Wikibooks:Reading room/Technical Assistance

Welcome to the Technical Assistance reading room. Get assistance on questions related to MediaWiki markup, CSS, JavaScript, and such as they relate to Wikibooks. This is not a general-purpose technical support room.

To submit a bug notice or feature request for the MediaWiki software, visit Phabricator.

To get more information about the MediaWiki software, or to download your own copy, visit MediaWiki

There are also two IRC channels for technical help: #mediawiki^connect for issues about the software, and #mediawiki-core^connect for WMF server or configuration issues.

Duplicate identifiers?

Hi, On the Oberon/Text page, lintHint reports 4 instances of duplication of identifiers. Can someone spot a duplication? Thx, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 15:39, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

The problem comes from transcluding other pages. E.g. on Oberon/ETH Oberon/TextType, you can find <div id="Piece"></div>. If you changed that name to something else, it could fix the problem. I'm not sure why there is an empty div in the first place. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:49, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

The div is empty but provides a fragment identifier to link to; but the identifier should be in the table tag. Thanks, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 17:32, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Okay, but why not use Template:Anchor or a span? Why include a blockline element? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:50, 9 February 2025 (UTC)

Was unaware of Template:Anchor. The problem seemed to be resolved after some fumbling. Thx, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 22:23, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

Suppressing a redundant link.

Hi
How can the link at the left, surrounded in red, be suppressed? Thx, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 22:27, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

To hide these links for yourself, add this to Special:MyPage/common.css:

#mw-content-subtitle {
	display: none;
}

If you want to only hide it on that page, add this:

.page-Oberon_System_Variants #mw-content-subtitle {
	display: none;
}

JJP_Master (she/they) 22:45, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

I've added a statement per page but commas in two page headings are problematical. How can the syntax accommodate a comma? Thx, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 16:21, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

@PeterEasthope: Commas aren't included in the IDs. You can just remove them. JJP_Master (she/they) 02:39, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. Omission of a character seems an arbitrary syntactical detail but works. =8~)

Can omission of the "back link" be declared within the page? Enclosing the page content in <style mw-content-subtitle="display: none;"> ... </style> is conceptual but doesn't work. Thx, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 17:42, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

Linking a cell in a table

Hi, Another question about hyperlinking. In this case linking a cell in table. The introductory paragraph in Wikipedia Help:Table states "Tables can be created on Wikipedia pages using special wikitext syntax, or HTML syntax, and many different styles and tricks can be used to customise them." Applies in Wikibooks also? Not for the example in my sandbox. Ideas? Thx, ... P. PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 21:12, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

Now another means of navigation is attempted in my sandbox. It should work better on a narrow display; but the wiki doesn't accept the style declaration. How can the style be specified without inclusion in each div and a tag? Thanks, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 20:14, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Styling

Hi,
Styling doesn't work as attempted in my sandbox. How should the styling be included? Thx, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 23:42, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Notice of change to MediaWiki:Common.js

I have added a snippet to MediaWiki:Common.js that allows users to load a script or stylesheet in the MediaWiki namespace by appending the withJS or withCSS parameter to a URL. See User:JJPMaster/sandbox for an example. JJP_Master (she/they) 10:33, 2 April 2025 (UTC)