The Wikimedia Foundation announced yesterday the launch of the Beta Features (literally "features in beta") program, which allows volunteers to test the new features of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites in the sphere before their official launch.
The principle is the same as any other phase of public test: users benefit from early access to future features in return they agree to expose faults they are asked to report.
At launch, Wikipedia has four features:
- Media Viewer that allows you to enlarge the photos illustrating the articles overlay without having to go to a separate page
- The VisualEditor, easy to use modern editor available in alpha since July
- Editing mathematical formula with VisualEditor
- The Typography Update to make the pages more readable and slightly reduce the importance of navigation elements
These features are now available on Wikimedia Commons and MediaWiki. Users with an account can go to their preferences to enable them one by one, or choose to automatically activate all existing features and future betas.
