VisualEditor: Link input widget should somehow recognise input text that look like urls without protocol as external links (e.g. "www.example.org/foo") and then guess the right protocol
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	TTO
	Jun 28 2013, 10:16 AM

Description

This is a legacy of wiki-syntax, where all external links have to begin with the protocol. It would be nice to make the VE link inspector smarter than this.

"www.google.com" is almost certainly meant to be an external link - if there is an article by this name, then it could be shown in the link inspector dropdown as well, but the option for "External link" definitely needs to be there. Even something like "royal.gov.uk" should be recognised as a URL.

Requiring "http://" or some other protocol at the start is confusing for the newbie, as the protocol component of URLs is generally ignored nowadays.

Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement

Details

Reference: bz50360

Related Objects

Mentioned Here: T76398: External link interface for link dialogue

Event Timeline

• bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Medium.Nov 22 2014, 1:46 AM

• bzimport added a project: VisualEditor-EditingTools.

• bzimport set Reference to bz50360.

TTO created this task.Jun 28 2013, 10:16 AM

We solved this to some degree in WikiEditor with the link dialog in that extension. We can probably re-use some of that logic.

Bug 56490 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Jdforrester-WMF added a project: VisualEditor.Nov 23 2014, 10:48 PM

Jdforrester-WMF moved this task from To Triage to Freezer on the VisualEditor board.Nov 24 2014, 1:21 AM

In T52360#542816, @Krinkle wrote:

We solved this to some degree in WikiEditor with the link dialog in that extension. We can probably re-use some of that logic.

https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-WikiEditor/blob/master/modules/jquery.wikiEditor.dialogs.config.js#L131

By looking for www.? Yeah, that doesn't work. phabricator.wikimedia.org should be recognised, as well as the bug creator's suggestion of royal.gov.uk.

Sounds like T76398: External link interface for link dialogue would fix this by having the user deal with it instead.

Jdforrester-WMF added a project: VisualEditor-MediaWiki-Links.Jan 27 2015, 11:52 PM

So we now have a separate external link input, but it shows URLs without a protocol as invalid :/

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptAug 10 2015, 1:29 AM

Jdforrester-WMF removed a parent task: T50789: VisualEditor: Improvements and behaviour changes to the link input widget (tracking).Sep 10 2015, 6:56 PM

Jdforrester-WMF renamed this task from VisualEditor: Link input widget should recognise input text that look like urls without protocol as external links (e.g. "www.example.org/foo") to VisualEditor: Link input widget should somehow recognise input text that look like urls without protocol as external links (e.g. "www.example.org/foo") and then guess the right protocol.Mar 25 2017, 3:30 AM

Jdforrester-WMF lowered the priority of this task from Medium to Low.

Krinkle unsubscribed.Mar 27 2017, 11:08 PM

Aklapper changed the subtype of this task from "Task" to "Feature Request".Feb 4 2022, 11:13 AM

Aklapper removed a subscriber: • rmoen.

VisualEditor: Link input widget should somehow recognise input text that look like urls without protocol as external links (e.g. "www.example.org/foo") and then guess the right protocolOpen, LowPublicFeatureActions

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VisualEditor: Link input widget should somehow recognise input text that look like urls without protocol as external links (e.g. "www.example.org/foo") and then guess the right protocol
Open, LowPublicFeature
Actions