Help:Page Previews

Example of a page preview pop-up.

Page Previews is a feature that displays a short summary of the target and an image (if available) upon hovering over a link to another article, allowing the user to decide whether they wish to visit that subject more thoroughly before continuing with the current article. This feature is powered by Extension:Popups. Additionally, this feature also shows a preview of references and footnotes upon hovering over them, which can be used rather than having to jump or scroll to the appropriate references section. For a greater overview of this feature, see Page Previews and Reference Previews on Mediawiki.org.

Contents

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• (Return to top)
• Introduction
• Settings
  • Enabling/disabling for logged-out users
  • Enabling/disabling for logged-in users
• Limitations
• Reporting feedback and issues
• See also

Contents

Introduction

Page Previews are designed to reduce the cost of exploration of a link, as well as to promote learning by allowing readers to gain context on the article they are reading or to define an unfamiliar term, object, event, or idea without navigating away from their original topic. For casual readers, Page Previews will make it easier for users to get an overview of an article before deciding whether or not to browse to it. Users interested in reading an entire article in its totality will not be distracted or discouraged by viewing unfamiliar concepts—they can simply preview the concept without navigating to a new page. Consequently, the smoothness of the user experience for these users will be increased.

Example of a page preview pop-up

The Reference Previews feature displays a preview of a reference within text when hovering over a footnote. Previously, clicking on a footnote discards the reader's current position on a wiki page and jumps to the references section, making it difficult to continue reading after consulting the footnote. Reference Previews display a preview of the footnote as it appears at the bottom of the page. Within the preview, any and all footnote content (text, images, tables, ...) will be displayed. Clicking on a footnote marker will jump to the References section (as it would if there weren't any pop-ups).

Example of a reference preview pop-up

Settings

Enabling/disabling for logged-out users

Logged-out users may turn Page Previews off via the cog-icon displayed at the bottom of each preview. If a user wishes to re-enable Page Previews, they can be enabled via the "Edit preview settings" link available at the bottom of any wiki page. They can also disable JavaScript in their browser to turn it off permanently.

Disabling Page Previews when Logged-Out

Enabling Page Previews when Logged-Out

Enabling/disabling for logged-in users

Logged-in users can enable or disable Page Previews from the Appearance section of Special:Preferences. If a logged-in user clicks on the cog-icon displayed at the bottom of each preview, they will be redirected to the user preferences page.

Enabling/Disabling Page Previews when Logged-In

Limitations

• Page Previews will only work for links targeting pages in the mainspace (i.e. links to pages in other namespaces, such as talk or template pages, will only show the link destination instead of a preview pop-up).
• Page Previews will not work for external links, including interwiki or interlanguage links.
• Extensions:Popups allows for showing the type of a reference in the preview (such as book, web, etc.); however, due to how references are used on Bulbapedia, this is not currently supported.
• Any content inside a reference preview (such as links or nested references), will not have a preview.
• Hatnotes or maintenance notices at the top of articles may be displayed in the preview. Such content should be added using the appropriate templates or be wrapped inside a noexcerpt class.

Reporting feedback and issues

To report any bugs, issues or to give other feedback, please leave a message on the talk page.

See also

• mw:Page Previews
• mw:Help:Reference Previews

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