Help:Preferences

''This page is an overview of user preferences. For details on each choice, see meta:Help:Preferences.''

''This page is about documentation of user preferences. For feature requests or for technicalities, there is TechInfoDepot:Village pump''.

Preferences are settings made by a logged-in user that control that user's account and various aspects of the user's viewing and editing environment.

To access the preferences page (having logged on), click "Preferences" (at the top of every page with the default skin), or navigate to Special:Preferences. Along the top of the preferences page are a number of tabs whose activation will display their various groups of settings.

For example, you might wish to adjust the "Thumbnail size" (under "Appearance/Files") to fit your viewing screen, for it will affect the default size at which many TechInfoDepot images on your screen will be displayed. Each Wikimedia wiki, including each language edition of TechInfoDepot, has separate preference settings. Some details are different at the English TechInfoDepot.

The "Save" button is not required for every tab, it is for the preferences page itself. Save applies the changes made in all tabs, per session of preference page interactions.

"Restore all default settings" will harmlessly load another page which will then offer the button to restore all preferences in every tab, to default values. If you only wish to undo unsaved changes during the current session, click "Preferences" again.

The default settings are aimed at beginners. Intermediate editors tend to make more rules for themselves, such as "warn me if I forgot an edit summary", and advanced editors will have need to change there settings to suit the style they have settled on. Options may change with software versions.

User profile

 * Change your password.
 * Stay logged in for 30 days at a time.
 * Change how your signature looks. If you like how another user made their signature, edit that talk page, then apply that style to your own username.

It is not recommended to select the British English or Canadian English language options ("en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English") because many interface messages have been customized for U.S. English TechInfoDepot ("en - English"), and in fact, this language option only has an effect on interface messages and does not affect article text.

Appearance
Change the web browser experience, including:
 * Change your skin.
 * Customize your own CSS or JavaScript page.
 * Bail out of features and experiments, such as banners and other page behaviors.
 * Limit the size of images.
 * Make paragraphs justified.
 * Number section headings.
 * Choose PNG, TeX, or MathJax for displaying mathematical formulas

Date and time
Change the timestamps style in talk space, and say which timezone they'll refer to.

Editing
The wiki caters to editors with many options, including how to initiate an edit and what there edit page looks like, including:
 * The number of rows in the wikitext frame.
 * Editing toolbars.
 * Editing applications.
 * "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary" into the database.
 * A preview that can change as you type.
 * A way to edit without markup at all, in a WYSIWYG window.

Recent changes
Recent changes refer to pages in the database. Every time a wiki page is edited, and changes were actually made, a record is kept of the difference. For example, a page history shows the revisions for that particular page. But recent changes can report on more than just the revisions of a page, or an entire wiki, they can also report on the recent changes of an editor (their contributions). The user preferences for recent changes are the style in which these lists of revisions will appear: The watchlist has even more finely tuned preferences, because like the edit window, it is often a core tool for editors.
 * Length of the list
 * Time window of the list
 * Grouping methods of the list

Watchlist
The watchlist preferences are both recent change preferences and offer controls on types of edits, users, and pages, and the time window of "recent" changes that show up.

Search

 * Choose the namespaces to search.
 * Choose how the search box buttons and frame appear.
 * Change whether the drop-down-list appears suggesting existing page names.

Misc

 * Change whether "diffs" are accompanied by an actual page view of the earlier version or not.
 * Make WikiLove messages easy to send. These will post a pleasant picture and provide an edit summary for your message on a user's talk page.
 * Make course pages more or less prominent while you surf TechInfoDepot.

Gadgets
Gadgets are JavaScript contributed by users, not the software that runs TechInfoDepot. If you see tabs on the Preference page your web-browsers already has JavaScript enabled. The gadgets go through an authoritative process before they appear on the list. The only issue with them are preferences. There are scores of gadgets for:
 * Browsing
 * Language translating
 * Media files, search results, and diffs
 * Twinkle admin tools for the advancing editor
 * Teahouse for the new editor question
 * Mouse-over on an inline citation, to see it
 * Editing
 * Citation modifying/expediting/proving
 * Colorizing wikitext; Character toolsets
 * Categorizing; Reviewing new articles; Filing disputes
 * The Wiki Editor, WikEd, and WikEdDiff
 * Appearance
 * Editing the introductory section.
 * Admin tools; Changing and adding to page layouts and controls
 * Displaying diffs, or animations, or your very own local time on all timestamps
 * Enabling an external search engine for searching TechInfoDepot
 * Show the assessed class of an article, Featured, A, B, C, etc.
 * Compatitiblity
 * Font and JavaScript support
 * Advanced
 * Regular expression tools
 * Tracking software bugs
 * Patrolling recent changes

Notifications
See this week's The Signpost section, "English-language TechInfoDepot to be first to receive Echo deployment", for a brief overview.

Pending changes
These settings are for advanced editors who have a detailed understanding of the five pillars and of the templates used to mark judgments on the page. Pending changes refers to the style of the presentation of For an example of a page history showing the pending changes feature, click on the history of a page listed at Special:PendingChanges.
 * new page "curation" tools: curation toolbar and new pages feed, and
 * how recent changes appear on the page history of certain pages that have been configured for protection by reviewing any changes before they are applied to the public version of the page.