you highlight text, an inspector menu with common formatting elements appears. For example, you can quickly apply a different text color.
Pasting content from your clipboard
If you paste content from your clipboard (e.g., copied from MS Word or MS Excel), you usually also paste many unnecessary formatting tags from the original application. To avoid, this you should paste the content as plaintext.
If you already pasted text which resulted in undesirable formatting, you can use the undo function to remove the content again if you have not yet saved the page or switched between visual and source editing mode.
To paste content as plain text instead, use the shortcut ctrl+shift+v.
Shortcuts
If you want to apply multiple formatting options at the same time, shortcuts are often the quickest way. For example, to show text in bold and italic, highlight the text and press Ctrl+b (for "bold") and Ctrl+i (for "italics"). Even a link can be quickly inserted by pressing Ctrl+k. Pressing Ctrl+b again will cancel the bold. Multiple formats can be removed after text selection with Ctrl+m.
All available keyboard shortcuts are marked accordingly in VisualEditor next to each menu item.
Inserting other content
Many typical page elements such as images, files and tables can be integrated into your page from the Insert menu.
If you want to learn more about inserting these elements, go to the following help pages:
Wiki-specific content
Some functions in the "Insert" menu are little known in traditional word processing editors, but are quite typical for working with a wiki-based system:
- Comment: Add comments to the page to help you during the editing process. The comments are only visible in edit mode.
- Gallery: A simple picture gallery can support many process flows.
- Magic word: Wiki features such as signature, word counter, category tree or even process diagrams with drawio can be integrated as a "magic word".
- Your signature: Allows users to quickly insert their signature on any page.
- Codeblock: Programming code is displayed here with clean syntax highlighting, optionally with line numbers.
- References list: Allows to show the footnote references anywhere on the page, not only at the end of a page.
- Chemical formula: The formula rendering uses an external service via Wikimedia's REST API.
- Math formula: An editor opens for entering and displaying mathematical formulas.
Switching between edit modes
When creating or editing a page, the page loads in visual editing mode. If you are familiar with the code language of MediaWiki ("Wikitext"), you can easily switch to source editing mode using the "Switch editor" button:
Reference
Since the toolbar is a standard MediaWiki extension, you can also read a documentation of functionality on MediaWiki.
Discussions