Last modified: 2013-08-02 23:47:59 UTC
From user:PamD at en.wp: Clicking on the "Read the User Guide" link (within the Beta/questionmark popup) has the effect of losing all current editing, because it opens the User Guide in the current window, without warning that it's going to do so. Imagine: half an hour's editing, find a problem, remember seeing that link and think it might offer advice, click for the popup, click to open the User Guide, and ... one very unhappy editor. I suggest that either the User Guide should open in a new tab or window, or, if this is impossible, there should be a warning "Read the User Guide (and lose any current edits)".
Marking as high priority like similar bug 52093
Change 77374 had a related patch set uploaded by Jforrester: Make the link to the user guide open in a new window https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/77374
Change 77374 merged by jenkins-bot: Make the link to the user guide open in a new window https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/77374
Now fixed in the code; next scheduled deployment is not until 15 August, however. :-(
Thanks for the super-quick fix. As for the wait until deployment, would it be possible to add something like "(hold CTRL while clicking this link to open it in a new window)" before this goes live? If not it's not worth doing anything, but if we can as an interim measure help some people that's better than nothing.
The text is controlled by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Visualeditor-help-label - but I'd counsel against putting a lot of text into it, as it may not look very good.
Thanks for the reply, that is very useful to know. Brevity is not my strong suit so I've refrained from making a change to it myself. I've asked for suggestions at [[WP:VE/F#User Manual should open in new tab/window]], feel free to opine.
