VisualEditor

What is VisualEditor?

One of the most important tools for inserting and formatting content in BlueSpice is VisualEditor. This visual editor is based on the MediaWiki extension VisualEditor. With this sophisticated editor pages can be quickly and clearly filled with a variety of content.

When creating or editing a page, you're in visual edit mode right now. If you are familiar with the code language of MediaWiki ("WikiText"), you can easily switch over using the "Switch Editor" function:
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text editing

Typical text formatting such as bold, italics, or textcolor</ span> are already possible during text input. When you format text with the mouse, you will see a mini menu with the most important formatting elements. With one click the desired formatting can be selected. This is especially fast, if you want to change the text color, for example:

The mini menu appears only in the text flow, not when an entire paragraph is highlighted. For example, note for bullet points, that you select only the text itself and not the whole line. Otherwise, paragraph formatting will be selected "behind the scenes" and the mini menu will not appear.

If you want to apply multiple formatting at the same time, shortcuts are often the quickest. For example, to show bold and italic text, highlight the text and press Ctrl+b (for English, "bold") and Ctrl+i (for "italics"). Even a link can be quickly pasted via Ctrl+k. Pressing Ctrl+b again will cancel the bold. Multiple formatting can be removed after text selection using Ctrl+M combined.

All editor functions for which there are keyboard shortcuts are marked accordingly:

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insert external content

Many typical page elements such as images, files and tables can be integrated into your page via the "Insert" menu.

If you want to learn more about inserting these elements, go to the appropriate help page:

• Images
• Files (PDF, xls, doc, ...)
• Tables
• Templates

Typical Wiki!

Some functions in the "Insert" menu are little known from traditional word processing, but are quite typical for working with a wiki. Therefore, you will be briefly introduced here. You can immerse yourself deeper on the individual pages:

• Comment: Add comments to the page. These are only visible in the source code.
• Magic word: Wiki features such as signature, word counter, category tree or even process diagrams with draw.io can be integrated as a "magic word".
• Your signature: Only works on pages that allow signatures. Pages in the Namespace "Pages" are not included.
• Gallery: A simple picture gallery can meaningfully support many process flows.
• Codeblock: Programming code is displayed here in clean code blocks, optionally with lines.
• Itemization list:
• Chemical formula:
• Math formula: An editor opens for entering a mathematical formula. More info on MediaWiki

MediaWiki Reference

Since the visual editor is a standard MediaWiki extension, you can also read a complete documentation of functionality on MediaWiki.

Here in the BlueSpice Helpdesk we give only short hints and tips for using the editor.

Hints and Tips

The visual editor is optimized for editing web pages. That's why it has exactly those features that are needed to create a wiki page again and again. The uniform formatting by VisualEditor thus supports the readability of your wiki content.

The BlueSpice Editor offers the following options:

text formatting

Text formatting
Undo function	Left arrow: Undo last action (greyed out: there is no last action yet) Right arrow: Restore last action (greyed out: there's nothing to restore yet)
Paragraph formatting	Here text can be defined as heading or specific paragraph type. Note: If you work in a table, the options will change accordingly (content cell and header cell): alternative-text=VisualEditor-paragraph2
Character formatting	If no text has been selected before clicking on the " A" button and on a button, the text will be formatted from the current position of the cursor. (More Info on MediaWiki)
Insert hyperlink	If no text was selected before the hyperlink dialog was opened, the link will be generated with a number: [1] To subsequently change the hyperlink description, just click on the link to open the edit menu. In a table, you may need to double-click the cell first and then click the hyperlink again.
quote	The citation menu is used to insert references (also called itemizations or footnotes) within the text.
Block formatting